YOOWALK Opens for Beta

YOOWALK, a French start-up aimed at creating a 3D virtual world layered on top of the Internet,  opened for a public beta yesterday The system is a Flash-based virtual world that integrates with instant messenger clients  Windows Live, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, layering those buddy lists on to the ability to walk with avatars across a 3D version of the Web--a combination of the ideas behind ROCKETON, Weblin, and ExitReality. Users can build their own 3D spaces as well as their websites (called "Walksites"), but the system also provides a 3D representation of other 2D web pages.

I haven't gotten a chance to play around with YOOWALK much yet. From what I've seen, though, it seems like it could be a fun way to approach social browsing, but most users probably won't have much need for the 3D versions of 2D websites. If a site goes to the effort of building a 3D space--YOOWALK expects them to be useful for live CRM--it could be a different story.   

For me, though, trying to use the 2D version of Google by myself inside a 3D room without any interactive objects didn't help much. If, for example, the Google Video room were contextualized inside of a movie theatre and I could watch videos simultaneously with my friends, that might be more helpful. Instead, it looks like clicking on the video only jumps out from YOOWALK to the regular Google Video site.

Of course, as a caveat, the virtual world just launched into beta and I haven't spent very long in it. After all, I'm still wandering around as the generic avatar (which is nice that users can just jump in) and don't use any of the supported IM clients, so I don't have friends list to add yet. 

Regardless, with all the companies developing these sorts of social browsing tools--and, like YOOWALK did in February, getting funding--there's at least the perception that there will be an interest/need for services like this.

If anyone else spends some more time in YOOWALK or these other services before I get the chance, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

''We are proud of this launch,"  Xavier Marvaldi, Founder and CEO of YOOWALK,  said in a statement. "We are entering in an era of Web 3.0.  Web 2.0 rested on social networking, user-generated content, and communication platforms.  Our revolutionary service adds 3D to all this, which lets users interact live on the web, congregate with friends, walk around the web together and share their Internet interests. We are the first to blend these concepts together and make them accessible in one click.  In three years time, we aim at being the European leader in virtual worlds with 10 million unique visitors.''

Comments

[Claude Gelinas]

It's still in beta alright but it could be a nice technological base to create virtual trade shows.