ICYou announced today that it had partnered with magnify360 to add personalized shopping experiences to its upcoming virtual world Interactive City, announced earlier this year. The virtual world, which emphasizes shopping and retail, launched to a Swedish audience in the fall of 2007 and is now aiming for an international launch in the winter of 2009. The partners say that magnify360's Web-based platform will be used to "automatically tailor the Interactive City experience to each resident, based on their online behaviors, needs, personality type and other parameters," which should both boost sales for virtual retailers and visits and session times for Interactive City.
On the retailer side, magnify360 says its software helps by "providing anonymous data on individual and aggregate shopping habits, lead scoring and by connecting in real-time with brand's customer relationship management (CRM), email systems and lead nurturing campaigns."
I'm curious to hear more about how it'll work and fit into ICYou's overall plans for Interactive City. The company says users will be able to design avatars with their real-world measurements and features, and it seems like it's emphasizing connections to the real-world with shopping instead of promoting purely virtual goods. So far that hasn't really taken off as a use case, but with companies like [TC]2 touting avatar technology that promises to create realistic avatars that reflect their users (though, as far as I know, unconnected to Interactive City), I could see more avenues opening up.
Of course, some of those ideas have been around for a long time, so it seems like it's still as much an issue of getting users to connect to the idea of a virtual world experience for shopping as it is giving them the tech to enable it. ICYou was initially aiming for a Spring 2008 worldwide launch, so it seems like the company is, at the very least, taking some more time to figure all this out.
"This is an unprecedented partnership bridging two of the most exciting areas in technology today," said Lars-Erik Ottenvall, ceo of ICYou. "With magnify360, Interactive City can revolutionize the online retail industry by providing brands with an unparalleled understanding of who their customers are and how they live and shop online."
Comments