Myrl Launches to Open Beta Promoting Outeroperability between 19 Virtual Worlds

Myrl, the social network meant to connect virtual worlds, launched to open beta this week with 19 virtual worlds. Users can register with Myrl, enter their avatar names, and, depending on the world, synch up some of their avatar's activities with their profile on Myrl. For now some worlds only support showing whether the avatar is online or not while others can stream activity and track activities, offering an avatar newsfeed. The goal, though, isn't just to create a social network, but to create a hub for virtual worlds with activity running in and out across the spokes.

"We’re trying to build a cross-world entertainment platform with two goals," explained Founder and CEO Francesco D'Orazio. "The first goal is to bring together the different virtual worlds and create an integrated space with endless possibilities. We’re trying to build a layer on top of each virtual world to create a common ground and build different applications. Some of them might be mobile some them might be cross-world gaming some might be virtual goods-related, but the core idea is to bring together virtual worlds."

The aim is to provide a central place for users to manage their information and avatars through a dashboard, share news about events in different worlds, and connect in a different way. D'Orazio doesn't want to siphon traffic away from virtual world publishers, though. Instead, his thought is that the user experience is changing, and he wants to enable publishers to continue connecting with new and existing users.

"Most [publishers] realize that there is going to be a place on the Web for people to try different worlds and jump from one to the other, but most are playing hide and seek," said D'Orazio. "We need to show them that users are ready and starting to use virtual worlds in a different way from the beginning, when we were focused on the context and the life. We logged into Second Life or There and were stuck there because that was our world. Now it’s more and more content driven. We’d like to browse across different worlds and pop into the one that’s most interesting to us right now."

In fact, he thinks that may be the answer to the frequently bandied question: "Okay, I'm here. Now what do I do?" What users can do is find whatever activity or content happens to be engaging to them at that moment--a concert in Habbo Hotel, a job fair in Second Life, a game in Small Worlds and so on--and enter easily with their managed identities. As they progress they earn karma

"We wanted to create a place for people to keep up with the different worlds and their different accounts and the events going on in different worlds," D'Orazio explained. "The amazing thing of virtual worlds is that the activity isn’t structured as in game worlds. That’s great for 10% of users, but the rest need some sort of structure. That’s why so many people pop in and never come back."

As users move in virtual worlds, they earn Myrls, which let them vote on the social network for updates and events, which D'Orazio hopes will encourage users to stay active in virtual worlds instead of just his network--and show world publishers that he's not interested in poaching their users. Currently, Second Life offers the deepest support with its open nature, but Myrl is in talk with There.com for deeper integration, and D'Orazio hopes more publishers will come around.

For now the functionality is limited--D'Orazio says his first focus is to simply get the gateway open before looking at a platform for new ways to interact--but the roadmap includes plans to create a cross-world gaming platform with missions across worlds and eventually a cross-world trading platform supporting listings, payment, and delivery for virtual goods in different environments.

Outeroperability vs Interoperability

As D'Orazio moves down the roadmap, he has one major focus: providing not interoperability, but outeroperability.

When questioned if there was a mainstream (or what passes for it) demand for interoperability, D'Orazio said the idea of interoperability relies on two flawed assumptions, that users want one identity that's portable across worlds and that the industry is ready to support that.

"Outeroperability on the contrary is the tool to allow users to manage multiple different avatars and keep up with different worlds from a single place," said D'Orazio. "The assumption here is that users use more than one world, that they like to have different identities in different worlds and that the virtual worlds platforms aren't and will not conform to standards. So if you want to experience a boar hunt in World of Warcraft and a conference in Second Life, but you also like to pop up in Vside to party with Simian Mobile Disco djing live, you are definitely going to need to create multiple accounts and multiple avatars. What we are doing, is giving users a tool to keep all this together: manage multiple avatars from a single dashboard, keep up with the 5 virtual worlds you're using from a single Web-based place and discover new things happening in new worlds easily from the Web."

It's circumventing real interoperability, using the Web instead as a bridge and hub between worlds. D'Orazio thinks that's essential for the way we're using virtual worlds. He comes back to the metaphor of the early Web as full of walled gardens before opening up. But instead of asking each virtual world to pull down its walls for interoperability, D'Orazio thinks that their current trend of connecting to the Web is enough to promote outeroperability. That supports, as D'Orazio puts it, users' "switch from a context-driven mentality to a content-driven mentality."