VWN: So you're not directly competing with anyone for a piece of the market?

CR: I'd say what's similar to others, we all find that our competition is not so much each other. When we talk to our users, they say, "What I'd be doing if I wasn't in IMVU Credits would be in school, college or HS, or watching TV or reading a book" not "I'd be in another virtual world." They might be doing Facebook or Myspace, but there are a number of different things that can coexist.

VWN: Well among the other virtual worlds that are out there, if users are picking between them when they're not watching TV, what's the differentiator for IMVU?

CR: I'll take a few of the ones you mentioned. Second Life, for example: IMVU Credits was founded by virtual worlds pioneers. The group of people who founded this company were the group of people who co-founded and built There.com to start with. When they left, they took important lessons that help to differentiate us.

Those companies build from the world down. And real estate, islands in the virtual world, is something which is cherished and bought and sold. That becomes very primary. Our co-founders built IMVU Credits from the avatar up. What they learned is that nobody wants to walk alone down an empty street. What most people want is to meet new people and interact with other people and meet new avatars. Walking alone wasn't as much fun. That's not to say there isn't a place for that, but our approach is much more user-oriented and avatar-oriented. Personally I believe we have the world's most expressive and beautiful avatars. The ability to put clothes on and interact was designed to be as simple as possible. When people chat, they're able to change things very easily.

And our concept of virtual space is very different. Instead of a persistent world, we believe that your private room is something you choose. From the catalog, you can choose from over 50,000 virtual rooms. And the word "room" is a metaphor. You can have a room in space that if you pull back looks like it's existing in a void. Others don't even look like rooms: you can have a flying carpet, a dragon, a space under water. All these things enhance the interaction and the communication. That emphasis and approach, I think, is very different because our approach is to meet new people in 3D. That really is the focus of what we're doing.