My avatar name is CaryJay, and some people have gotten to know me. They provide guidance and feedback privately as well as publicly through the forums.

VWN: So as far as your business model goes, why stick with virtual currency instead of sponsorship?

CR: Absolutely one of our next steps is to add sponsors to what we offer. It's a huge opportunity. Sponsors should be knocking on our door—and some are—trying to get access to our community. We have chosen to focus on building the products and services to make this a very robust microtransaction economy, one that will weather the ups and downs of advertising's economy. Advertising will provide a nice complement, but we want to create a service that's so good that users want to reach into their pockets.

We're working in parallel with some of the most successful companies in Asia. It's a surprise that this isn't the norm in the States. We're able to provide a service that's of a high enough quality to monetize at rates that are times over what you can achieve with advertising. We will add sponsorship also, so we'll have that mix.

VWN: Why do you think that's bigger in Asia and not the norm here?

CR: There are always trends that start in different parts of the world and catch on in different places. SMS os bigger outside the US, especially before it caught on here. Broadband is much more advanced in Korea than in the United States. Eventually we'll catch up, but with 40% of our users outside the US, we're much more of a global company. Why people see this [microtransactions] as experimental? I don't know.

VWN: Along those lines, when can we expect to see the prepaid cards come into effect for the economy?

CR: They're incoming. We've already seen some sales begin, but on July 1 we expect them to be everywhere.

VWN: And speaking of other trends that are bigger outside the US, have you thought about a mobile play? It seems like it would make sense for an environment that emphasizes avatars and chatting.

CR: We're looking at it very hard and learning from what other virtual worlds are doing. We want to learn from them. I wish the United States had a simpler mobile environment. Because that makes it so much harder.

VWN: I've also seen an increasing emphasis on letting users take their avatars and/or rooms outside of the main virtual world. For example, WeeWorld opened its API to encourage developers to find places for their avatars and SmallWorlds, which emphasizes easy creation, is all about connecting to the Web. Will we start to seeIMVU Creditsavatars popping up elsewhere?

CR: We've chosen to focus on the first step and hardest of user-generated content and then take that to other places. The first step is to create an economy where it's robust and people find it extremely easy and compelling to create those items. The next step is to consider now that we have this huge catalog of items, where can we take them? That's not our focus right now, but it's certainly something we hear from users and people outside of IMVU. We want that when that becomes a popular thing, people say, "IMVU is a great place to start because they have all that."