Second Life Goes In Search Of Its Voice

Second Life sees voice as an important tool for its residents. According to the virtual world’s creator, Linden Labs, their development path is focused onhaving both voice-enabled avatars so you can simply walk up to someone and engage in a conversation and allow for spatially aware multiple voices so that you can walk through an area and hear people speaking with their voices emanating from where they are in that space.

In an interview with IDG News, Joe Miller, Linden Lab’s VP of platform and technology development also noted that they have a significant initiative under way to make inworld search more natural and visual.

Joe also mentioned they have created an API which will allow their business customers to create their own front porches into SL. Not my favorite analogy, but this is an important development. In fact all three initiatives are important as SL has copped a lot of flack for its clunkiness. Marketing and hype is one thing, but happy users is a whole other ball game.

Let’s end with a great quote, which we strongly agree with…We believe that multiple-user virtual environments are just in the beginning stages of their existence…to create communities, commerce and a permanent place for ourselves.

Draper gets Meebo’d

Meebo, which bills itself as a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere has raised a Series A funding round of $9 million – anyone recognise a trend in funding we’ve been covering this year — 9 is the number of choice.

This round follows the $3.5 million seed round they raised from Sequoia in December 2005 and Draper Fisher Jurvetson led the round. Venture capitalist extraordinaire, Tim Draper, has joined Meebo’s board.

Dollars flow to Piczo

We blogged recently about teen social networking phenomenon Piczo and its rapid growth from 1 to 10 million monthly unique visitors in a year. Our venture friends heard the call and have ponied up $11 million in a Series C funding round.

This capital will be deployed on Piczo’s worldwide expansion and delivering new tools that empower teens to build their own personal online communities in a safer online environment.

The round was led by U.S. Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners. Existing investors, Sierra Ventures and Catamount Ventures, participated.

In making this investment, the venture guys recognised that teens control billions of dollars of spending worldwide and that understanding this demographic and knowing how to market to them online is a skill that Piczo can bring to its partners and advertisers.