MyMiniLife
Over at TechCrunch there’s an article about MyMiniLife. In a nutshell, it’s a competitor to CyWorld or Habbo, with social network aspects and virtual apartments. The client runs in Flash, so you can embed it inside any site: your MySpace profile, Yahoo!, whatever. The look of it is very Sims-like. You use virtual currency to purchase stuff to decorate your house with. It’s put together by a bunch of students who seem to have gotten together at U Illinois Urbana Champaign, though now one of them is a grad student at UCLA. And they’ve been around since the middle of last year, running along quite quietly.
The idea of virtual worlds as essentially widgets is one that seems to be gaining currency, and it’s the opposite from the vision of an all-encompassing immersive metaverse. Rather than the web getting sucked into textures on a 3d wall, in this model it’s about the spaces being sucked into the Web we use today. Instead of the virtual world being the primary interface, it’s a secondary interface, and web browsing remains the primary way you interact.
I expect to keep an eye on MyMiniLife; right now, it looks like the interaction is basically chat, which is an increasingly crowded space. Of course, since it is Flash, you can embed streaming MP3s on objects, Flash games, or video quite easily. I would expect every single social network to have a virtual apartment system in the next year or two. These guys are likely to get drowned in offers of seed capital now that Mike Arrington has given them some coverage.
13 Responses to “MyMiniLife”
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05/21 04:34 What are you doing with the net? (Feedster on: secondlife) 05/21 04:18 MyMiniLife (Feedster on: metaverse) 05/21 04:09 But I wish BMW would go ahead and acquire Alpina and apply their philosophy to the M line so that I might actually want to own (Feedster on: second life)
[…] mini home into a blog or myspace page.The blogosphere is afire about the story… Tech Juicer , Ralph Koster, Download Squad, VC Mike , and others have picked up on the story… and for good reason. […]
I’m not so sure that the 2D web will remain the primary way we access the internet.
Windows, the 2D based operating system now has 3D rolling windows in Vista. Games went from 2D Space Invaders, to Half-Life in 3D.
History tends to tell us that in the end, most things “computer” end up in 3D. Why wouldn’t the web become more like Second Life, a full blown 3D client, instead of a 2D webpage with a 3D widget inside it? I’m not saying Second Life IS the future of the internet the way some people are, I’m just saying it’s probably closer to the future model of the web than anything else.
Granted one of the reasons mySpace is so popular is because it took a lot of the HTML away from building a person webpage, so that Moms and Grandma’s could “get it”. So I do admit a 3D interface to the web is still a long ways off, at least until a layman’s interface is designed and built.
Personally, I see the future web as eventually a fully 3D entity, not a pseudo-3D one based inside a 2D webpage, although that may be a step along the way.
mini virt. worlds is perfect for the platform of choice in the middle school/high school, i.e., the cell phone. it’s a brilliant construction for that audience, a mobile, more fluid myspace.
I agree, LindaX, but don’t forget that technology improves day by day. Flash is probably the next step towards a 3D web, but in ten years, your phone will probably be running full blown PC apps.
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Looks to me like Second Life lite, or a “me too” compared to Citypixel.com or other existing microverses…
The market for Flash-based 2.5D virtual environments is already flooded with companies like Habbo, Cyworld and even Webkinz. Interestingly, Cyworld USA has recently upped the ante by launching a true Web 3D application (http://news.corporate.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20070502/02may20070600.html) that is powered by a company called View22 (www.view22.com).
This is clearly the future direction of immersive social media: rich, interactive, near photo-realistic 3D application that also offer a unique branding and advertising opportunity for consumer and premium brands.
[…] The Blogosphere has caught afire with stories about MyMiniLife: Download Squad , Techjuicer , Ralph Koster, VC Mike, 2.0 Webmania (Portugese), Black Rim Glasses and others have all written about MyMiniLife […]
[…] on download speeds. … blog.myminilife.com/blog/?cat=7 • Raph’s Website » MyMiniLife May 20, 2007 … The Blogosphere has caught afire with stories about MyMiniLife: Download Squad , […]