Raph’s Website » GigaOM goes to HiPiHi

GigaOM goes to HiPiHi

August 25th, 2007 (Visited 1810 times) Tags:

Wagner James Au was in Beijing, so he stopped by the HiPiHi offices.

Alas, he didn’t return with a guide on how to pronounce the name of the company. But he did return with lots of details about the virtual world, which is expected to launch a US beta in October.

For a Second Life user, the most striking thing about HiPiHi is how similar its interface is – reverse-engineered is probably the more accurate term. (This despite the fact that Second Life’s confusing user interface is easily its weakest selling point.) Xu said he conceived of the basic idea before even knowing about Second Life, but it’s abundantly clear he and his team have modeled a lot of HiPiHi on it. Like Second Life, content is streamed from the networked HiPiHi servers — which comprise the world — to users’ computers.

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Tarek said on August 25th, 2007 at 5:37 pm:

The first thing that came to mind is something like “Yippy-I-Ay”, like the song lyric only without the “ay.”

ErikC said on August 26th, 2007 at 3:08 am:

http://gigagamez.com/2007/03/05/first-looks-at-a-chinese-second-life/

HiPiHi (pronounced “high-pee-high”) literally translates to “The World Exists Because Of You.” (Quite similar to Second Life’s official slogan, “Your World. Your Imagination”.)

Michael Chui said on August 26th, 2007 at 9:54 am:

Solipsism Rising?

Wagner James Au said on August 26th, 2007 at 11:43 pm:

Yeah, it’s “high-pee-high”. I thought I included the pronunciation in the article, but maybe it got taken out in the edit process. I can’t tell, because I’m still in China, and GigaOM has been blocked by The Great Firewall.