It’s been quite a while since we’ve redone our UI. Thanks so much for being super patient with us over the past few months as we’ve focused on building a great experience. We’ve now rolled out some pretty significant changes that are the precursor to us introducing the new shopping features in the very very near future. (so close we can taste it! that’s a good thing, btw)

New Interface for Customizing Scenes, Avatars

Definitely a big change here. Now you can easily access all the things that are in your inventory –  all your gifts, furniture, pets, etc., — in a simple interface that makes it supereasy to add it into your scene (it’ll be supereasier in a few weeks when we add Drag and Drop, too). We call it “My Stuff” (go figure), and in a couple weeks, we’ll let you use it as a closet to store all the clothes, dance moves and other things that you’ll be able to buy with your Vivaty Points.

New Launchpad

You told us that you wanted to get a sense of what is going on in Vivaty without leaving your scene. No problem. With the new Launchpad, you can access it anytime, and it pops-up as a layer on top of your scene. This will show you where the party is at, in addition to all the new things to add to your scene, new gifts, news, and upcoming events.

New Help Center

We want to make it easier for you to get help on the things you need, in addition for you to be able to send us your ideas and questions more easily. We’ve revamped our Help site, although it’s still getting new content all the time. You can check it out here at http://help.vivaty.com

Text Triggers for Gestures

There’s this engineer here named Len. He’s cool. He works his tail off and then every once in a while in his spare time he makes a new feature. Well, this is one he built in about an hour. Instead of using our menus for gestures, just type them into the text. If you want to wave, type “/wave” in the text, and presto your avatar will wave. Cool eh? And for some things, you won’t even need the slash, like a little smiley    Give it a shot. For the full rundown, you can read the help info on these gestures and triggers.

On top of all this, we did a ton of things to make Vivaty run a little harder, better, faster, stronger (insert Daft Punk / Kanye West soundbite here).

Busy week! We’re still working out a few kinks, and if you come across any, please let us know in the Help Center. A few more major changes upcoming. Stay tuned!

Thanks,

Mark Hull
VP Products

Maybe your avatars are exhausted from walking around Vivaty so much. Maybe your feet hurt from dancing. Is it the running around while throwing hearts that has you so tired?

We’re still investigating what’s behind everyone’s desire to sit down, but while we’re busy sleuthing, we’ve rolled out the ability to sit on furniture, bars, etc. So now you can take that new sweetie you just met, and have a serious heart to heart on the sofa of love. Or maybe you need to explain your latest macroeconomic theory — who wouldn’t need to sit down to hear that?

This was a pretty significant push, and a lot of content was updated as part of the process. A couple of you might run into an alert window the next time you visit Vivaty. It should go away in a few days, or you can clear your browser’s cache to get rid of that message, too. Sorry about that, but thanks for your patience!

Couple of other new things that launched yesterday:

Male Avatar Improvements

We did a complete overhaul of the female avatar a couple weeks ago. Now, the men step up to the plate. There are some nice improvements to the general look and feel now, that should make you look a little artificially chiseled. Additionally, you might see a couple new articles of clothing.

Where are the rest of the clothes? We sent a few back to the tailor to get stitched up. The tailors are hard at work, and in a couple of weeks you’ll see why when we begin to release hundreds of new clothing items for your avatars. Hang in there!

In the meantime, let us know what styles you’d like us to make first in our user forum (all you have to do is VOTE!) Vote now

Scene Names

Tired of your scene being named, “My Scene”? Now, you can change it to whatever you want (be good, people!). Change it in the “Settings” link which is under “My Vivaty.” Btw, did you know you can restrict access to your scene to just friends from the same control panel?

Easter Gifts

There are some cute Easter gifts that we just launched, too. Give a gift today to check them out. Little chocolate bunny that gets eaten up when you click on him. Ow! Easter bunny doggie. And another swarm of bunnies coming out soon!

What’s Coming

We have a major set of changes coming up in the next few weeks. They should make your Vivaty experience much more fun and easy to use. We’re working through a lot of details during that time, so it’s going to be crazy.

In the meantime, we launched a new version of our forums for you to tell us what you’d like us to build next. Share your thoughts with us!

Thanks!

Mark

We know, deep inside, you you yearn to be a country-rock superstar.    One of the reasons may because of Rascal Flatts, one of the most successful bands today, attracting tons of fans from all over the world. Maybe you heard their great cover of “Life is a Highway” in the Pixar movie, “Cars” or maybe you’re just curious.

The latest Rascal Flatts album, “Unstoppable” comes out April 7. In partnership with Universal Music, we’ve created a Rascal Flatts album listening party inside Vivaty. You can listen to the first single from the album in the scene today, and we’ll soon have the entire album for you to check out. While you’re there, check out the Rascal Flatts videos, leave comments, join their fan club, sign up for text alerts, and meet tons of other fans.

Join Now: http://www.vivaty.com/official/rascalflatts

This is the second listening party Vivaty has done with Universal Music, after our earlier one with Queen’s new album. The Vivaty community loves music. Create your own fan site today!

Hey everyone!

Lots of new changes that went live earlier this week! Here’s the latest rundown.

New Female Avatars

We’ve spent a lot of time sprucing up our female avatars, and frankly, we think they look great! Thanks for all your positive feedback. We listened very carefully to your comments and applied much of that feedback to the new version. Guys have a new version coming around the corner, too. You’ll also notice a handful of new clothing items. Some of you also noticed that a few items disappeared (wings, for example). Don’t worry! Those will be coming back soon. We just had to send them back to the shop for some repairs, and you’ll see a new version, in addition to hundreds of new clothing items, coming out in the next month.

Here are a few snapshots of some of our new female avatars.

Who Are You?

Have you ever wanted to learn a little more about the people in the scene with you? Or wanted to easily share your Facebook profile or Twitter feeds with them? We introduced a very simple way to do this. Right-click on any avatar and select About Me to see that person’s scene thumbnail, and also any links they’ve chosen to share with you. You can put any link you like in there to share with your friends. I know you guys are thirsty for ways to learn more about people, too. Stay tuned. Some cool new things coming out soon.

Show a Little Love!

Yeah, we see you Miss Flirty Flirt. Trying out your moves on the boys. Very cute. Well, now you can win each other’s affection by sending hearts to other friends in the scene. Just right-click on an avatar and select Send Hearts to send a cute little flying greeting to your friends. Warning, if you fall in love, don’t blame us.

Rotten Tomatoes!

Love or hate our movies, you can now show how you feel. Just like Sending Hearts, you can also go into the movie theaters and rate them by selecting “I hate this” or “I love this.” Depending on what you choose, the avatar will throw something at the movie screen. So if you’re sick of the latest Twilight clip, just throw some rotten tomatoes to let people know how you feel!

Power to the People!

We’ve given you a couple of new features to help you better control your experience in Vivaty. If that avatar next to you has really bad breath, or is otherwise way too annoying, just right-click and select Ignore User. After ignoring the user, you’ll no longer see their chat and they’ll generally just have to leave you alone. Also, for those of you who prefer to hang out with just an older crowd, you can now put some age restrictions on your scene. Just Edit Settings for your scene to control it. Also, if you have any more significant issue with other users, please just let us know, or send email to help at vivaty.com

Come by the Forums!

We’re listening closely to your feedback, and frequently responding inside our new customer forums. Thanks so much for your fashion ideas, and all the other suggestions. We think about them very very carefully as we’re building our future versions and features. Stop by our forums today. While you’re at it, follow us on Twitter for the latest updates!

See you soon!

Mark and the Vivaty Team

Hi everyone!

We’re a little late with our blog post, this time around, but we definitely have some cool things for you to check out.

Let’s go to the movies

Now introducing Cinema Vivaty. We’ve launched three movie theaters that are playing a variety of cool things. Coming Soon Cinema shows the latest movie trailers. Cinema Twilight shows all things Twilight!  Cinema Vivaty shows full-length movies. Each theater has multiple movies, so stick around, have a seat in the theater, and check them out. Each movie is sync’d up so you’re all watching the same thing at the same time. Go figure! There are more cool features coming out in these theaters in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

Also, you can request movies and clips here. More comedies? More romance? More action? Tell us what you want to see!

Let’s get together!

We heard many of you ask us for helping in finding other people to hang out with, or to point you in the direction of all the action. To help you with this, we’ve introduced Vivalerts, which are little alerts you’ll see in your scene every few minutes letting you know where people are hanging out, with a quick invitation to go join them if you’re interested! Even if you’re not in Vivaty, when the party is really hopping, we’ll occasionally send you an alert via the Vivaty Message Center at the bottom of your window in the desktop tray. That way, you’ll never miss out when things are hot! We’ll try to do that only once in a while, but if even that’s too much, you can turn these settings off in the Vivaty Message Center.

Now presenting, Miss Congeniality!

We wanted to showcase some of our best friends in the Vivaty community. Those who are the most generous, the most popular, the most active, and our overall VIPs (a combination of cool factors). We’ve quietly launched this Vivaty leaderboard, which you can see from your Launchpad. It’s just the beginning, as we’ll soon start to reward our best community members with a little celebrity awareness!

Tell us what you think!

We’re constantly interested in hearing what new features, ideas or any feedback you have. You’ve probably seen our good friend Samantha in our community. She’s always interested in your thoughts. Additionally, you can share your requests and ideas in our new forums.  We listen very carefully to your feedback, and now it’s even easier for you to share it with other members.

Keep an eye out on an upcoming blog post. Would love your feedback on some upcoming avatar changes and clothing!

Thanks!

Mark Hull
VP Products

It’s not unusual to jump into Vivaty and find a few Vivaty employees chatting with folks, or playing the new Eskape Cove shell game, or checking out the latest scenes. But sometimes even we need to get back to work!

We introduced something pretty cool this week so that even when you’re not logged into Vivaty in your web browser, you can still get the latest updates when your friends log in or drop by your scene, so you can then jump in and join them.

Vivaty Message Center

It’s a small little thing that sits at the bottom of your Windows task bar. It’ll fade in a little balloon that tells you when your friends have logged in, sent you a gift, commented on your scene, or when some other cool bit of activity takes place in Vivaty. You can easily customize it, too, to just get the messages you want to receive.

You don’t have to do anything special to get this. We’ll install it automatically when you download the latest version of the Vivaty Player on your next visit (You can always uninstall or disable it if you don’t want it, too).

Eskape Cove Shell Game

Also, the next time you’re online, check out the Shell Game at Eskape Cove. No, it’s not some guy with a wooden box betting you $20 you don’t know which shell the ball is under. Instead it’s a fun game where you race the clock to pick up enough shells in order to bring out your inner hula. Best scores gets an exclusive gift from Vivaty that you can’t get anywhere else! It’s a lot of fun, and is the first in a series of fun games that are on their way, so stay tuned for more!

We’ve seen some great scenes recently. Loved seeing Stephane C.’s scene and Summerdays2106’s scene. We love Papillon Denuit’s scene, too. Finally, I think people can thank xion696 for the results in last week’s elections.

See you soon!

Mark Hull
VP Product Management