Vivaty Blog

This afternoon, we launched VivaBux, a fictional currency that the Vivaty Community can buy with real money and then use to access to exclusive virtual goods and services. With VivaBux you can buy additional scenes, special gifts and furniture for your scenes, exclusive clothes, and in the future, the ability to do special things inside Vivaty.

This is an exciting opportunity for our users to get access to some really great content. You can always continue to earn Vivaty Points to buy some clothes and furniture for Vivaty, but VivaBux are a great way for you to get some of the coolest stuff around. There is a ton of new content that has gone live today, and people purchasing VivaBux will have first dibs on it. We also have some great introductory prices on things, too. For example, you can get an additional scene for only 99 VivaBux right now (compared to 7,500 Vivaty Points). You can also get some limited edition tattoos and shirts. There are only a few of these, so get them before they’re gone!

VivaBux can be purchased using major credit cards, a checking account or your PayPal account. It’s very easy to get started, and there are no commitments!

You can learn more here at http://help.vivaty.com/VivaBux

And right now, we’re going to give out some special surprises for our first few customers, so get started today and see what’s coming!

This is a big day for Vivaty, but we have even bigger news around the corner. Stay tuned for those details in the coming weeks!

As always, let us know if you have any ideas or feedback.

Thanks,

Mark Hull
VP Product Management

Hi Everyone,

This is an important week as we’ve launched VivaBux, a fictional currency that the Vivaty Community can buy with real money and then use to access to exclusive virtual goods and services. You can learn more about VivaBux on our other blog entry, but this note is mostly some news about our updated Terms of Service, which you can (and should!) review. As a reminder: By using our service, you agree to the Vivaty Terms of Service.

Naturally, things get a little more complicated and interesting when you’re working with real money. The Terms of Service update basically outlines some common guidelines and rules around using the service and clarifies that, in the interests of protecting all of our users, the community can’t do bad things to the service overall (e.g., hack into the service, decompile the code).

It also outlines some of the policies on VivaBux. For example, all purchases of VivaBux are final — there are no refunds, resale or exchanges. Now, in some certain circumstances, Vivaty may take some other action, but that’ll be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Also, VivaBux have no real monetary value today, so you shouldn’t expect to be able to resell them for real cash to other users, or back to Vivaty.

That’s the majority of it, although I’d encourage everyone to take a few minutes to review the terms (heck, you should probably do that on any online service you use). Let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Thanks,

Mark Hull
VP Product Management

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks in the Vivaty office, so apologies we’re a little tardy with the latest launch announcements, but here’s what’s new:

Easier Gifting: We’ve made a series of improvements to make it easier to give gifts, in addition to finally enabling you to give clothing as gifts! (Whew, about time!)

Unique Usernames: We’ve started to enforce unique usernames for everyone. This should reduce any user confusion on identity, in addition to making sure that you are friends with only one Harry Potter and not five copycats.

Boot and Block: Sometimes, guys can’t take a hint. Now, you can boot out the people who are being a little annoying in your room. Additionally, you can prevent them from coming back by using this. It’s available in the right-click menu.

There were also a wide variety of things we worked on behind the curtains to help make the experience even faster and easier to use.

The next release is a big one for us. Stay tuned for some exciting news!

Thanks,

Mark Hull
VP Product Management

We wanted to send a quick note to our friends over at vSide, who announced they were closing down their service due to a lack of funding.

This is obviously sad news for everyone. We’re always interested in seeing more companies in the virtual world space because it helps increase competition, and overall, provide a better experience for users everywhere. The vSide and Doppelganger team were always a very creative and innovative team, and the industry learned a lot from their work.

Luckily, we know a lot of the team are landing at great new places (we’re lucky enough to have one of their best animators on our team now!), so their good work will continue.

We’ve learned a lot from the vSide users who have joined Vivaty and shared their feedback on what we can do to build a better service. I know a lot of those vSide users have spent a lot of time building up their identities and reputation on vSide.

As part of this, we’d like to invite vSide users to join Vivaty. To help with the transition, we’re offering a limited-time Vivaty Points bonus based on your vSide activity. A lot of this is built on trust right now, but we want to do whatever we can to make an easier transition for vSide users.

You can read more about that here. http://help.vivaty.com/vSide-Closing-Its-Doors

Additionally, we’ve often read the vSide forums. vSide users are a vocal bunch (awesome!), so we invite you to share your ideas, feedback and insights with us at http://feedback.vivaty.com so we can focus on making Vivaty a better experience for you, too.

Thanks,

Mark Hull
VP Product Management

Happy Early July 4th!

Hope everyone’s enjoying their summer! We put our regular release out a couple days early this time around, so a few of you have had a head start on these great new additions:

Improved Profile Pages

We made it easier to learn more about the new people you’re meeting in Vivaty. Just click on any user’s name in most places (or click on View Full Profile in other places), and you’ll see a pop-up with that user’s profile. The profile includes new information (which you can control the visibility of in the Account Settings). It’s easy to see where people are hanging out, what their favorite stuff is, and even to send them a little gnome gift so they know you were checking them out.

Shoes and Bling

It’s about time we let you change your shoes. Hello! Sorry about the delay, but now you can change your shoes, and also get some cool bling or accessories to trick out your avatar. Sunglasses, tattoos and more. Lots more are coming, and the first batches are limited editions, so get yours before they run out!

Improved Shop and My Stuff

We weren’t fans with how long the old version of My Stuff and Shop took to load up, so we redid it. Now, it should be lightning fast for you to go shopping and check things out to try on or decorate your scene. There’s a ton of content now, so we’ve made search much better too for you to quickly find something you’re looking for in Vivaty.

Object and Scene Pages

Now if you click on objects, especially from the stores, you can see a little Information icon “I” which you can click on to see the profile information about that object. So for example, if you love the Garnet Red Sandals, you can learn more about how many are left in the store, other items that are similar, and who are the lucky devils who have one already!

Address Book Integration

Some of you guys are really popular. REALLY popular. So we wanted to make it easy for you to invite more of your friends to join, and to send more of them gifts, too. We’ve integrated web address books into our flow. So if you have a Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, AOL or other address book, you can easily select addresses from those lists to send invitations.

Things That Make You Go Boom

Finally, celebrate the 4th of July in your scenes with some firecrackers! These little things make a big boom when you click and set them off. But be careful! Just like in real life, firecrackers are unpredictable. Sometimes you get a fizzle, sometimes you get a crackle, and sometimes you get a delayed explosion the size of a large farm animal. That’s going to leave a mark.

Have a great holiday!

Mark Hull
VP Product Management

See @aplusk in 3D! Vivaty just added a Twitter object for you to put in your scenes! You can easily add this object to your walls, and enter the name of the Twitterer you want to showcase. Maybe you want to put your own tweets in your room, or maybe of your favorite friends and celebrities.

The Twitter object updates when you visit the scene. This is the first iteration of this, and we’ll add more capabilities in the future, including the ability to post from here, and include multiple styles. Buy it now in the Vivaty Shop!

Speaking of multiples, we’ve added the ability to own multiple scenes! Many of our users want multiple scenes, so we ‘re now letting you buy them and create quite a few! Admittedly, it’s a little expensive right now, until we learn a little more from our users about this (so prices likely to drop in the future), but now you can switch things around pretty easily!

You’ll also notice we tweaked the Launchpad a little bit. It should look a little nicer, in addition to being faster, and easier to connect with some new friends.

Check out some of the latest clothing items. We’ve got some cool swimsuits for summer, some awesome hats, and around the corner, stay tuned for some piercings, tattoos, and shoes! (finally!)

More to come!

Thanks,

Mark Hull
VP Product Management