Once the fb IPO goes through and they become public then I expect things to change some since they will be subject to regulations and shareholder votes they don't have to worry about now. So LL is at their peak and cannot grow anyway so why advertise? LL systems can't handle the load they have now. Facebook doesn't like secondlifers so LL loses. IMVU wanted more revenue so they leveraged facebook and adsense and got it. If you don't care about the ramifications of participating in fb data collection (the like buttons, etc.) and only care about money then hey that is a personal choice. If concerned about privacy then block all the fb spyware domains and don't use their services at all. by agreeing to use facebook at all you agree to loss of all privacy and you also give up your 4th amendment rights as well since the government can acquire the data same as anyone else that buys it. The simple truth is that people are attempting to sell the idea of linking all these aspects of our lives as a desirable service but in truth they are only interested in further commodifying our private lives for their own benefit and profit. It was clear from talking to both academics and students that while they were fine having *a* cyberlife associated with their meatlife, they were adamant that they didn't want their entire cyberlife associated with their meatlife, that they wanted clear firebreaks between the various aspects of their cyberlives and that they desired complete and absolute control over those firebreaks rather than trust control to companies, especially when those companies have lousy track records of keeping user data secure. Just this very day I attended a meeting about virtual learning environments. I don't link my meatlife to SL, I don't link my meatlife to EVE Online. Hamlet, when are you going to realise that people DOES NOT WANT? “Clearly 2 million people decided they’re fans and users,” as Fleck, who was once head of Linden Lab marketing, put it. He told me there’s no compelling evidence of that. Since IMVU is, like Second Life, based on interaction between anonymous avatars, I asked IMVU's head of marketing David Fleck if the user community had expressed concern over linking their IMVU activity with their real world Facebook profile. Related to that, here's another interesting IMVU stat: The game's official Facebook page, which the company uses to promote IMVU content and events, has well over 2 million fans, almost all of whom are likely IMVU members. It's also still several times larger than Second Life, which had around 600,000 monthly active users in 2008 - about as many IMVU had in that time frame - and has grown to just 800,000 now. so this includes people checking out IMVU for the first time, even before they register." So that high number of visitors is still a reflection of IMVU's aggressive marketing efforts, which was really the point of my post for CMO Site I was referring to. 'Unique visitors' are people who hit the website without necessarily signing in. "'Monthly active users'," as Cary explained to me, "are defined by the number of people that are signing into the product with their avatar names and passwords. Last week I mistakenly posted that it had 10 million users, but that's actually the number of unique visitors on the site on a monthly basis. IMVU, the 3D virtual chatroom with user-generated content, has 3 million monthly active users, company CEO Cary Rosenzweig tells me by e-mail.
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