Attention LL marketing - IMVU is after you

[animats]

IMVU pitch: "Avoid FOMO and Get It!"

This is what some people get searching for Second Life.

IMVU's landing page is cooler than SL's landing page. Second Life's landing page now requires a full signup, including date of birth, permission to spam, and a CAPCHA, to find out anything about Second Life. The marketing funnel is upside down.

No wonder we see so few new users at the new user entry points.

[LittleMe Jewell]

27 minutes ago, animats said:

IMVU pitch: "Avoid FOMO and Get It!"

This is what some people get searching for Second Life.

IMVU's landing page is cooler than SL's landing page. Second Life's landing page now requires a full signup, including date of birth, permission to spam, and a CAPCHA, to find out anything about Second Life. The marketing funnel is upside down.

No wonder we see so few new users at the new user entry points.

 

If I was LL, I don't know that I'd worry too much.  I just did a search of "second life forums" on 11 different search engines, including Google (which I'm pretty sure is still the most popular) and only Bing showed IMVU first.  All the rest did show the SL Forums as the first result and IMVU was actually not even on the entire first page for all of the other search engines.  

Even with Bing, if the search is only for "second life", then "https://secondlife.com/" is the first result.  That result gives the usual SL page that does allow for some exploring, rather than immediate sign up.

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by LittleMe Jewell

[animats]

2 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

 

If I was LL, I don't know that I'd worry too much.  I just did a search of "second life forums" on 11 different search engines, including Google (which I'm pretty sure is still the most popular) and only Bing showed IMVU first.  All the rest actually did show the SL Forums as the first result and IMVU was actually not even on the entire first page for all of the other search engines.  

Even with Bing, if the search is only for "second life", then "secondlife.com" is the first result.

 

OK. It's always hard to tell who's advertising what how hard to whom. Who and where you are affects search results strongly. I'm never logged into Google or Microsoft, so I see the default results.

Still, compare the landing pages of IMVU and SL. Boring old IMVU has upped their game.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 minute ago, animats said:

Still, compare the landing pages of IMVU and SL. Boring old IMVU has upped their game.

The IMVU page looks cooler because they are showing animated avatars.  You can't go any further without signing up though and with the SL base page, you can click on lots of things for more info without have to actually sign up first.

If I was poking around, I'd still pop through all of those SL pages for info before actually creating an account in either place.  Since I can't actually get any more info on IMVU without signing up, I'm not so sure I'd ever go past that first page.

 

[Chic Aeon]

2 minutes ago, animats said:

Still, compare the landing pages of IMVU and SL. Boring old IMVU has upped their game.

They also have an UNDERSTANDABLE TOS  (yes, I read the sucker) which would be REALLY nice to see again. Long, long LONG ago the SL TOS was much simpler. It basically said "play nice with one another"  -- well more than that but not much more :D.  AND they have a really nice deck out your avatar interface before making an account -- simple but changing hair and top.  I didn't make an account but I might some day. 

 

Sinespace gives folks starting out money too --- which is a VERY good idea for here especially since new folks really have no way to make money AND there is really no way to help the "actual" new folks (well maybe Trivia since you would have to be "awake" for that.   

 

We know from statistics that while there was much more land sold in SL last year the sign ups went way down. This from Inara's blog via the famous statistic's keeper  Tyche Shepherd.   So inboarding has NOT been of importance. I am guessing that it still won't be in 2021.  But it would certainly be helpful to get some new folks in here. 

 

[Chic Aeon]

14 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

The IMVU page looks cooler because they are showing animated avatars.  You can't go any further without signing up though and with the SL base page, you can click on lots of things for more info without have to actually sign up first.

If I was poking around, I'd still pop through all of those SL pages for info before actually creating an account in either place.  Since I can't actually get any more info on IMVU without signing up, I'm not so sure I'd ever go past that first page.

 

You can get to lots of information from the footer. And more before actually putting in any personal information or even naming your avatar if you go to the "sign up for free" part. 

 

 

From those links you can get many many more places.  Sorry deleted that last screenshot as the links weren't active. But I got to see lots of pictures of avatars and read about things etc. 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by Chic Aeon
fixing incorrect info

[Rowan Amore]

I've seen quite a few people coming to SL from IMVU over the last year.  I'm not even sure it's comparing the same thing as I've never checked it out.  

This kind of bothered me when I read their Community Standards.

IMVU is for all users 13 and older and we maintain some separation between users who are 13 to 17 and those who are 18 and older.

I'm not saying SL doesn't have it's share of people who lie about being 18 but just the fact they allow 13 yr olds on the same grid would be enough to keep me away.  Not even for any adult aspects of the platform  but that I don't come to a virtual world to interact with tweens.  

[Solar Legion]

Yet another variation of the ever popular Chicken Little threads ....

Seriously, give it a rest already. IMVU is not even close to comparable to Second Life and caters to an entirely different demographic (one that Linden Lab should not be catering to).

[FairreLilette]

Years ago I was on IMVU for one day.  I didn't like their avatars as much as SL.  I truly think digital art is a real art form and some of us are downright infatuated with it, but I also think it's the 4000 credits from IMVU that would get users in more than anything.  We need the egg game here in SL - something like match so many of a certain egg color and win a prize, a good prize.  People say SL's draw is it's sex but I say it's the art.  If SL didn't have the artistic standards it does, the sex part doesn't look very appealing.   Plus, I think a lot of people love avatar customization and that's why they want a sugar daddy/momma so they can buy all this cool stuff.  If they couldn't buy all this cool stuff, I don't think they'd be all that interested in a sugar daddy because there wouldn't be the drive to get the lindens in order to have all the cool stuff.  

Edited January 27, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Is this a seasonal thing? Is it because the days are shorter now on the northern hemisphere? Is there a way to tag threads like these with #TheEndIsNear, so I can filter them out from the content list? It's spreading like a disease on this forum. Yesterday it was the cloud, now IMVU, tomorrow it's someone's twinkle in their toe.

[LittleMe Jewell]

53 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

You can get to lots of information from the footer. And more before actually putting in any personal information or even naming your avatar if you go to the "sign up for free" part. 

 

 

From those links you can get many many more places.  Sorry deleted that last screenshot as the links weren't active. But I got to see lots of pictures of avatars and read about things etc. 

 

 

Ahhh - those links just aren't "in your face" as much as the SL ones.  

 

Overall, I think that IMVU is likely a better "social" platform.  I've never logged in there, but isn't it more like Sinespace and Sansar where everything is basically in disconnected rooms?  I mean, can you just start walking / driving / flying over the entire world?  That is what I didn't like about Sansar and Sinespace, and thus one of the things that keeps me in SL.

[Chic Aeon]

3 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Is this a seasonal thing? Is it because the days are shorter now on the northern hemisphere? Is there a way to tag threads like these with #TheEndIsNear, so I can filter them out from the content list? It's spreading like a disease on this forum. Yesterday it was the cloud, now IMVU, tomorrow it's someone's twinkle in their toe.

You can always just NOT READ. There are oh so many threads that I bypass :D.  

If you noticed however this is not an "End is Near" thread. Hopefully it is not, but many folks (especially creators) ARE WORRIED.  Profits are down overall and some folks are trying to send their kids to college or even pay the grocery bills -- I know some of them.  

This is a "new Lindens who likely really don't UNDERSTAND virtual worlds" (just a guess there) these are things you need to think about, things that have been talked about for oh so long while "other ideas" like Places , EEP and Arctan (RIP) were implemented instead.   

 

I have no great hopes that the new Lindens will pay attention to the populous any more than the old Lindens did, but if no one SAYS anything --- how are they supposed to know?  Go back through years of forum posts?  I think not LOL.

 

Very good to see @Dakota Linden again! 

[Amina Sopwith]

Was I missing something with IMVU? I tried it out ages ago and it seemed to be all about dating, which didn't interest me. When I finally got past the sign up process, it put me in a room with a male av who immediately left. I'm the first to admit I'm not very technical, so was I missing something?

[LittleMe Jewell]

Given this from their 'About' page, I likely don't need to worry about signing up anytime soon (bolding mine):

"No wonder IMVU was rated a top 10 favorite social app among genZ and millennials in 2020"

Socializing with others is not my primary reason for being in SL - not even in the top 5.

[Solar Legion]

4 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Given this from their 'About' page, I likely don't need to worry about signing up anytime soon (bolding mine):

"No wonder IMVU was rated a top 10 favorite social app among genZ and millennials in 2020"

Socializing with others is not my primary reason for being in SL - not even in the top 5.

Ok, I'm sorry but .... What?!

At present the youngest member of Generation Y (Millennials) is 25 years old. The oldest turning 40 this year. While I can certainly see the more child-like/young in mind members of my (1983) generation using such a program I cannot believe for even a single second that it is as popular as they're pretending it is.

Generation Z (Zoomers)? Sure.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

I signed up in IMVU once but that game is totally broken. I could not get to walk my avatar even a single inch, no matter what I tried, WASD, arrow keys, game controller, Thrustmaster HOTAS F/A-18 flight stick, nothing worked. Needless to say, I binned the client.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

I tried it too and it quickly found it's way to bin 13.

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Amina Sopwith said:

Was I missing something with IMVU? I tried it out ages ago and it seemed to be all about dating, which didn't interest me. When I finally got past the sign up process, it put me in a room with a male av who immediately left. I'm the first to admit I'm not very technical, so was I missing something?

And if it's all about dating, Wtf are 13 years olds doing in there????  Case in point is the 15 yr old that was on these forums a few months ago. Said she'd been on IMVU since she was 11 and had experience in RP.  I don't even want to know what that was all about.  

As IMVU promotes itself for persons that young, parents may assume it's ok without checking.  At least many adults have already heard that SL is for the most part, an adult platform and would hopefully, be a bit more careful with their children.  As @Solar Legionsaid, not the demographic we need or want.

[Amina Sopwith]

3 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

And if it's all about dating, Wtf are 13 years olds doing in there????  Case in point is the 15 yr old that was on these forums a few months ago. Said she'd been on IMVU since she was 11 and had experience in RP.  I don't even want to know what that was all about.  

As IMVU promotes itself for persons that young, parents may assume it's ok without checking.  At least many adults have already heard that SL is for the most part, an adult platform and would hopefully, be a bit more careful with their children.  As @Solar Legionsaid, not the demographic we need or want.

Honestly, I couldn't figure out how to do anything else with it. It wouldn't let me in until I chose someone to join and the only people it showed me were men. Eventually I chose one at random, hoping I could ask him a few questions, but as soon as I rezzed in, he got out. There was nothing and nobody else in the room. I tried looking up some roleplay places and they seemed to exist, but I couldn't go to them. As far as I could tell, the whole place was just a really really rubbish digital Tinder that didn't even work. Even when I was first feeling my way around in SL, I could figure out enough to tell that this place was an Aladdin's cave if you just stuck with it. IMVU was just...what? 

Fully prepared to hear that I was missing something massive about it but I really couldn't work out how to do anything except get dropped in on random men who didn't want to be there.

[Chaser Zaks]

This is laughable, they didn't even do their research.

They claim to have "the most" of anything(around 30 million items). Second Life has around 21 million items on the marketplace, and tens of million items that are sold only in-world.

Not to mention, IMVU's movement system is poopy. Literally just pose ball, no physics, no driving, etc.

Second Life in actual size is 1,674,706,944 square meters(According SELECT count(*) * (256 * 256) FROM map_tiles_agni WHERE lastseen > CURRENT_TIMESTAMP - interval '1 week').  Meanwhile, IMVU just has "thousands of chat rooms" of unknown size, which can't even be traveled for that matter.

There is also the fact that IMVU is targetted towards teens, despite them also owning a p**n site known for donation fraud.

Honestly, they make roblox look like competition.

(In case you couldn't tell, I despise IMVU for various reasons.)

Edited January 27, 2021 by Chaser Zaks

[FairreLilette]

21 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

Wtf are 13 years olds doing in there????  Case in point is the 15 yr old that was on these forums a few months ago. Said she'd been on IMVU since she was 11 and had experience in RP.  

Ewwwwwwwwww, just ewwwwwwwww.  Can you imagine you are put in a room with an avatar and the person behind the avatar is 11 or 13.  OMG!  I might never want to go on the internet ever again.   However, I went on IMVU oh my gosh somewhere around 10-12 years ago for one day and I don't remember a thing about it all those years ago.  I didn't know the age limit.  I wonder if they have age verification and payment info on file kind of things.  So many people think SL and IMVU are equal rivals but they aren't for so many reasons.  I wish people luck if you sell there but I would not want to be with ages 13 and up for any "game"...even Fortnite is 13 and up and I think it's ewwwwwwwwwww yucky.    

Edited January 27, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Paul Hexem]

Amazing how many people are missing the point in this thread. 

[Bree Giffen]

It has a mobile app though! That’s a huge market that SL needs to penetrate. Never played it so I don’t know what the experience is like but I can see that it’s a graphical interface and you see your avatar. We need that. 

[Rowan Amore]

5 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Amazing how many people are missing the point in this thread. 

I certainly didn't miss the point he was trying to make but what popped up first in his search was an ad.  I never open those so to me, its a moot point.  Frankly, if the in boarding for new people is too difficult, perhaps SL isn't the place for them.

[Solar Legion]

And that point is .... What exactly? That Oranges are preferred over Apples by a Generation that is barely within the Apple's target demographic?