Web-based virtual world IMVU has announced that it's passed the milestone of 20 million registered accounts, although that translates to 600,000 active monthly users. The company is also now earning $1 million a month in revenue, 90% of which comes from selling virtual currency, while 10% comes from embedded advertising. Around 1.7 million items have been created by users and uploaded to the IMVU community too.
According to GigaOM, around 100,000 IMVU users have registered to become content creators, although the actual number doing it - with tools like Maya and Blender - is in the tens of thousands. The world typically has 50,000-70,000 users online at once, of whom 60% are female, and 60% are US-based. However, the company isn’t yet profitable, although it has high hopes for selling prepaid currency cards in US retail chains like Target and Blockbuster - an initiative that kicks off in the next fortnight.
They’re impressive stats, and seemingly imply that someone’s clicking on those ubiquitous IMVU banner ads (if you haven’t seen them, have you been using the same web as us?!). The success of the IMVU catalog for items shows the benefits of building a committed community of content creators, too - IMVU appears to take a relaxed attitude towards users selling each other content even outside its own retail system.
It has to be said though, IMVU has been going since 2004, and is still in beta. Shouldn’t it be ready for a proper commercial launch by now? ;o)
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