Avatar chat application Visitoons has announced that it is to officially launch worldwide on 15th October, although the site is available now. Visitoons has been available to the Spanish-speaking market since July of this year, and has now launched a global service, in addition to a development platform for third parties. Visitoons is an application which is designed to be embedded by a site owner. It will then allow users either to chat in a 2.5D environment, or in a Rocketon-style overlay, on top of the website.
The case for a site owner installing some sort of avatar chat application is clear. It could foster a stronger community around the site, hopefully making it more sticky and certainly creating greater engagement with the brand. If done with a more heavy-weight solution, then a company could leverage a tightly integrated virtual world to sell virtual goods, for example, perhaps even making decent money. There is a whole spectrum of providers catering to this space, however, so Visitoons will have a tough time gaining decent traction. On the expensive end, Webflock is a 2.5D platform developed by Electric Sheep which can build a virtual world for a 'six figure sum' – this requires no plugin other than Flash. Another option might soon be Lively; it's already possible to embed a Lively room into a 2D website, and with an enhanced platform on the way, that could become an even more attractive option (although with the need to download an extra plugin – a potential barrier to adoption). Rocketon is slightly different, in that it is a web-wide virtual world, which allows users to control avatars on top of web pages, chatting to others and operating the site.
Visitoons' plans for its API aren't totally clear, but it appears that the flexibility is mainly in the ability to alter the 2.5D environments. From the press release: The Visitoons Platform has been specially developed to allow the creation of highly customized virtual environments using a variety of forms of art, including illustrations, photography and 3D renders, and not just only 3D models resembling online games. This will enable businesses to present their brands in the most appropriate ways, allowing for traditional creative professionals and existing marketing teams to tackle the quest for developing branded Virtual Worlds, as no special 3D design or programming skill is required.
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