First look at the chat community imvu

Recently I had a chance to try out the chat community imvu.  I thought I'd share my first impressions with the dashPunk Community.

As far as chatting systems go, this one holds it's own with most.  It is reminiscent of the old Palace chat and Excite bubble chat.

The screen is comprised of two sections.  Your chat window and avatar display and then your buddy column that basically looks like Yahoo Messenger.

For those of you who can not get on Second Life because of graphic card or memory issues, this may be a good alternative for you.  The av's are very 3D and there are excellent shopping opportunities for you to make your av exactly how you want it to be.  When you begin, you are given a choice of many different av styles and a room or apartment where your av can live and chat.  The homes are able to be rearranged by the owner and can be updated by shopping as well.

Shopping points can be earned in the beginning by completing newbie tasks.  Or you can join and spend real dollars to get points.

The down side to this chat is that if you are used to easy to maneuver real life like chats and games systems like Second Life, you will be extremely frustrated with the lack of mobility your av has.  You can not walk or explore the rooms without clicking on a space and waiting for a chair symbol to show.  Then you can click the chair and you will appear in that next spot as if by magic.  There are also some glitches in the system that for some reason move your av from your sitting spot to somewhere else and it's hard to find where you landed as the screen stays focused on your previous spot.  The chat windows are very laggy like AOL dial-up where several lines of type will show at once.

As far as I could tell, the only way you can get to other rooms is being invited by someone in the room or clicking a CHAT NOW button that plops you into random rooms.  This makes it pretty easy to meet new people, but unfortunately the community goal seems to be about hooking up rather than networking or meeting friends. 

Nevertheless, it is free to try, so if you're bored and would like to try something new, you can download the software at http://www.imvu.com

I have to thank imvu member Roger for teaching me some of the basics and hanging with me while I got the hang of it.