imvu News

While i was out checking for rss feeds i came across an interview with imvu in regards to their moving from beta to full version. Now what amazed me and many more was the amount of comments posted in regards to the shift from beta (after 4 years) to the full version or as i like to call it (the stable version). There were alot of unhappy users, particularly developers, who spoke about the affair and how badly imvu has gotten. I personaly think that its about time imvu got out of its beta stage however, like some agreed, there is still alot of work that needs to be done before IMVU becomes what it should be. Although, like other software companies, typically they have updates and such on a regular basis pushing out the stable versions as fast and reliably as possible. So what makes IMVU different? why did they wait so long before they felt they had a 'stable' version of their website available? particularly with the messenger system being faulty along with the developing software 'Previewer'?

Personaly i think they have gone over their heads trying to push too much at one time and lost track of whats realy going on around them. In a way, They took on too much for them to handle now its falling back on them.....and they are planning to come out of their 4 year beta stage?!

Hey everyone,

So the day is approaching, but we will be disabling the old catalog on May 1st, but we have heard the concerns many of you have had about the current catalog, and we are going to be working to improve on it, and will be continuing to improve on it, even as we move forward. Some of you have stated a preference to the old catalog, but we have found through repeated user testing that users found the older catalog more confusing, and that users spent less in the old catalog.

That said, we also saw a lot of long-time users who had issues with the old catalog and we're going to be continuing to implement changes based on that feedback. Already, we've already improved a handful of things:
* When you go to a content creator's link to see more items by that developer, you now default see their newest products first.
* You can now use a content creator's name to narrow down categories on the left-hand side, another commonly requested feature.
* We have been working on speed for some time and are continuing to do so.
* We are going to be restructuring the categories, based on suggestions we received from the community late last year.
* Disabling the old catalog will improve performance for the entire site.

On April 21st, we will be disabling the ability for content creators to make their own categories and will be implementing a new structure that we worked to develop with the CAB last year. This new taxonomy is very robust and should cover most content easily and efficiently. (Therefore creating new categories in the old catalog right now will do very little anyway, as we have already drawn up the new taxonomy with the help of members of the community.) We will begin to implement this new structure shortly after we have disabled the ability of developers to make subcategories on April 21st. This will be a phased roll-out and we will be testing and collecting feedback at each stage in the process.

We're going to continue working on improving the catalog in terms of functionality so if you have suggestions on functionality that we should be developing/improving upon in the new catalog, please let us know and we'll look into the matter.

Thanks again!

~c.

Cliff "Devinoch" Hicks
Community Manager

OK, here it is the latest (and greatest?) client prerelease. This is not an official client release, so you're taking your chances. But you're also helping us out by finding problems so that we can make sure the next official release is good, and for that we thank you.

Download link:
http://www.imvu.com/installers/InstallIMVU_395.32_full.exe

Now with fewer crashes! 13% more stability included free of charge! Same great taste! But seriously...

- Fixed a crash that could happen if you closed a 3D window immediately after triggering an action.
- Fixed a crash that could be triggered by a product with a corrupt image.
- Fixed a crash that could happen when joining a public room.

OK fearless testers, try it out and let us know how it goes. And remember, when you post to this thread, the more specific you are, the more likely it is that your problem can be addressed (being nice doesn't hurt either ).

(This was taken directly from the post JopeZ made October 15th, 2007) 

What are they?
Tiers will be a way to identify and reward our active CC community based on their actions. The program will be broken down into multiple levels that reflect the CC abilities and contributions.

So what will they do?
Under the old process it was pretty binary, you were either a Pro or you weren’t. Now they’ll be more levels that are calculated automagically and you’ll receive ever increasing rewards based on how high of a tier level you achieve.

How many levels will there be?
At the alpha launch there will be 0+7. Yes, I said 0+7. There will be a tier 0 which will be for all new CCs. And then 1-7 earned tier levels. In the future there will also be 1-2 paid for commercial levels for entities that don’t fit into the earned structure (but that’s a little ways off). Each level will be separated by 3 pts (more on the pts system below).

What kinds of rewards can we earn?
The final list isn’t locked down, but they range from: Discount on IMVU CC fees; special promotions; access to new features; participation in official IMVU bundles and first user experience; and more.

What happens to the old Pro system?
Essentially it is going away, but still remaining in spirit. There won’t be an official pro level anymore, but there will be more or less a Pro Zone of tier levels (5-7) that will represent ever increasing pro-like status. People who are at the current Pro requirement levels will most likely end up in this Pro Zone (I say most likely because of the way the formulas work). Who knows maybe we’ll create a way to identify and celebrate these individuals.

So how will the system work?
At a high level the system is merit based on your actions. The harder you work (or more you contribute) the better the tier and rewards. I won’t go into all of the technical specifics, but essentially this is how it will work:
Once a month everyone will receive a score ranging from 0-18. This score will be made up of your activities for the past 90 days in a range of criteria. The criteria are broken into 2 categories: Core and Unique. Everyone will have the same 3 core scores, and will be judged against the entire population of CCs, but to ensure that people are rewarded based on their unique contributions, we have the Unique bucket.

The Unique group will work by taking your 3 best scores from a pool of criteria. So everyone will end up with 3 equal compared across the population, and then 3 unique ones only comparable to others like you. Your tier level will be a total of your Core & Unique scores (9 in total). So 50% of your final score will be based on your Core (common to all) and 50% based on your unique actions.

The lowest score you can receive would be a 0, and the best is an 18. Each tier level is broken down into scores of 3. So Tier level 1 = 0-3 pts, and Tier level 7 = 18pts (best of the best).

Does this mean that my tier will change every month?
It might. Depending upon your level of activity and the communities at large, you may see your tier go up or down a level. But if you really step it up, you may jump up more than 1 level in a month, and if you forgo everything, your tier will slowly drop down in level to 1.

So how are criteria scored?
Without boring you with all of the mechanics (and to prevent some folks attempting to game the system) the scoring system does the following: Your score for either Core or Unique items are calculated using a Statistical Normalization process. What this means is, you’re actions are compared to the population and you are assigned a 0-3 value based on how close or better you are compared to the average user.

What criteria will be evaluated?
Core criteria will be: Sales in Units; Sales in Credits; and Sales in Predits.
Unique criteria will be: # of forum posts in the CC forums; Feedback review (avg of all products in your catalog); # of derivable products (of all time, this is the one exception to the 90 day limit); % of new products introduced from prior period to current.

We will be adding new Unique criteria as they come online.

So what’s an example of how this thing will work?
Let’s use two people, Bob & Jane.

Bob’s business is pretty average. He doesn’t create many new products or participate in the community much. Jane is very active, very popular, sells a lot and very involved.

Bob’s score would go something like this: Core = 3 (1 pt each for having average sales in Units, Credits & predits), and 1 pt for Unique (he got 1 pt because of avg feedback, and 0s in all the others). Total score of 4 pts.

Jane score is: Core = 9 (She’s a top seller in units, credits & predits). She also scores 6 pts in Unique (3 for feedback (she makes the best quality products); 2 for productivity (she’s above avg in creating new prods); and 1 Pt for having a lot of derivable products). Total score = 15.

So Bob would be Tier Level 2 (3-6 pts), while Jane would be Tier Level 6. Bob works about avg while Jane works really hard and gets rewarded for her contributions.

Can this system be gamed?
Well I would hope that every CC is ethical and wouldn’t ever do that, however we are realists at IMVU. Due to the way a score is calculated it is going to be really hard to game the system, because of the process involved the hurdles to gain upper levels is always changing from month to month. If the entire pop moves in one direction and one person moves in the other, they’ll be singled out as an outlier and not counted in the calculation of the hurdles for the 1-3 scores. The system will flag outliers and let us look at them for clear cases of gaming. Mass gaming will also be self-defeating. Because of the way Statistical Normalization works, if everyone is the same, the score will go to 0 when it is calculated. This defeats everyone trying to do the same thing.

Finally since the values are calculated every month, a person would have to work really hard to game the system every month, which would get them noticed pretty quick. For instance if Bob was thinking he could game the system by spamming the CC forums, he’d get picked off by a moderator before that got out of control. And the system would self-regulate his score out of the calculation process and he wouldn’t be able to influence it in his favor.

I’d also like to think that if someone did go through that much hard work, they’d just invest it in developing content in a constructive way and not risk banishment.

Wait didn’t you say something about a Tier 0?
Yep. All new CCs will start out at Tier 0. Once we launch our first batch of rewards, Tier 0s will have additional requirements to “graduate” to tier 1. The first requirement we’ll implement is 10 published products. Expect this system to go online when Peer Reviews comes online.

This all sounds neat, so what’s the game plan?
We will be launching the alpha of Tiers this week. You’ll get a new Dev report that tracks your tier level and scores, and on you “My Accounts” page your Dev module will include your tier level.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be monitoring the results and making sure everything is working correctly. During this Alpha period your tier level will not have any rewards, it’ll simple be there for your own bragging rights.
Once we feel comfortable with the system will begin rolling out more criteria, rewards, and other bonuses to the tier system as we bring online other functionality and ensure stability and accuracy with the system. We know that the rewards have the potential to impact a lot of people, and want to make sure everything is calculating correctly before we touch anyone’s credit sales. Also we want to nail down the reward structure before revealing it and give time for community feedback.

So what’s the future plans?
Well as we talked about before we are building out a core infrastructure to a new CC program. Tiers will be at the center of this new structure. Many of our additional features will be centered around tiers, or have an impact on them, or gain from them. As we bring online additional features (ex. Peer Review) we will integrate them into the tiers formula (if they have a measurable quantity) or tie them to the rewards (if possible) or provide recognition where applicable.

We would also like to celebrate our CC’s tier status through stickers, titles, and badges of honor. These systems will all come on line in time and offer of CC’s even more ways to differentiate themselves.
Finally I should mention that the tiers system will in the future be closely tied to our punishment process. CS will be able to adjust tiers as a new way of dealing with flagging. This will give them more options