First Take on Blue Mars Mobile Including Over-Hyped Video Trailer

Blue Mars developer Avatar Reality announced a restructuring last month that is shifting focus to a mobile version of their platform. They released an initial free version for the iPhone and iPad last week, which:

. . . allows users to view and rate avatars and fashions from Blue Mars, which populates the results on the "Top-Rated". They can also use the "Recents" option to track avatar updates and see the latest fashions. From Blue Mars blog

I decided to give it a try. The initial version is very limited, but feels really responsive. Downloading an avatar takes only about ten seconds. Once it's there you can pan, rotate and zoom with standard iOS gestures. You can view a list of avatars by either popularity or recency, and also search for them by name. Unfortunately, at this time you can only create or modify an avatar using their PC client. Which is a big problem.

One issue is that it only runs on a Windows. Although the client supposedly can run under Parallels or Boot Camp on a Mac, I couldn't get it running despite three hours of trying. Didn't find any useful help in their forums. So I dug up a mid-level Windows notebook and finally got it working after downloading a huge file and installing the most recent version.

Even after logging on successfully, it was way more frustrating than fun. The response was very sluggish and it took over an hour to find a shop with decent clothing for sale. Along the way I downloaded three additional 300+ megabyte locations. Nope. Not fun at all.

Needless to say, few iPhone or iPad users are going to be willing to go through hours of downloads and searching just to create a marginally customized avatar just for viewing. But despite the initial kludginess, I'm still optimistic that when they bring avatar customization into the mobile app, the experience will be much better and it will eventually evolve into a fun 3D avatar chat application:

Future updates will include such enhancements as avatar customization, interaction with other social networking platforms, the ability to chat with other Blue Mars users, and integrated shopping of clothing and other items via Apple's in-App purchase feature. From Blue Mars blog

For now, here's a totally over-hyped trailer I put together showing both the iPad and iPhone versions.

Why IMVU Prospers As Blue Mars Dies

You may think you know what customers want, but until you build it and you get it out to them you'll never know. Cary Rosenzweig, IMVU CEO

Blue Mars announced that it is suspending work on their PC client and shifting their efforts to to the iOS platform (iPhone/iPad/etc.) Although the announcement puts a positive spin on the new direction, the bottom line is that their multi-million dollar investment in a high-end virtual world never caught on. They're taking their remaining money and hoping to survive by creating a new application that can be developed quickly and cheaply for the huge mobile market. I wish them luck.

Tateru Nino did a fine job analyzing what went wrong on the technology side. But I think the underlying problem was that they directed their efforts based on what the management team thought was compelling rather than on what users really cared about. The stream of beta versions they released was used just to debug, rather than to enlist the users help in shaping the emerging platform.

Contrast this with IMVU, a company that has grown to fifty million registered users and a profitable $40 million annual revenue run rate. They've shaped their product through an Agile development methodology focused on continuous releases directed by user feedback. I love the spirit expressed in their engineering blog and the video below: