Innovation

Sometimes I question whether or not it’s worth it… To be first to do something new and clever in my products (Xivio, Xivio Teenz, etc). When in the end the features are just ripped off 3 months down the line by our competition (I won’t name names but it starts with an H and rhymes with Hobo.) Ask me personally and I can name 7 instances where this has happened. (all in exact chronological order of release mind you.)

I would love to see how their products would look today had it not been for my long hours hacking away at code and designing original interfaces while downing tons of Diet Coke listening to iTunes blaring in my headphones. I would like to think that it makes sense, and makes for better products for the users. I would love to believe there is a reason to all of it. Maybe I just haven’t figured it out yet.

I have to say that after everything that has happened I do feel a little hesitant to keep on innovating. I used to feel like I could just go at it, make a mess, build anything that would be “awesome.” Now there is a little negativity that comes with each new idea and I realize now it’s holding me back a bit.

Sometimes I feel like I want to vent but have no one to listen… So I guess that’s what a blog is for. Lol.

Anyway, I’m pushing on and hope for the day I actually get some form of credit for my hard work. Keep an eye out for that icon on the top left too. It’s got a lot to do with my next innovative feature. You’ll just have to wait for Xivio Teenz to find out what it’s all about.

~Gavin

Fantage at 3 Mill

Fantage repots 3 million user accounts signed up now. With everyone seeing a dive in usage due to the economy, they’re still climbing, as well as Xivio. Seems our big brothers in the industry have tapped out the audience.

I think Fantage’s success so far has been due largely to their huge purchase of Google Ads, which turn up on any search to do with a virtual world.  Even though they claim most users are from invites.

One interesting thing to note is usage per session for the average Fantage user.. “Bae said, at 55 minutes spent per session.” The average Xivio user spends over 81 minutes per session. Don’t believe? Check Alexa.

The Day The Music Died

Xivio no longer allows music upload or party-streaming. Don’t blame us. Blame the recording industry.

You may upgrade to flash…

But some things just never change, Habbo.

I was logged in for not more than 1 minute before seeing the above.

Habbos Like: Bobba, MSN, Cam2Cam…

Update:

In other news…

Habbo to lay off 20% of their workforce in Finland. No word on how many will be laid off globally. Though they made revenues of around €50 million, they only profited just under €1 million. Where do you spend €49 million? Obviously not on research and development, they just take “good ideas when [they] see them.”

 http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-habbo-hotel-parent-company-sulake-lays-off-40-staff/

Well technically before taxes they were in the red. “but the IFRS calculated tax receivables turned the company statements profitable.”

FarmVille & Facebook

Short Points:

1. It sucks.
2. I won’t be making any Facebook apps.
3. The “industry” will move on soon.

Farmville sucks. I kept getting invites in facebook to try this thing, so I finally caved. It’s one of these million facebook apps that has just enough multi-user interaction to make it feel like a virtual world. Slap on a cute user-interface, a shiny glassed up logo, and you have a game on facebook. Zynga (the developer behind it) pumps out a few of these a month, all similar in game play with new logos and interfaces being the only difference.

It’s been my observation that the the “gaming industry” (Mainly everyone in Seattle) likes to move in droves to the latest fad. Most recently it being building Facebook games/apps. Last year it was Virtual Worlds for kids. The year before it was Second Life. The year before that it was Web 2.0/Social networks. The industry changes their minds each year, chasing the investor’s dollars. I know this by attending the gaming conventions, and talking with other people who have connections in the industry. It seems there’s always some “new rage.”  Facebook be it at the moment.

I have nothing against Facebook. It’s a site that got a lot of users. The end. My issue is developing within a site which itself resembles the very fickle fads these gaming industry types like to move in. There are two benefits to developing on their “platform.”

1. Their huge userbase.
2. Easy distribution method between friends (Rapid fire inviting)

That’s about it. But I’m not looking to take my talents and dump them on a social network, just to keep people entertained in their little facebook bubble. Facebook wins in the end. As its so easy to move from one mini-game-fad (Farmville) to the next on their network, just as it was to distribute it in the first place.

Facebook isn’t the Internet. It’s just the biggest pooling of users at the moment. How long does that last?

Working on Teenz

Working hard here at Xivio on Xivio Teenz! It’s coming soooooon u know

Just changed the look of ma blog. How u …

Just changed the look of ma blog. How u like?

Upgraded to CS4

Just upgraded from Adobe CS3 to CS4. So far the layout is nice. Was a real pain to install though. Took two days, and a few hundred google searches later I still had no luck. Finally just killed all running apps, uninstalled everything in the OS, and started from scratch. That worked!

I guess you don’t install Adobe. It installs you <_<

Hai

Installing Windows Vishta on a MacBook. D:  FAIL

Hello Amazon :) Payments

My last entry was all about how PayPal sucks big donkey *. No surprise.

So what might we use in place of it? Well Amazon of course. They’ve got great Web Services, which I have subscribed to in the past, with awesome technical documentation and community.

So far we’re 90% into the transition from PayNazi to Amazon, and it turned out to be much less of a learning curve than I had anticipated. In fact it looks like Amazon did their best to emulate PayPals APIs. Which is nice.

If you’re looking for an alternative to PayPal  I suggest checking them out:

http://payments.amazon.com

L8r