Ambient Sound Investments, a company established by the four co-founding engineers of Skype, have invested in the Hong Kong based 3D social networking company Frenzoo as part of a Series A round of investment aimed at expanding the service through out Asia.
ASI owners include Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn, Senior Developers at Skype, Ahti Heinla, Chief Architect at Skype and Toivo Annu, a former Skype Head of Engineering.
Frenzoo enables users to connect with friends by becoming “budding fashionistas”. Users can express themselves by personalizing 3D characters, and can mix-and-match a variety of branded clothes, footwear, accessories, furniture and lifestyle items.
Frenzoo utilizes a “RealFashion 3D Engine” that simulates a user’s character, clothing and living environments in true 3D, leveraging recent advances in graphics hardware. The Frenzoo application is a downloadable program offering native social network browsing and instant messaging.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Frenzoo is currently in closed beta with a launch date scheduled for the second half of 2007.
That might be a good investment for them. Though still in beta, it seems good and i have a feeling that it will be successful
Only time will tell whether it would be a good investment
I notice that this post has just two posts…..
Usually Techcrunch posts have 10-12 comments within no time.
Why does TechCrunch, a blog with great content and truckloads of traffic have to make do with such a pathetic design? Sidebars look haphazard.
The only part I like is the post-meta/info region. Every thing else could do with a better design.
It’s the Second-Life’ing of the internet. If you have a communication tool, add some 3D elements to it and suddenly interactivity jumps.
Well, Skype works pretty well as is, hopefully they make good use of this new technology. What it might do is to drive Skype away from being a utility to being more like a product like AIM
Skype as a (commercial) product? Yuck….I guess I’ll have to search for other tools when and if that day comes.
It seems that there are many environments that get new life in the orient after they have already been maxed out in thewest. Yet another Second Life clone in the US can not attract too much attention anymore unless it had some new special sauce. In the East it seems that old idas can flourish when adjusted to suit the local pallet.
im sure it will be joostable Members can enter rooms and watch tv on their pcs but see literallwhoelseis in theroom watching same show
Looking at Second Life and how recent reports have forecasted it to have more than 25 million people by end of 2008, this may be a good investment for them. Virtual word and 3D living is going to be a common phenomenon.
Arrghhhh - if I see one more “Create your ZWINKY!” ad I’m going to freak out. That’s one reason why Desktop Tower Defence bugs me: the perpetual pre-roll Zwinky ads. Anyway, I’m clearly not in the frenzoo/zwinky target demographic, but the whole concept seems bizarre to me - at best a flash in the pan internet fad like “tamagotchi.” Though I suppose tamagotchi still made a lot of people rich while it was hot.
I can’t help it but this kind of stuff freaks me out a little. The whole virtual world thing is just a little twitchy for me.
I know the fashion niche kind of well and I can’t see the wide appeal, unless the character could travel with you to other sites, like second life, be an avatar on a message board, etc., not just limited to this one world. Or, if they could somehow take this world, add true ecommerce retailers like Neiman Marcus or Barneys, where shoppers can use the character can try on and model the things they’re interested in buying and actually purchase if they want to, put together outfits, etc. That would be cool. Half the problem with online shopping is getting the fit right - you can’t really get a sense of how something will work on you.
I have a QUESTION - how many founders does Skype have?
You have misspelled Toivo Annus. There’s an S in the end…
Interesting, though it seems like the reason this firm as opposed to others would receive additional interest at this point is the popularity of Skype’s founders.
Region-specific 3D chat? Why no global focus? Perhaps this can survive as a B-level chat, but how many subscribers will it take and what are the chances that they can make a real run at it?
“Users can express themselves by personalizing 3D characters, and can mix-and-match a variety of branded clothes, footwear, accessories, furniture and lifestyle items.”
Branded? Which companies are handing over their rights?
Looks like a nice investment / The founders of a company like paypal should knoow what they are doing (On the tech side)
- then again ; what do they know about VC?
-RB
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