weblin begins 2009 with two million users

2.000.000 users, what a finish in 2008. The year 2009 begins with very good news for weblin and we have a lot of plans bringing weblin to the next stage in 2009. For the moment we are very happy to finally managed all the more than 50 servers to work well and stable with this huge user base. The buddy list is up and running again, for a few weeks now. There will be a website design relaunch shortly and a funny new way to send gifts and trow some graphical bombs on websites will be available soon. There will come a lot of other features and fun stuff, this year.
So, stay with us and enjoy the weblin way 2009. Free speech on websites!

Finally! weblin frees Avatars from Second Life

One unique avatar, stepping from one virtual world to another. This was the idea and weblin made it come true. The new weblin Gate portal allows avatars to roam from the virtual world of Second Life(R) to the Web, which is the biggest virtual world. Isn´t it?
Yesterday, at 8:00 am Boston time we sent out the press release and just few hours later, there was a bunch of people waiting in the weblin house in SL, to be teleported to the web. How cool is that?

If you are a SL user try it.
Fast Facts about weblin Gate (according to "stargate", not watergate of course):
-- The Weblin house in Second Life is located in New Berlin, close to the tower at Alexanderplatz: New Berlin 221, 73, 32 (PG).
-- The Second Life avatar is capable of performing all the actions of a weblin avatar, such as walking left and right, dancing, laughing or waving.
-- The 3D data is then exported as a library of animated GIFs and once the conversion is finished, the user receives a link and is directed to a personalized weblin login landing page, built with a token. With the token, the generated library can be mapped to one's weblin account.
-- Interoperability between virtual worlds is something Linden Lab actively supports. This is a positive and encouraging development for Second Life users to add more dimension to our user experience.

There are already a lot of blog posts covering weblin Gate. One of the posts I liked best for now ist: Common|Sensible.
Have fun!

New Christmas Avatars

The New weblin Christmas Avatars are online now! Check the galleries and choose your new avatar. Walk around as an angel, a rendier or Santa Clause.

Halloween weblin Video by Lalla

Thanks to lalla64 you can find a very cool video on YouTube watching the weblin Halloween party.
There are so many scary Avatars, chatting, dancing, having fun. Check it out.

The mountain and Mahomet

Mashable has just reported that meez is now launching an own virtual world for its avatars. The meez avatars are fantastic; there is no doubt about that. But the users of the cute little figures now obviously want more action, that is to say more interaction and socialising with other meezes. Mashable writes “Unlike most other virtual worlds that have grown out of an avatar creation and sharing site ...”. Exactly, others too began with avatars and are now building virtual worlds around “their” avatars. Everyone for himself and everyone differently. Sure! No-one wants to share his users with others! The result is that walled gardens are to be found everywhere. But what has that got to do with mountains and prophets? We believe that building own worlds for each avatar solution is not only cost and time consuming but also leads to a lot of dead ends. It is almost as if the mountain has to come to the prophet Mahomet. I am not sure when a mountain last moved but it must have been before the age of the Internet.
Mahomet should come to the mountain. That’s our attitude with weblin. The largest virtual world is already there and does not first have to be created. It’s the Web. Sure, it is all still only 2D and not quite as spatial as one would imagine a virtual world to be, but, instead, people are already there! And they are already finding all sorts of distraction in this world – reading, watching videos and, with weblin, they can chat with friends or strangers who could become friends. They can collect points and give presents, wave, dance and laugh. OK, one can’t exactly roll on the floor laughing but, hey, it’s a good idea!
Meez is out to turn the virtual world into money, with advertising “... which can be branded as part of Meez’s advertising options within this virtual world. Just as brands like Nike, Panasonic and Sears have provided gear ...“ This, to my mind, is a form of In Game Advertising. And I bet that, in addition to advertising, virtual goods are also part of the concept. All things considered, I am glad about every avatar creator, every virtual world, whether mountain or Mahomet, because this can only advance our mutual idea of the Next Generation Web.

Avatar theatre

On Friday evening, the 13th of June, almost a dozen committed weblins performed an avatar play. The weblins brought a three hour production of the “Feuerzangenbowle” (a cult movie produced in Germany n 1944) to the virtual stage. There was a lot to do beforehand, from writing the script, designing costumes (avatars), distributing roles, building the settings and directing, up to the actual performance, to the acting. There were over thirty spectators at the same time in the virtual audience. It was a great evening during which many weblins had lots of fun. You can access the picture gallery via the link. Have lots of fun and perhaps you will be part of the fun when it is once again time to make way for the weblin avatar troupe.

T-Online Venture Fund invests in weblin

The T-Online Venture Fund is investing in the Hamburg company zweitgeist. Weblin, the Web 2.0 application developed by zweitgeist, makes a completely new, entertaining form of contact and interaction possible. With the aid of a virtual character, Internet users are able to communicate with one another quickly and easily on any website. The start-up founded in 2006 is thus further expanding its cooperation with the Deutsche Telekom group which had already got off to a successful start when weblin entered into a cooperation with Gamesload, Germany’s leading online portal for PC game downloads.

Weblin not only benefits from the worldwide connections of the global player but also from the many interesting cooperation partners belonging to the Deutsche Telekom network.

“With Web 2.0, communities, blogging and personalised services, the consumer is playing an increasingly stronger role in an interactive Internet world,” says Christian Schmahl, member of the Investment Committee of the T-Online Venture Fund and Member of the Segment Board, Products & Innovations Deutsche Telekom AG. “In this connection, weblin is a highly innovative and unique communication product making it possible for the user to build his own personal social network. Apart from the fantastic team, we were particularly impressed by the combination of individualisation with a personal avatar companion and the advantage of having a high-performance browsing tool. Our investment in zweitgeist is an innovative contribution by the T-Online Venture Fund to this dynamic market.”

For further information please read the press release:Press Release: T-Online Venture Fund invests in zweitgeist

weblin points now activated - get update now

(like one of the two above). Just wait and see!

Weblin is getting better and better, the weblin world is growing from week to week. And a lot has happened in the last three weeks since the last fat update version. There are new functions and new avatars, check out weblin now!

It is great to see every day how active you all are in weblin. We would like to give you something back and reward you with weblin points. There are points for many different activities such as, for example, chatting, surfing, sending webositions and web pages. But also for inviting friends to try out weblin and thus supporting the growth of the weblin community. So, whoever chats a great deal or visits a particularly large number of web pages can look forward to being awarded weblin points. This is how it looks: the points are shown under the name of your weblin.
But that is not all; you will soon be able to do more with the points. One of the many bonuses will be that, as of a certain number of points, you can choose an exclusive avatar

CNN Business 2.0: weblin is one of the 31 world’s hottest startups

The international press and blogosphere recently discovered weblin. The famous CNN Money.com Business 2.0 magazin is writing: “It’s not just Silicon Valley. The user-generated revolution is in full swing worldwide. Business 2.0 Magazine picks the best non-U.S. sites to watch.” weblin is one of these hottest 31 companies. So, if do not already have a weblin account, go for it now!

Screenshots from the weblin Flashmob on Live Earth Concert in Hamburg

Have a look on the screenshots on flickr and sevenload we made from the flashmob today on live earth event right on the website streaming the concerts from hamburg.

Lancia Online Press Conference with weblin Avatars

Things were ablaze on Thursday morning on the web page of the Lancia Momo Design Project . At 11.30, the Italian motor makers Lancia (FIAT Group Automobiles S.p.A.) held the world’s first on-line press conference with avatars on its own web page. Participants were real journalists and press representatives from Italy, the conference language was Italian. Together with the presenter, the Lancia hostess Angel presented the web page and the advertising campaign for the Lancia Momo Design Project. It is all about heaven and hell, about angels and the devilishly passionate characteristics of Lancia’s new Ypsilon model. The press representatives had installed the weblin software before the conference and then went on-line with their own avatars. The avatars designed by Lancia especially for the on-line campaign all have a Lancia Ypsilon logo on their t-shirts. Communication is quite simple; you write in your own speech balloon. The web page is, in a manner of speaking, the press conference room. Everyone who enters the web page with a weblin avatar can see and chat to all the others. Weblin connects the virtual world of avatars with real life, with people and with the real content of web pages. I do not wish to predict the worse but who needs an island in Second Life when much more is possible in the real Internet so much more easily?

Brand new: Lancia cooperates with weblin!

A few hours ago the cooperation with Lancia (FIAT Group Automobiles S.p.A.) went live. This is an outlook how future online marketing and advertisement could look like.

Lancia offers the download of four weblins branded with the Lancia logo. The website mentioned above has a hostess with wings who welcomes new weblins. The weblin download will be promoted by an integrated banner. Just have a look.

Lancia is a testclient for the advertising agency Testawebedv (Armando Testa Group). They will extend the collaboration with other Italian brands if this cooperation goes well.

Please check the following reference

Cool action hero or powerful magic elf? The new weblin models show everyone what you are playing at!

Showing your own alter ego in the virtual gaming world to other Web users - this is now possible with the brand new, fully animated weblin avatars. Fans of action, role playing or sports games can thus recognise one another immediately and can see at first glance whether the other weblin prefers the same genres. (more…)

Beastly good! The new avatars of the weblin community

weblin has been inspired by the enthusiasm surrounding the little polar bear Knut. The large number of animated avatars available at weblin has therefore been enhanced with animal characters: brand new motives of four-legged friends are now available. Roam the Web as dog or show yourself as a purring cat to the other weblin users. With funny animations such as wagging their tails, giving a paw or cleaning their coats, the cuddly animals liven up the Internet. The range of figures available will be continually expanded in the course of the next few months: you will soon be able to strut around the search engines as a king penguin or mark out your territory in e-shops as noble wild cat. To make sure that you do not miss out on the many new avatars from the animal world, it is worth your while to regularly visit the weblin home page. (more…)