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Media - Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Musical IM Avatar Maker Doppelganger Launches Vside. Raises $11M

Everywhere we look we seem to see IM avatars based on The Simpsons. San Francisco-based Doppelganger wants to get the same effect with its avatars based on music acts like Nelly Furtado, All-American Rejects, and Eminem. Doppelganger has just raised $11M in fourth-round funding led by ComVentures with return backers DFJ, Draper Richards, Trident Capital, KPG Ventures and Greycroft Partners.

The Doppelganger world is located at TheMusicLounge.com. Business partners include Interscope Records, Warner Music Group, Warner Brothers, and MTV Networks.

However, more recently the company has launched a new virtual world called Vside. This virtual world is built on a neighborhood hub of nightclubs and as you crawl from club to club you hear different soundtracks. One of the smarter aspects of the game is that players earn respect points that encourage socialization, and more time spent in the virtual world. Hipper clubs in Vside will only allow in people with lots of respect points. You earn respect points by hanging out in cool places and meeting cool people.

Vside officially launched today but pros who were allowed a pre-view are giving it great reviews.

Doppelganger competes with Second Life, There.com's "Virtual Laguna Beach," Vivendi's World of Warcraft, and the upcoming "Home" virtual world built around Sony's PlayStation 3. It competes both for relationships with Hollywood properties as well as course for viewers' time.

For the past 8 months, the company has been led by CEO Tim Stevens who was an SVP at both Borland and Inktomi. Doppelganer seems to have a good number of people who came from business software.

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