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Social Networking - Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Endless Meetings Go Virtual With Qwaq

Palo Alto-based Qwaq has raised $7M in its 1st round co-led by Alloy Ventures and Storm Ventures. The startup has developed a virtual worlds platform for the workplace. So rather than schedule with remote workers on clients on Webex, you might do it in Qwaq where you might walk around in a virtual room with co-workers in Shanghai and Paris looking at virtual powerpoint presentations while pretending that you are paying attention.

We certainly agree that as more and more meetings take place on phone lines with visuals that Webex is not satisfactory. However, we do think that it will take some time before buttoned-down corporate types get into a comfort zone scheduling meetings in virtual worlds. Video conferencing is not a big deal because people are so accustomed to video, but as the CEO of Second Life recently told us, the great majority of people still feel nerdy letting others know that they participate in virtual worlds That perception has to change before people at Clorox and Exxon begin to invite their peers to meet in Qwaq.

Qwaq got a foot-up by licensing virtual presence technology from Intel. Qwaq is led by Greg Nuyens who previously ran Kleiner Perkins-backed Devicescape.

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