Neowin.net

With the rising popularity of instant messaging There, a company which has been working for the last four years in secrecy, have created what they tout to be the ‘killer app’ of the Internet. They have created an instant messanger that supports a 3D world and they’re looking for people to beta-test the software from today.

It allow users to drive vehicles, shop, take guided tours, talk and share special occasions such as Valentine’s Day in the 3D world where special events will be created.

The CEO of There has claimed that “Facilitating interactions between people is the Internet's killer application, and for the first time, There will make online socialising a truly engaging experience”.

Despite the hype time will tell whether this is to be a success. Everquest has proven there is a market for systems like this; however there have been many ‘virtual worlds’ that have failed already in a commercial sense, and There are hoping this will be a financial success in the long run. Expect a final version in autumn.

News source: ZDNet
View: There.com

The timing of the outage was particularly bad, coming as it did at the opening of business on the East Coast of one of the biggest business days of the year, as people returned from holiday vacations. "It's a time when people are coming back to work. When systems fail, it's a double insult. This was the worst time for something like this to happen," Gardner said. "There might have been a small technical reason for this that will be easily fixed, but the perception among users will be, `I needed tis, and they weren't there for me.'" Moreover, switching to an alternative instant message provider is easy, Gardner said. "The market will be harsh to those that don't perform well, because the cost of switching is so very low," he said.

Surprisingly, Microsoft agreed.

"We agree that a large degree of reliability is necessary," Grothaus said. "We are taking steps to see to it that we don't see outages like this again."

But Michael Sampson, analyst with Ferris Research, said the impact of the outage on Microsoft will not be significant. He said Microsoft's instant message service had a July 2001 outage that lasted eight days.

"It's certainly not good for Microsoft, but those people that are wedded to MSN will keep using it. If they were paying for it, they would be a bit more annoyed," Sampson said.

It's uncertain just how many users were affected. Sampson said he estimates that Microsoft and America Online are the instant message market leaders, with about 30 million to 35 million active users each. AOL claims it has 180 million registered users, and Microsoft says it has 75 million, but many of those accounts are duplicates -- more than one account per person -- and inactive.

Microsoft will likely become market leader because of its instant message technology being included in Windows XP; when users register XP they are strongly urged to sign up for an MSN Messenger and Passport account, Sampson said.