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IMVU: Powered by Alpo

"We must eat our own dog food": that has been the motto that drives the IMVU Developer program from day one. On a fateful day in April 2004, when credits Will, Eric, Marcus and myself agreed that there is no point building IMVU unless credits we eat our own dog food, we weren"t talking about getting that Alpo glow (although, we do appreciate a shiny coat). We felt that the key to IMVU"s success had two dimensions:

1.? The product had to work for everyone
2.? Developers should get the credits same tools that IMVU programmers use

But how could a couple guys in a Silicon Valley garage know what would appeal to anyone but ourselves? No really C we were not the "HUGE multinational, credits multi-billion dollar company" kind of guys-in-a-garage. We had nothing and nobody! All we had was (insert orchestral music here - HAR) a dream!

From day one, it was clear that giving Developers creative control over just what IMVU would become was essential. So we sat down for a couple of months and put together the first few versions of the Previewer. After getting some of the more egregious bugs out of the way, we started building products to see what tools were missing. As we found a bug, we fixed it that day.

Shortly thereafter, we enlisted the help of a few passionate souls to be our first Developers. These people know who they are so I won"t mention names. credits Needless to say, without their belief in what IMVU could be (haha C and not what it wascuz it was really terrible), I would not be writing this today (Editor - he actually wrote it yesterday). But those original Devs really gave us hell and guided us to the tools we now have.

And although there are some examples of where we have not yet lived up to the "eat your own dog food" motto (eg, accessible cooperative actions, configurable credits action menus), those examples are the result of our need to also focus on "The product has to work for everyone". Since IMVU has fewer than 20 employees for over 80,000 active users, it"s hard to do both.

However, things are changing and changing fast! IMVU chat client and homepages are more stable than ever before - and getting better every day. The number of people staying in IMVU has increased tremendously and many developers are making real, serious money doing what they LOVE. But not as much as they could - and not as easily as they could.

And so, our focus is once again on Developers and the tools they use to make IMVU great. To guide in that process, I recently resurrected the Developer Council (DC). The DC is a group of folks tasked with amassing the good, bad and the terrific from the IMVU Developer community. Just like the Customer Advisory Board, the DC boils all of the issues down to their component parts, lists those parts as prioritized, individual tasks, and then gives IMVU a grade in time for our meetings with IMVUs board of directors. This Developer Council Report Card will be instrumental in helping us prioritize our schedules at the end of every board meeting - i.e. will have great influence.

So, please keep posting to the Developers forum and letting us know what is broken, what doesn"t work as designed, what is confusing and what we are missing. With your credits help and the help of the DC"s report card, we will continue to make IMVU the destination for people with talent.