IMVU Creator Submissions OFFLINE

Sunday December 1, 2013 IMVU had to suspend new item submissions. Creators were no longer able to edit products currently in the catalog. It took several days, as usual, to find and fix the problem.

Forum Post Here

 

Product submissions were open again as of 4 P.M. Central time December 4, 2013.

 

This is just one of those things that IMVU and Creators/Developers have to deal with on an ongoing basis. It seems like every few months product submission goes offline. Creators bemoan the loss of income, and are instructed by IMVU and other users alike to work on texturing or 3d modeling while IMVU works on fixing the issue. Users were able to derive items and such, just not upload them to the catalog.

 

One man wrote as a tagline: "I wish IMVU would spend as much time on their program instabilities as they do searching out and banning pixel penises and the like." I have to agree with him here.

There was also a MUSIC MIX error going on simultaneously. See that thread Here.



Shard 5 Database Failure

 

Sunday, November 24th 2013 IMVU had a database failure. Those who had accounts stored on this Shard were surprised with missing inventory, friends, chat rooms and possibly their entire avatar. Some were given this message when attempting to login:

 

 

 

 

On November 28th Brett sent out this message to users who were directly affected:

 

I had one such alternate account that was affected. I only received 200 credits and one t-shirt although I did login daily, as directed in Brett's message. Ahhhh, such is IMVU.

The IMVU Forum has numerous threads dealing with users actual issues, including creator errors, and finally the apology itself from Brett. Brett is the VP of Engineering at IMVU where he leads the engineering and technical operations teams and was responsible for the operations infrastructure that successfully scaled from two machines to over 700 servers.

THEMED ACCOUNT SIGNUP LINKS

I was shopping on eBay today and noticed a link at the bottom for IMVU. I clicked it and found this really cool set of starter avatars. Fairies, mermaids, several different fantasy themed avatars. See these cool new ideas for yourself:

Fantasy Themed IMVU Avatars 

 Vampire Themed Link Here

 

Furry Themed Link Here

Each browser can bring up different sign-up pages too:

Internet Explorer

(Bubbles Theme)

Firefox

Chrome

Opera
(Default Sign-up Choices)

New! June 2014....This link will load an IMVU page that houses a new interface wherein you can chose from multiple themes from the top tabs. Simply click on chose your free avatar. It pretty much only will load the mashup if you have all your cookies cleared so imvu cannot remember you were ever there, and don't have the toolbar loaded.

http://www.imvu.com/landing_page/page/themed_mashup/?affid=cd6&subid1=GOOGA07C01&imvu_creative=29028399508&imvu_placement=&imvu_keyword=imvu.&imvu_target=



BEWARE IMVU CREDIT HACK SCAMS

I feel a need to warn users of IMVU credit hacks. They ALL are scams. They want to gain access to your id and password. Once you use their sign in form or applet you send your login data to them via an email. It all happens in the background meaning you don't know it's happening, but it is happening.

Some time ago a friend made a video and I put it up on my YouTube account. I can only guess that one of the scammers themselves reported the video because this particular post showed how to avoid credit hack scams. Seeing YouTube had it within their power to remove the video AND warn me of a violation, I've shared a similar one here. 

I found it strange that even after I appealed the removal of that particular video YouTube maintained their decision. That just goes to show YouTube staff is automated, I don't believe an actual human would have removed it. Or, if it was removed by an actual human, they didn't really view the video.

The following videos show a particular scam, and shows the steps to perform to login. Also shown are the actual areas of danger regarding account hacking and loss of an IMVU account. 

If you do fall prey to this type of scam all you need to do to get your account back is submit a help ticket with the email address you signed up with, and also, they may ask for the name you gave when you signed up.

MISSING BADGES

IMVU BADGES

It was the summer of 2013 when IMVU was having severe connection issues. In response to their downtime they gifted their VIP users two badge tiles for the VIP users to design and pass out to friends and homepage visitors.

There was a very large uproar by a substantial amount of users. Partly because non-VIP users were also inconvenienced by the service outage, and partly because those very few users who had invested tons of credits on badges that were bought prior to the outage felt their badges had become less valuable. The non-VIP users felt snubbed, while the "very few" users proceeded to remove the images from their badge tiles thus leaving a grainy, pink box in place of the badge. You may have seen these pink boxes in badge trays yourself.

Now, months later, I haven't heard a thing from the non-VIP users in regards to the perceived snub by IMVU. However, I see that one or more of the "Elite" users (I will refer to them as elite simply because they put themselves in a class above those that didn't own badges) have not replaced the badge tile images that were removed. It's petty in my opinion.

Say no to the elitists. Grab the badge tiles here.

IMVU Creator Development: Web shop redesign and Paid Advertising.

I've been reading the IMVU forums about the newest 
Creator Development: Web shop redesign and Paid Advertising.

"...The main goal of this form of marketing is to simply get your name and brand out there by purchasing one of five available product spots on Shop’s main page. Each advertising spot will be a product from your catalog that represents that category. For example, if you have a beautiful necklace, you could submit that product to be chosen for the Accessories category. Creators may not have more than 1 product per category."

Rolled out on September 25th, there are gobs of forum pages, and it's clear the users would like IMVU to nail down their policies with a more defined hammer. The shady area being the actual duration of the ads. IMVU states it will be "about" a week.

"...generally speaking, we will advertise products for 7 days, but there might be instances where one phase runs for extra days. For example, if we start a phase on a Friday, we may not be able to update it until the Monday after the next Friday, making that phase 9 days instead of 7. This is to ensure our team has enough time to organize the next phase, including design work."

The cost of the ad: 8K credits or 1K developers tokens.

"...a nice idea , but a bit costly (8k for 1 week per product) i got a message to day saying developers that participated have seen a increase in sales , which is good . but is it worth the out lay of 8k per product and how many do actually go to the web store?"

It's being touted as a "Marketing Opportunity", but many posters are concerned IMVU will show favoritism toward certain creators/developers as they have in the past.

"...I'm very interested to see how this tests out, and how it prices out. The last time there was a 'pay for advert' it seemed priced for wealthy devs only.

I think the layout looks nice. The page is definitely more attractive now. I'm glad to see the web catalog being presented better, but fixing the catalog as a whole would be awesome, too, you know? "

The fall themed areas included in this redesign are:

• Shoes: male and female
• Tops: male and female
• Accessories: male and female
•  Furniture 
•  Rooms 

My thoughts:

IMVU has a thriving economy. At first glance my gut reaction was IMVU wants to pull back some credits into its Credit Federal Reserve. With so many 3rd party (discounted) sellers it would seem IMVU is trying to re-harness credits. And yes, some people do still buy credits from IMVU at Full Price! The kicker for the developers is this: Many people are buying these Advertised items with Promo Credits. The net for the developer =  a Loss.

 "...And if anyone is still interessed:
I submitted a dress and paid 1000 DT's
So far the dress has sold 22 times, 10 of which were promo-sales.
For me the return has been 10 DT's and 2160 credits, if I had paid with real credits I would be at a loss of -5840 credits."

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=478809&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0