The recent launch of two services -- a brand new, fully three-dimensional chat-room product known as IMVU, and AOL Instant Messenger's new 3-D SuperBuddy icons -- is putting the spotlight on a major shift by the leading IM providers toward making graphical avatars a fundamental personalization feature. Yahoo Messenger has offered 2-D avatars as part of its instant-messaging service for some time. AOL Instant Messenger's new SuperBuddies are 3-D avatars that appear alongside the service's normal chat boxes and respond to contextual cues typed by users. IMVU is a new service that lets people communicate with each other using 3-D avatars in a chat-room environment. IMVU is the new service from Will Harvey, founder of There. Harvey is riffing on some of the core communications features he developed for There's metaverse and devoting them to instant messaging. In IMVU, people talk to each other in 3-D chat rooms using avatars that display a wide range of emotional cues and do so through a client that is compatible with the leading IM applications. "IMVU gives you the sense that you are in the presence of the person you are chatting with," said Harvey. "What I think we understand better than anyone else is that the killer app is something that lets people feel like they are with the person they are chatting with." Go get your's here ... Source: Wired News