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IMVU is Thankful for its Amazing Community

With the holiday season approaching, it’s a good time to reach out to the people in your life to whom you are grateful. And from all of us at IMVU, which includes each of you who make up the IMVU Community, we are very appreciative. Thank you.

It’s been an incredible year of growth and change for IMVU.  This growth wouldn’t have been possible without the passion, creativity, rich interactions, and contributions from our community. With 40 million registered users, 6 million unique monthly visitors (from over 100 different countries), and the world’s largest virtual goods catalog with over 3 million items, IMVU is one of the most amazing and diverse communities in the world.  Thank you.

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Great News! Become a VIP with a Prepaid Card!

That’s right. Users without a credit card or PayPal account can now get all the great benefits of the VIP Club with a Prepaid Card. These benefits include name registration, 5,000 credits each month, VIP monthly gifts, and much, much more!

Prepaid cards (PPC) are available in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. For a full list of stores in your country, click here.

The number of months of VIP you receive is dependent on the card value. Anytime during your membership you can enter another PPC to extend your membership. Also, to celebrate, we’re going to give you a FREE bonus month when you redeem a PPC for VIP:

  • $10 card  2 months of VIP
  • $25 card  4 months of VIP  
  • £10 card  3 months of VIP
  • £15 card 4 months of VIP
  • $20CA card 3 months of VIP

And remember…all VIP members receive 5,000 credits per month!

 

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Update on the New Peer Review Process

A few weeks back, we annouced changes to the Peer Review process. I am making good on my promise to deliver our findings on what we have seen since we introduced these changes. These findings reflect activity in the month of November:

  • In total, 231,000 reviews were completed.
  • The average time a product was in Peer Review was 6.5 hours, with most items passing in less than 1 hour.
  • The Customer Service Peer Review (CSPR) queue was zeroed out, with new products in this queue being reviewed within 24 hours — most within a few hours.
  • The average review accuracy of guest accounts is 87%, and the average review accuracy of non-guest accounts is 94%, and we expect the guest users to continue to get better as time passes (if not, consistently inaccurate reviewers run the risk of being banned from participation).
  • Most days, we give out no more than 1 million promo credits. This is a small amount compared to other ways users can earn promo credits, and we haven’t seen any major effect on the economy. In fact, credit spending is significantly up, which may be due to items getting through Peer Review faster.
  • Customer Care & Education has already taken action on hundreds of accounts owned by customers submitting UFI content.  We have also removed the ability for well over 100 people to vote in Peer Review due to consistently low accuracy rates.   

Our findings show that contrary to popular concern, guest accounts are actually taking their participation in this process very seriously (likely because they don’t want to be banned from the opportunity to earn promo credits).

We are going to continue to monitor this process, but so far, we find these results promising.

I know that many of you are still concerned that an increased number of UFI and AP items rated GA are getting into the catalog.  While we can’t confirm this to be the case, I can tell you that the resources freed up from reviewing products in the CSPR queue are being directed at flagged products. What’s more, we are continuing to work on the project that will improve the flagging and re-rating process, allowing us to respond to inaccurately rated products more quickly.

I hope this helps to ease some of the continued concern I’ve seen on this topic. I’ll continue to keep you posted on new developments.

Thank you,
Jami
Sr. Community Manager

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Are you hoping to get a Prepaid Card this Holiday Season?

Update: Thanks to everyone who responded, we actually have all the users we need to talk to. Thanks! :)

Are you crazy about shopping in the Virtual Goods Catalog and currently use, or hoping to get a Prepaid Card this holiday season? If so, and you are willing to talk with us, please let us know by commenting below (don’t forget to include your IMVU username).

Thanks!
Jami
Sr. Community Manager

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Safety Reminder about Users Posing as IMVU Staff

It’s come to our attention that several accounts have been created recently with the intention of posing as IMVU Staff.

As a general reminder,

- NEVER give out your password, not even to someone claiming to be IMVU Staff, since an IMVU Staff member will never ask for your password.
- Make sure you pick a password that someone cannot easily guess.
- Never give out real-life personal or credit card information in public rooms, public groups or off-site to someone indicating they are IMVU Staff. We will only ever ask for your birth date and the last 4 digits of your credit card for account verification and we will only ever do that via tickets in our Support Center and on the phone. 

Thanks!
Jami
Sr. Community Manager

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Now Available – Choose Your Own Public Room Moderators!

Public Room Moderators
Public Room owners now have the ability to designate trusted friends as moderators (“mods”) of their rooms when they aren’t available. We hope all of you room owners are as happy to hear about this new (and heavily requested) feature, as we are to deliver it!

Designated moderators will now have the ability to remove (also known as “boot”) users from the room who are misbehaving. All they have to do is right-click on the avatar to bring up their Avatar Menu and click the Safety icon. The “boot” option is at the top of the list (see screenshot below).

To assign moderators to your public room, click on the Account Settings link in the upper right-hand corner of your homepage. From there, scroll down to “manage public rooms” located under Account Tools. Click the edit button for the room you would like to designate a mod, and enter one or more avatar names, separated by commas. Be sure to scroll down and click the “save changes” button when you are done (see screenshot below):

You can differentiate between room owners and moderators by using the colors of the newly added sheriff badges on their Avatar Menu. Moderators’ badges are silver, and room owners’ badges are gold. 

Download version 425.0 here to start using this feature now!

New Friends Notification
We’ve also added notifications so that you will know right away when your friends come online! You’ll find this notification in the lower right-hand corner of the screen near the new Friends Tool icon.

New Gift Option in Shop Mode
In order to make it easier for you to give your friends awesome products in the catalog that you know they’ll love, we’ve added the ability for you to send gifts from Shop Mode in 3D Chat. Now, when you hover over an item in Shop Mode, you will see a gift package icon that you can click to easily purchase the item for a friend. This is the first of many enhancements to the gifting process on IMVU, stay tuned for more!

Number of Countries Represented
Another fun feature we just added next to the total number of users online is the number of countries those users represent. It’s pretty amazing to see that of the 81,334 users online when I took the screen shot below, the global reach of that number spanned 177 countries! You really can meet new people from all over the world on IMVU!

We hope you enjoy these new features!

Best,
Jami
Sr. Community Manager

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Redeem any Prepaid Card in November & Get a Posh Sushi Club!

 Need a sleek new club to chat in? Redeem any Prepaid Card this November, and you’ll receive a posh sushi club and plenty of Japanese sushi sets to decorate it with!

This month’s Prepaid Card Gifts were created by Whystler, one of our pioneer creators. He added some great touches to this room that you’ll be sure to love!  Start decorating your sushi club now!

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The New Peer Review Process

We’re very excited to announce that we’ve just overhauled the Peer Review process. In response to your persistent and valid concerns, we’ve introduced many changes which should help get new products into the Virtual Goods Catalog faster and with enhanced rating accuracy.

Who Can Participate in Peer Review?
First, we have broadened the eligibility of who can review products.

  • Now, any user who is 18 and over, has been on IMVU for at least 30 days, and uses 3D Chat may participate in Peer Review. (Existing Creators who are 18 and over and have not yet been on IMVU for 30 days will still be able to participate).

Why Should I participate in Peer Reviewer?
Second, we now reward reviewers for participating in this process.

  • Users can now earn 5 promo credits for each product they review, with a limit of 500 reviews per day (note:  this limit is subject to change).
  • Users can also now get an exclusive sneak peek at new products. Users can also add these brand new products to their wishlists, so they can purchase them as soon as they have passed Peer Review and are available in the catalog.

What else do I need to know?
There are a few other changes that you should be aware of before participating in Peer Review:

  • The first time a user visits Peer Review, they will see a pop-up window with an explanation of what Peer Review is and how the process works. All participants are required to learn the rules for participating and must familiarize themselves with the Virtual Goods Policy (VGP).
  • Customer Support will closely monitor individual Peer Review performance and behavior.  They will prohibit users from participating in this process (and earning promo credits) for routinely passing or failing products inaccurately, or in a deliberate attempt to disrupt this process.
  • Additionally, Customer Support will track the product re-rating history of all Creators to look for deliberate attempts to pass UFI content through to the catalog.  Creators who routinely submit mis-rated/UFI products will have their account(s) suspended or permanently disabled. 
  • To learn more about the Peer Review process, please read the FAQ link at the top of the Peer Review page.

We hope you are as excited as we are about this major update to Peer Review. We will be actively and closely monitoring the effects of these changes over the next few months, and we’ll continue to make changes as necessary. We encourage you to share your feedback with us by commenting below.

Thanks again for all of the feedback and suggestions you have shared with us on this process!

Jami
Sr. Community Manager

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General Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is Peer Review?
A. Peer Review is a system that IMVU has put in place in order to give the community a voice in the kinds of content allowed on IMVU. Peer Review allows users to review product submissions before they enter the catalog to be sure they adhere to the Virtual Goods Policy and IMVU community standards.

Q. How does the Peer Review process work?
A. After a product is submitted to the catalog, it is put up for review. All products are randomly assigned to a reviewer in order to reduce any attempt to game the system. Each reviewer is asked to evaluate the product and its product details to determine 1) if the rating selected matches the content, and 2) if the product and product page adhere to the Virtual Goods Policy. Using the checkboxes on the page, each reviewer can decide if the product passes or fails. If a product passes, it will be published to the catalog. If it fails, the submitter will be notified so they can address the concerns.

Q. What do I need to know before I start doing reviews?
A. All reviewers should read and be familiar with the Virtual Goods Policy. You should also be familiar with product pages, usage, and information in general.

Q. What are the criteria I should use when reviewing products?
A. You are evaluating a product and its product page to determine if the item follows our Virtual Goods Policy. While you may not be a customer for the actual product displayed, or not agree with the actual merchandising of the product, we ask that you only consider the Virtual Goods Policy when you review the item.

Q. Can I fail a product if I don’t like the submitter, or I think their product page is ugly, contains spelling errors, etc?
A. No. You should only be reviewing a product and its product description to ensure compliance with the Virtual Goods Policy.

Q. I don’t have an Access Pass. Will I be able to review Access Pass items?
A. No. Only Access Pass members can review items rated as Access Pass only.

Q. Are only newly submitted products subject to Peer Review?
A. No. Any product which will be sold, gifted, or used by an avatar must be Peer Reviewed. Peer Review can also be triggered if the Creator changes an item, its rating, or its. In addition, Customer Service may force a product to be reviewed if they have concerns about an un-rated item. Creators may also choose to self-submit any item for review.

Q. I don’t want to review certain types of products. Can I choose which types of products to review?
A. No. All products across all types are assigned randomly to reviewers. The only exception is that Access Pass items can only be reviewed by Access Pass holders.

Q. Do I have to review every product?
A. No. You can choose to skip a product review if you are unsure or uncomfortable reviewing the item.

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Pick Your Favorite IMVU Staff Halloween Costume!

Inspired by our Daily Outfit Challenge, the IMVU employees had their own Halloween Outfit Challenge. Here are the silly, spooky and enchanting results. Visit our Fan Page on Facebook to help us pick the winner by voting for your favorite with a “thumbs up”! Just click the image you like best and then click the “like” link. 

Thank you!
Jami
Sr. Community Manager

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