mEgo snags $2.5M for avatar-based widgets
Widget maker mEgo just brought in $2.5 million to add avatars and related media to users’ social networking profiles and blogs. Already running on Facebook, MySpace and Hi5 among others, the company’s application embeds a rectangular box containing an animated character or silhouette, and buttons leading to other information about the user in question.
For example, one mEgo shows a cutout of a cowboy standing against a starry sky with buttons leading to the user’s Flickr photos and bookmarks. Mousing over the figure’s stomach produces a button linking to his favorite foods, while clicking on his ears takes you to his profile at music site Last.fm profile. Another shows a photo of a cutesy blond girl overlaid with a translucent sillhouette of a dancer and animated birds and butterflies. Clicking on the dancer’s feet tell you where she’s traveled and where she wants to go. Mousing over her heart gives you her mini bio. Content can also be aggregated from Twitter, Amazon, YouTube, etc.
All of the examples provided on the mEgo homepage are slick and pretty, and should attract a fair amount of attention from younger social networkers. The company says its widgets draw about 30 million impressions a month, making them ripe for advertising — an opportunity that has yet to be fully explored.
mEgo will use the new cash, contributed by private investors, to launch an iPhone application and perhaps its own virtual world later on. The investment brings its total capital raised up to $5.5 million.
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About the Author, Camille Ricketts
Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
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