Itzle - Nice but Lacking (a lot of) Sex Appeal

Tom pointed me to this social tool I wasn’t aware of. Itzle is a new tool that gives you a visual presence while visiting at a webpage “as if it were an actual, physical place”. The aim is to meet other people in the same virtual location and communicate. Tom also points out that He sees it

“as the reincarnation of Odigo's base idea: while being able to IM with your friends, how do you make new friends?

the idea was that you would see on the Odigo 'radar' people being on the same web page as you (you could further drill down to sex, age, spoken language, etc), as well as leave notes for other to see on the web page.”

My criticism is about the visual appearance: the Itzle avatar is nice yet very schematic. The personalization options are very basic and only allow you to change the colors of the hair, shirt, pants and text. The user can't even change the most basic option of all customizable web identities - determining his/her gender. Today, with a huge market of web avatars, this is just not enough. If this seems redundant, just think how would someone attract others into initiating communication while visiting the same webpage when they all look the same??! Would you just try avatars randomly? I don’t think so.

It’s nice, yet this browser add-in will have a tough time gaining popularity with the proliferation of social apps in the online neighborhood and with its avatars' low sex appeal…

Comments

[Tom Sella]

i think there is another problem with it. it has a very basic chicken & egg issue, easily demonstrated by going online to google and digg with it - nobody is using it - and this is on top sites. there were not even people on its own site the few times i've been there - their very own itzle park is empty (except for butterflies...).
chicken & egg, as without users itzle is not interesting - so you don't use it. you don't use it, nobody else does.
i would certainly like to see more personalization of it - but i think it is secondary to the above issue.

[Xen]

Yeah, all I've seen in the several visits I made these last few days were butterflies; yet I assumed I'm not visiting the right geeky places... (does it mean that I can finally declare myself as a geek?) ;-)

[GorillaSushi]

I've seen this concept reincarnate a few times but I think the real limiting factor is the fact that most people consider chatting and browsing to be 2 very seperate activities. I myself rarely do both simultaneously...