Shaker Gets $15 Million in Venture Funding, Renewing Valley Interest in Synchronous Avatar-Driven Socialization

Shaker, the virtual world-meets-Facebook startup pitched as "Second Life, except you’re yourself" that I blogged about recently, just got $15 million in funding from Shervin Pishevar at Menlo Ventures, joining Michael Arrington's CrunchFund, which was already an investor. That's a decent chunk of funding from some well-known Valley players, which makes me think we'll see some more "me too" investments in this space -- not necessarily virtual worlds as we understood them in the 2006-2008 era, but synchronous, avatar-driven virtual spaces where you can connect and socialize with people outside your Facebook network. Indeed, early Facebook investor Sean Parker (or as he's better known outside the Valley, Justin Timberlake in The Social Network) says this, speaking about another startup with a synchronous socialization feature:

“We are trying to address the problem of what has happened the last 10 years of social media... Your social network has become more rigid and constraining.”

A great way to expand your social network is through avatars, and Shaker has some pretty good ideas. However, I definitely think it will need game structures beyond just being a social hangout space, as I write here. And as a side note: Hey, Linden Lab, you have another opportunity to lead this push, if your new project taps into this need, and just does it better.

Anyway, to see the pitch that helped win Shaker this influx of cash, watch this Techcrunch video after the break:

Comments

[Sami Tabla]

The Techcrunch video needs to be embedded at a smaller size so it isn't cut off.

Shaker reminds me of ThePalace from the mid 90s and is probably just as boring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_%28computer_program%29

But hey... throw out the buzz phrase "social network" and you probably have more investors lining up in droves. Why does this all remind me of the dot com gold rush days?

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

15 million down the tubes. Let's party like it's 1999.

Hamlet, you quoted them as writing "Second Life, except yuou’re yourself"

If that is their copy, they can toss a million my way and I'll be company proofreader.

[Hamlet Au]

Doh, fixed.

[bongo]

15 million dollar parties... bring on the teen boyz.