So what's special about Vivaty's platform?

KM: The Vivaty platform can run virtual web content in any web browser, anywhere, at any time. You can run it in a social networking site, on a home place, but a great example is running Vivaty Scenes in a Facebook page.

If you were to look at my scene, you'd see that everything about it was personalized to me. I put and placed all of the objects in it using the edit mode -- everything that you could see in the scene I can move or rotate. The edit mode is really easy -- if you want to place a chair you just point and click. There's no need for any difficult scriping or anything like that. And the placement happens live, so you and everyone else in your Scene at the time would see the chair appear.

There's also a lot of media sharing inherent in this product. For example, TV screens can link to YouTube videos, and anyone who comes to, say, my scene, and clicks on the TV will see a video. Picture frames can link to a flickr account, or from their Facebook images.

So a lot of the content that people can add to their Vivaty Scenes is really just created using links. It might be a 3D world but it creation is a lot like creating on the web.

It works in the opposite direction, too. I've got a noticeboard inside my scene where visitors can leave me notes. And if someone leaves me a note, it's not only left on my noticeboard, it's also listed in my Facebook newsfeed. So all of my friends in "2D" will see it and if they click on it they can go into my 3D scene. So stuff that happens in the 2D world can be fed into the scenes, and stuff that happens in the 3D world can be sent back.

There is a lot of customization to the avatars, too. Like emotions, you can be bored, or happy or sad, and you can trigger gestures too. I think they're quite expressive! And of course you can change their clothes and their look.

So what does this add for consumers who are already happy with their Facebook experience?

KM: It adds two things. First of all, Facebook is very functional -- it has a lot of information on what your friends are up to and so on -- but it's not as easy to personalize as something such as MySpace where you can really do a lot to express yourself. So this gives people a venue for more self expression.

The second thing is that it Facebook is an asynchronous communication system. You know, you go on at 2 p.m. and leave a message and check back at 7 p.m. to see if it was answered, and so on. That's fine, it works great for Facebook, but some people like real-time communication, and Vivaty Scenes allows people to jump in there when they know they're both online and interact with each other. So it's much more of a social experience than even social networks!

Anything else in the pipeline?

KM: One of the things we haven't shown yet is that we will be working with branded partners to offer branded scenes. We’re also going to be increasing the integration between the 2D web and our 3D world for users so it's going to be easier and easier for users to find their friends and so on.

And our plan (in the long term) to monetize Vivaty is centered on advertising and virtual items. Those are the two areas we'll be focusing on. Virtual items are attractive because they're a proven model, and in a 3D environment like we offer, people will pay for uniqueness, and there is limitless potential in what we can offer the users. Plus the objects we can offer can be scripted in different ways, so even the ways in which people can interact with objects that we sell is unlimited.

Our partners are also interested in selling virtual items related to their brands, so we think it's a great opportunity to make money for everyone.

What do you think of the competition? Even Google have just launched a browser-based online world!

KM: I think that it's a great example of the power of this kind of idea. Our investors are, ironically, the original investors behind Google, and obviously Google too, can see this kind of rich 3D environment is where the internet is going.

I don't know if we have any true competitors right now, but I fully expect that in future people are going to become more interested in this market there will be a whole variety of providers of platforms and services like our offerings. And if this gets half as big as we think it's going to be, there's going to be plenty of space for everyone.