Frenzoo. Games with Style.

Getting ready to battle...

Exciting times, this Wednesday is our public unveiling of our first mobile game, the first in a series of 3d fashion & lifestyle apps we'll be bringing to market over coming months.

We'll be participating in the "Battle of the Apps 2" event, held in Bisous in LKF, Hong Kong.  Each startup has 8 minutes to present their app, the winner is chosen by the crowd and with over 10 entrants the competition is bound to be intense.  

We'll be showing our game as well as the awesome feedback we're getting through our beta.

If you're in Hong Kong, come join us: registration is here

Alpha Testers Needed for Upcoming Game

 

We are at it again! Our engineers are in the middle of developing a new feature for Frenzoo.

I can't tell you much about it, as it is a top secret project -- sort of. I can tell you that it will be our first ever social gaming system. Yep, an actual game on Frenzoo, made by Frenzoo.

Exciting, isn't it?

We are going to launch the project for testing at the end of next week. We will need alpha testers to help give us feedback and catch any bugs lingering around.

Right now we are asking for 10 alpha testers for the initial test launch. That means 10 lucky people will have a glimpse into this new and exciting upcoming feature.

So far, 4 of our Frenzoo members have volunteered to help out. 6 slots are left. Interested?

Here are the requirements for volunteering:

-Be able to log on for a few minutes daily for 3-4 days starting at the end of next week
-Have experience playing games like FarmVille, Happy Aquarium, Zoo World, Petville, or similar games
-Be able to give great feedback and input
-Be a Frenzoo member for at least 1 month

Still interested? You can volunteer here.

New Updates - Notification System

We launched our new Notification system last week and the reviews are in!

If you haven't heard about the new notification system, here are the details:

You can find the new notification on the lower right hand corner of your window:



Click on the highlighted icon to see the notifications:



You will receive a notification when:

1. Someone posts on your profile wall
2. Someone posts on your club wall
3. Someone posts on your shop item wall
4. Someone posts on your item template wall (i.e. templates in the create tool)
5. Someone comments on your contest wall
6. You wins a contest
7. Someone wins your contest
8. Someone buys your shop item
9. Someone adds you as a friend

So far the feedback is really good, but we are always hoping for new ways to improve. Check out the new notification system and let us know what you think here.

Easter Updates

Hello world!

If you've been keeping up in the forums, you may have noticed a lot of news updates popping up lately. If not, well that's why we have a blog!

A lot has been going on for the last two weeks. Here's a summary of the new features we have added.

1.) Change Names

You asked for it and here it is! You can finally change your Frenzoo username, in case you are bored with the one you have already.




2.) Novice Badge

Have you noticed the "novice" badge and name before some users name? What about users who have frames around their profile picture on the meet people page?

It's easy to remove the novice name and get your own picture frame. You can read here for more information.

3.) Advertisements

It's time to pay those pesky electricity bills! We added advertisements to different parts of the site to help build up our revenue. Don't like the ads? Check out how to remove them here.

4.) Easter Specials

Yep! Easter is right around the corner. In honor of Easter, we have a few Easter specials available. Just keep an eye out in the Shop and Gold Coins pages for hidden eggs and packages.

5.) Broadcasting

Our newest feature! You can now broadcast your thoughts to the Frenzoo world! Be sure to try it out!

Phew, that's a lot of updates, and there's more to come. Keep an eye out for future updates!

And please let us know what you think of the new features!

Frenzoo at SXSW - are you going?

 

Hi to all friends in the industry,

Frenzoo will be attending SXSW interactive in Austin from 10-16th March 2011.  If you're going, would love to catch up :)

(If you haven't heard of it, SXSW is one of the big internet & interactive gatherings, bringing together lots of players in the industry - startups, established companies, investors, content creators and more)

If you're going do get in touch and let's meet in person.

Contact me:

Simon Newstead
CEO, Frenzoo
Cell 415 509 7185
simon@frenzoo.com
Skype simon-hk 

See you there.

A welcome to Miss Leelu of Frenzoo.

We've doubled our community team size!

Well, actually we're happy to have Leelu Frenzoo join us as our 2nd community team member :)

Leelu started off her Frenzoo life as an enthusiastic user, gracing us with her fashionista stylings for many months.  Since then she has got closer to our team and now rejoins us as a full fledged community manager.

Together with Channdie Frenzoo she'll be busy on lots of fun community activities - creator initiaitves, chat events, fierce contests and most of all, getting feedback, working with Frenzoo engineers to make Frenzoo an even better place in 2011.

Do drop a hello to Leelu :) 

Getting to 10,000 users - Startup Advice at Barcamp 2010

On Saturday it was the annual Barcamp unconference that brought together the tech / startup / web / creative community in Hong Kong.

It was a big day for us volunteers, helping to deal with the roughly 500 people who turned up and over 50 sessions that were held. By far the biggest barcamp yet and lots of great ideas being discussed.

Apart from helping out I also ran one of the sessions on the topic of "Getting to Your First 10,000 Users" and sharing advice and ideas with fellow consumer web startups, based on our experience back in early beta with Frenzoo.

My slides are here:

Getting your first 10,000 users - Ideas for Startups - Barcamp 2010

Some interesting discussion on pros and cons of SEO vs paid vs PR vs Word of Mouth traffic, and tactics for each. And the point that no matter how you get your users, make sure you measure and gather all you can while they are on their first visits.

A fun session and a productive day.

We're hiring for Community Manager, Programmer & Designer.

The sky is the limit

Want to be part of a small startup with big ambitions?

Frenzoo is developing the best web 3d world and we want you to be a part of it. 

Open positions:

- Web / Database Programmer (Hong Kong)
- UI Designer (Hong Kong / remote)
- Community Manager (remote, freelance)

Help us scale up and bring avatar life to the masses.

If you have the skills and a passion for user-friendly virtual experiences, do get in touch.

For information and to apply: email jobs@frenzoo.com

Talk at the Virtual World Conference

This morning I had a lot of fun speaking at the Virtual World Conference that was held virtually on Second Life, bringing together attendees and speakers from around the globe.

The speakers covered different topics around the theme of using virtual worlds and communities for business, entertainment and education, as well as the wider macro trends with gaming and virtual goods.

My talk was on the topic of the challenges and learnings of building a new browser-based 3d world.  These included technical, usability, business model and more.

Virtual world conference - Frenzoo presentation

My slides are attached, and there were interesting questions on topics from virtual economy through to behavior abuse problems and gender/age distributions. 

The conference is continuing on for the rest of the day, so do try and catch some of the sessions if you can.

Illustration Contest Winners

We have a lot of artistic talents on our 3d world, in different forms:

• Those great at style and virtual photography...
• Others who create and texture...
• 3d modelers and animators and the list goes on!

For this special user contest, the focus was back-to-basics - illustration on paper, on a free theme.

Competition was fierce but ultimately 3 very worthy winners were selected:

WINNER - Yadira

 

2ND PLACE - Ninja Destiny

 

3rd place - Zuzuboogaliboo

Congratulations winners!