Those animated, talking avatars you might have come across on sites like Evite and CBS Radio are about to become a lot more prevalent. Oddcast, the company behind them, is announcing the Voki Partner Platform, which enables any web site to offer their users the ability to create their own talking avatars.
I’m not usually one to quote the marketing buzzwords, but in this case Shaival Shah of Oddcast actually provides a good explanation of why someone might want to deploy this:
“… The user engagement and advertising revenue generated in the program’s first months created a high-level of demand for the partner platform. So we launched an automated, self-service program on voki.com for any online community to enable their end users with our avatar platform.”
Makes sense – conversation keeps people on web sites longer, and Oddcast’s unique, avatar-based approach to community has proven that it can create engagement. OddCast has been around since the first boom and bust (founded in 1999) and now has more than 9,000 customers, so the "odd" technology seems to have staying power.