Have you heard of Kaneva?

Kaneva is an entertainment virtual world platform which mixes both a browser based interface and a 3D interface together. What this does is give you the opportunity to socialize and connect with people and to get content from the web using your browser, but if you want to have a more immersed experience… they have a 3D interface also.

Word of mouth has been the advertising thus far for Kaneva, who has more than 100,000 registered members, (here we go with registered member numbers again) and they are still in the beta test at this time.

From what I have gathered so far Kaneva is like MySpace in its browser mode, but when you are wanting a more complete experience you enter into the 3D mode through a separate viewer. One can upload their multimedia materials and pictures, etc.to the standard website and have all that data available in the 3D world.

From their website:

You virtual apartment is where you can strut your style. You can personalize the wallpaper in your apartment, change the flooring, select from a variety of furniture styles — contemporary American, Euro chic, retro — and display your uploaded photos on your walls. Best of all, you can buy an expanding array of premium home décor items to give your crib that signature style.

Live Your Dreams
For the right price, you can trade-up your apartment for a loft or, for serious strivers, a two-story penthouse. Live large as you invite all your friends to your penthouse party, featuring a roof-top pool and a spectacular terrace with an expansive city view.

It appears as though one doesn’t have the opportunity to build their own world… only upgrade (buy) their way up.

Christopher Klaus, the founder of Internet Security Systems (and sold it to IBM for 1.3 billion Dollars) is spending most of his time involved with Kaneva. Klaus in discussing Kaneva with Carolyn Duffy Marsan, Senior Editor of ComputerWorld, mentions how he wrote a video game years ago that never caught on and how he went into the security field instead, and how he had always been passionate about gaming technology….. how he got the idea for Kaneva.

Come on Chris… i am disappointed…. didn’t you or someone around you look at myspace and say damn I should have thought of that… and then take look at Second Life and again say damn, I wish I had thought of that! Then some little light bulb go off in your head and say… hey, what if I combined the two? Make it a lot easier to learn how to participate in the virtual world… so I don’t lose so many who give it a quick whirl… and to hell with the hard core gamers… they wouldn’t really add much to the world and get bored easy anyway. (Personal note: Damn I should have thought of that!)

Really Christopher… I cant believe you gave this interview to Carolyn Duffy Marsan and with a straight face never mentioned Second Life. There is nothing wrong with getting an idea from a source and modifying it to fit a totally different demographic… but at least use footnotes!

I also have to point you readers to an article written by Mark Wallace over on 3pointD, Kaneva Aims For Social Media Consumption. Mark was able to sit down over coffee with Chris and have a face to face discussion about Kaneva and has written a …ummmm…GLOWING post. (Mark, must be nice to live outside the swamps.. where all the big boys play.) Ok I have to agree with most of the glimmering things Mark had to say about Kaneva… I was am just a little jealous, besides some world needs to catch the 6 or so out of 10 that find Second Life too complicated or boring (ha ha) to stick around, and maybe Kaneva is just the application to do it!