Q&A: Rob Frascas, Viximo CEO, on VixML and True Flirt

While at MacWorld, Viximo CEO Rob Frasca took time to answer some questions about his company's latest venture, the VixML-powered True Flirt application for iPhone, which we announced yesterday. True Flirt will be the first true virtual gifting service available specifically for iPhone, powered by the VixML scripting language. Usign VixML, virtually any en duser can develop the programs for True Flirt, which Viximo then publishes and sells through the Apple store. Viximo's VixML.com is currently hosting extra information about using VixML, along with 24 videos of content developed using the language.

"If you look at where people are at, they’re online, they’re on social networks, dating sites, virtual worlds. They’re also using their cell phones. iPhone brings an amazing opportunity to bring virtual goods to a new level," says Frasca. "It’s an open GL platform with better graphics than the Sony PSP. It’s always on. When you look at that, it’s the ideal virtual gifting platform. We need to be part of that.  The iPhone represents a big opportunity for us."

Virtual Goods News: So, why bring virtual goods to iPhone?

Rob Frasca: Our first app, True Flirt, is about romantic virtual gifting and goods. What’s neat is that since it’s connected, always on, and persistent, and you have text messaging, you can go back and forth and carry on a conversation. It’s perfect for the virtual goods infrastructure. Where VixML came from is that as a company, our model has always been long tail, in the sense that we wanted to create a community of artists that could ultimately build gifts goods.

The problem with iPhone is that development is really hard. If you look at the economics, you’re looking at one month, two months for a project. It’s not trivial to create an iPhone app. If we wanted to get a community creating content for iPhone, we needed a tool to let people create content in hours and days instead of months.

VixML is a toolset that lets creators generate native iPhone content without knowing objective C or being able to get at the OpenGL later. If you know how to write XML, you can write a quick script, trade the script around in any text editor, pop it into the engine. All the stuff is there, the tilting, microphone, all the really good features. In the simulators, the SDK will write the code for you, and you just have to edit it. VixML takes the economy of creating iPhone content down, and opens up iPhone to a hell of a lot more people than your typical set of programmers.

VGN: How soon do you anticipate launching True Flirt?

RF: True Flirt is imminent. I’m surprised it’s not in the store. Apple tells us it’s approved and just waiting to be pushed. It’s been a little bit of a nailbiter here at MacWorld, because we have a booth set up and people are starting to talk about it. I would expect to see it virtually any hour if not any day.

Two versions of True Flirt are coming out. True Flirt Lite is free and lets you look at all the Flirts in the app, but you can’t send a Flirt. To send a Flirt you have to buy the full version, which is $5.99. Content can be added to the app on the fly, or purchased from the store. So if you’re a VixML author or a celebrity, and you want to put your cool kissing flirt in, you can use VixML and create your content. Then that content is distributed through True Flirt.

It’s a very cool way to get concepts out there. As a company, we’re working on four other apps besides True Flirt I can’t really tell you about, but they’re similar in overall philosophy.

VGN: How moderated is the user-generated content in True Flirt?

RF: All content in the app must be approved by Apple. What we’ve done is create an infrastructure that keeps people from creating cheesy, inappropriate Flirts and sending them around. We want to make sure we hold to the standards of Apple. I anticipate there will be hundreds of people, if not thousands, using VixML. The story hit yesterday at TechCrunch and the response has been unbelievable. Way beyond what I had foreseen.

It’s been that same mantra, “I don’t know how to program, I have a lot of really great ideas, I’m a kickass designer, how can I do this quickly?” Or XYZ ad agency says "We want to do really cool content for our brands, we don’t have programmers on staff, but we have Flash and HTML designers." They can use VixML and they don’t have to worry about the engine or coding in C. Those are the kinds of comments we’re hearing.

VGN: How do you foresee users adopting Flirts on iPhone?  

RF: The average teenager sends thousands of text messages a month. I read the average 18-year-old is sending a hundred text messages a day. It’s pretty significant, how they’re using this.

Then you enter the iPhone, which is such a unique platform – video, audio, very visceral. So much of text messaging is flirtation. We’re human beings, we love to play and banter and have these romantic connections. What we’re trying to do is create a next generation of SMS and take it to a very fun musical, graphical level.

We imagine people will use these as icebreakers. Some stats out there say that just with a virtual gifts on a dating site, your overture is five times more likely to get a response. All day long on Facebook we see people sending virtual gifts, "happy birthday" or "here’s a drink on me". We’re taking that right to the iPhone, and it's so amazing.

One Flirt says “What’s your secret wish?”, and you blow on it, and all the seeds on a dandelion form into the shape of a heart. Every flirt comes with a flirt back, too. So when you were a little kid that sent the little note that said “Do you love me?” and then had checkboxes for yes, no, maybe... we have that option in every Flirt to do that, to Flirt back. We’ve tested it with a lot of different age groups. Everyone we’ve shown it to has been very excited.

VGN: What kind of price range can we expect to see on Flirt Packs?

RF: The way it works now is True Flirt premium comes with ten Flirts, and True Flirt lite can flirt back for free. We will be selling Flirts from anywhere from .99 cents on up. You can imagine a high value Flirt, a celebrity Flirt, would be higher value. There will also be free Flirts automatically downloaded to the app if you bought the premium app, perhaps branded Flirts from major companies. The Flirts can also have embedded music, full MP3, sound effects, games.  The content variety and flexibility is unlimited.

VGN: Why go for that particular price range?

RF: We’re looking at market data. If something like iFart Mobile can be the #1 app in the app store at .99 cents, we think these Flirts could certainly sell for the .99 cent price point. You would imagine that if there’s really high value to the Flirt, the price could be higher.

What’s cool is, we’ve got over 100 Flirts in development or complete, and Viximo studios was only one of several groups of people using VixML to create those. Viximo has only really created 10 or 15. The others that we’ll be launching and sell will be done by other groups.

We gave VixML to a guy who is a brilliant programmer, and in five lines of code, he created a fractal. It was amazing artwork of a snowflake. Our guys never would’ve thought of doing that. It allows all kinds of creative people to all of a sudden create different types of things. The consumer benefits.

VGN: How do you expect VixML to change the Digital Da Vinci program?

RF: I think it’s going to make it even more exciting. Of the people we’ve got in the Digital Da Vinci program, they’re clamoring for when they can get VixML. I think what we’re going to wind up doing is have training seminars in various cities across the country, and bring people in, and over the course of a day or two give people the training they need to be able to use it. Everyone that’s in there is really chomping at the bit to get at VixML and the iPhone. For the most part people haven’t been able to really get at iPhone development, and suddenly if you know XML and graphics, you can crank.

VGN: What kind of Flirt Packs do you foresee become the biggest successes for True Flirt?

RF: I can imagine celebrity stuff, branded stuff would be cool. Really innovative game-like Flirts, too. We’ve got this one that’s a satire of a bachelor pad, and you touch different things in the scene, and they animate. It’s like a little Easter Egg hunt. A record player plays music, a disco ball falls from the ceiling. If you sent somebody that, I think it’s called “My pad puts you in the mood, baby”, the flirt-backs are “Only if you’ve got shag carpeting”, "Yeah, that’s groovy baby", and "I think you oughta go back to the 70’s".

VGN: How does True Flirt fit in with the web and Viximo’s other channels?

RF: Ultimately, we’re going to work to integrate them where it makes sense. One of the products we just launched is Gifted, a kind of embeddable gift box you can embed anywhere. You can skin it. You can imagine how something like that would tie in to the iPhone. We’ll work to better integrate that.

VGN: Right now the Flirt Packs are a response to the App Store not supporting microtransactions – can you see this changing in the future? 

RF: Yes. There’s a lot of people that want a microtransaction system.

VGN: How do you foresee the iPhone community maturing, with regard to virtual goods, as compared to communities like Facebook or Second Life?

RF: I just think the growth opportunity there is amazing. If you look at the growth rates now just in the app store, it’s amazing. In the first three months, they did 1 million apps. In the fourth month, 1 million more. The numbers are just amazing. There’s over 15 million apps in the store now. It’s going crazy. In a lot of ways, those apps are digital goods.

It’s all about slices of attention span. If I’m going to watch the Godfather on Blu-Ray, I’m going to pay for how many hours of my attention it’s getting, 19 bucks for 4 hours. If I play 99 cents for a cool app that entertains me for a few minutes, it’s like snack food. What virtual gifts are about is snack food and doing it in a socially connected way.

VGN: So what does the future hold—what is Viximo’s next big move?

RF: We’re trying to be the definitive source of virtual goods, regardless of platform. If it’s the ‘net, if it’s a social network, we’re trying to be the turnkey solution. So if you’re a major publisher and you’re thinking of adding virtual goods, you could go build it yourself, or you could turnkey, plug n’ play, pop Viximo in and make money. Our pitch is virtual goods, real revenue. What we want to make sure everyone understands is, we’re going to be wherever these things take place, wherever it makes sense. 

 

Comments

[Steven Savage]

Interesting idea at least.

My concern would be that this limits people to whatever systems can support the application. Admittedly when that's the iPhone, there's some locations where everyone seems to have them. But it's going to limit the market a bit.

The creation engine is intriguing because of the involvement of the user. XML isn't exactly a friendly language, but its' easier than objective C. It also suggests to me that the folks behind this want to get as much content as possible as fast as possible - which will be needed for their business model.

A big target I see is lifestyle/interest. If you can brand things for favorite shows, genres (anime, soap opera), etc. you may be able to draw in a lot of niches and play for the long tail.