Voki.com - Talking Avatars

Voki is a fun tool that allows you to create your own personal avatar and give it a voice. You can choose from a wide selection of characters, as well as animals, anime looking characters, and more, and you can personalize them with different hair styles, clothing options, accessories, and more. You can also choose the backdrop behind them and the stage for that backdrop. Once you´ve created your character, you can bring them to life by giving them a voice. You can do this by either adding a message via your phone or microphone, or you can just type in a message and voice to speak what you´ve written. It´s fun to watch the avatar´s mouth as it “says” what you´ve recorded, since it looks like the avatar is actually speaking.

“Voki enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character. You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc. Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone. Voki lives on your blog, social network profile and will soon be integrated in various instant messaging platforms. You will also be able to download it to most video supported phones.”

They´re fun to use, so people will enjoy making them and adding them to their MySpace pages or sending them to friends. It´s creative and there are a bunch of options to help you create the avatar you´re looking for. They have a variety of ways in which they are planning on making a profit from the site, all of which still enable users to have a positive experience with the site for free.

Will people continue to check back to the site to keep giving their avatars´ new speech, or will they check it out once and move on? Will people prefer having a speaking avatar, or just rather use some of the other technology out there that uses their picture with a voice background?