Berlin start-up Metaversum, the developer and operator of the virtual world Twinity, has won a new investor in the form of Balderton Capital. The exact amount has not been released but it’s understood to be in the ‘multi million Euro’ range. Metaversum is adding to investment from VC Grazia Equity. Balderton, better known in its previous incarnation as Benchmark Capital Europe, is the fund that invested in and exited from Bebo and MySQL, the former to the tune of $140 million.
Twinity, currently in its private beta phase, is positioning itself as a virtual world “linked closely with reality.” You can get an apartment in New York, for example.
Reviewers of Twinity’s beta are thin on the ground but Maria Bäcke, a PhD candidate in Digital Games at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden – said the beta version of Twinity is “a very nice environment” and avatar customization tools “pretty good”, but another felt the world is pretty locked-down and feels like it’s ‘on rails’, which may well be the intention.