Vivox, the largest voice platform for the social web, is based right here in Natick, Mass. Today the company announced its global user based more than doubled in 2010, growing from 18.5 million in early 2010 to over 45 million at year end. Every month the company serves over 3 billion voice chat minutes to people across the world in gaming and social communities and applications.
Vivox Voice powers many of the leading game and social platforms, like Sony, Linden Lab (Second Life), IMVU, EA Games, and 38 Studios. The company integrates with these game and social publishers to allow their users to engage and talk online in three flavors: in 3D environments, in high definition, and in Flash.
Vivox also helps these publishers monetize their audience through audio ads and selling custom virtual goods. Beyond this, Vivox is also commited to helping keep these communities safe, providing security services for moderation, monitoring and control.
“As the social web continues to become a more dynamic and interactive environment, people increasingly desire the ability to communicate with each other quickly, easily and effectively, without the hassle of an extra device, download, or account,” said Rob Seaver, CEO and founder of Vivox. “This trend is being validated all over the web; when Google Voice integrated with Gmail it processed 10 million calls in its first week and we’ve been adding new users at the rate of 2.5 million a month.”
Vivox was founded in 2005 and is backed by Benchmark Capital, Canaan Partners, Grandbanks Capital, IDG Ventures and Peacock Equity. The company has raised $20.6M to date, with its last round, a Series C, of $6.8M at this time last year.
“There is a clear opportunity for voice providers to reshape the Social Web with a communication medium that has proven to be the easiest, most intuitive channel of communication throughout the first thousands of years of existence: voice,” Seaver said in the press release. “We look forward to empowering more and more users so they may talk online wherever, whenever they want and expect another, even more successful year for Vivox in 2011.”
Vivox currently has 35 “live integrations” with publishers and you can check out the list here.
