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STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: Yoowalk

20 word description: Yoowalk is a no-download virtual world which lets you browse the web, connect with friends, and design your own space in live 3D environment.

CEO’s 100 word description: We are entering in an era of Web 3.0. Web 2.0 rested on social networking, user-generated content, and communication platforms. Our revolutionary service adds 3D to all this, which lets users interact live on the web, congregate with friends, walk around the web together, and share their Internet interests. We are the first to blend these concepts and make them accessible in one click. In three years time, we aim at being the European leader in virtual worlds with 10 million unique visitors.

Mashable’s Take: Yoowalk is a new web-based virtual world that lets you browse the web via your avatar, in a 3D environment. With 3D representations of the Internet, Yoowalk offers an entirely different browsing experience for the web, that almost reminds me of the Chappele Show episode that surmised what the Internet would look like if it were a physical manifestation we could walk through–like a mall. Yoowalk has a similar idea: it’s laid the web out on streets and avenues, starting from more broad categories and narrowing down from there.

In this regard Yoowalk acts somewhat like a generic start page, which is emphasized by the fact that it determines what websites are available through its web-based application. So far the choices are pretty limited, and navigation is poor as actual websites have been modified to fit within the Yoowalk 3D environment and a lot of content is lost as a result. While it’s great that Yoowalk doesn’t require a download for its service, its vision of recreating the web is one of its biggest downfalls, as there’s no need to force users to change their browsing experience or take away from a website’s design and user interface in order to make it 3D.

There are some social aspects of Yoowalk that allow you to see other avatars as you surf its 3D web, and a chat client that enables you to talk to your friends regardless of where they are located. The option to sign into MSN, Yahoo or AOL chat clients also make Yoowalk more interactive and easier to use from a new user standpoint, but there’s no deep integration with Yoowalk and these other three chat clients so far.

Personalized virtual rooms are also available for your creative expression, but the design tool is a bit cumbersome and I’d love to see some relevant connectivity between your activity on Yoowalk and your virtual room–perhaps a message board for new friends, or an activity feed that displays some of the sites that you’ve visited. A bookmarking tool (of sorts) that saves your activity while surfing could also be accessed via these user rooms, and Yoowalk could easily begin collecting data to use towards site recommendations later on down the line.

For website owners, there’s an option to turn your site into a 3D creation on Yoowalk, but longterm there could be additional potential for a Yoowalk API that allows developers to build theme-specific or niche versions of the Yoowalk application, perhaps offering a virtual environment for kids and teens that only allows access to parent-approved sites.