MPTH is not just a gaming company or a young male IVIL. It also has Hearme with 2.5 million members. Hearme launched in January of 99 and features live audio interaction. One of the chat groups is Black World. According to the website info, it came about because preachers, karaoke singers, language teachers began using Mplayer to take advantage of live chat features of the game center. So the company developed Hearme. AT&T interested in Hearme technology.
At 1 billion market cap as of this morning, the game part of the company is highly valued. The reason I invested is this Hearme technology. Who knows what that is worth?
Here is one article on Hearme from their website:
Hearing Is Believing for Online Games Company Mpath
Online games specialist Mpath launches HearMe.com, a site aimed at people who want to gab on the Web – no typing required.
By Mark Gimein
In June, The Standard reported on the evolution of Mpath, an online gaming company. At the time, Mpath was switching its focus from multiplayer action games to games like checkers and cards.
Now, Mpath has gone further. Last week, the company launched HearMe.com, a free, ad-supported site that dispenses with games entirely. Instead, it's dedicated to voice chat.
Mpath says half the usage on Mplayer, its game site, already comes from voice chat outside the game areas. In fact, there's already a community area on Mplayer that has no games at all, just chat rooms on a range of topics.
While the voice-chat idea has been floating around for a long time, some early attempts were burdened with what may have been a few too many features. One notable and well-publicized entrant, OnLive, tried to create a 3D virtual space, where participants created "avatars" that wandered around and talked to each other.
In fact, Brian Apgar, the founder of Mpath, worked down the hall from OnLive when it was being incubated at venture-capital firm Merrill Pickard. "What OnLive finally delivered was 3D heads floating in space," says Apgar. But a 3D fantasy world "just wasn't something people wanted."
A number of other companies already offer voice-chat systems, but most (including OnLive's current offering) are designed for business use. Tribal Voice uses a platform called PowWow and offers a voice-enabled, community-building service. Tribal Voice, however, has positioned itself mostly as an applications developer.
Mpath President and CEO Paul Matteucci says the idea of creating the game-free HearMe.com site came up on Christmas Eve. Because the site uses the same technology as Mpath's gaming site, it took only a month to launch.
HearMe.com is essentially a back door to the community area that already exists on Mplayer. At launch it was already hopping. Country music players congregated in the Kickin' Kountry room. In some rooms, members have set up auditoriums where they play their own music or favorite tapes.
Alas, many of the more interesting rooms are accessible only with the creators' permission: You can't eavesdrop on Potheads Anonymous. And the audience for computer chat can tend toward the technical. "The question for the day," says one participant in a room titled 1984, "is how you conduct a file transfer through Mpath."
That limitation aside, HearMe.com's voice chat works seamlessly. It's possible that the audience for chat may prove a little larger than the audience for parlor games and 3D avatars. And, for most people, the anecdotal evidence suggests that talking is more fun than typing.
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