Thanks to Jason Kincaid over at TechCrunch for reviewing the JLI beta! That’s a nice thing to wake up to on a Monday morning.

Writes Jason: “Canadian-based Leap In Entertainment thinks it can do what Google couldn’t, and has just launched a brand new virtual world that might actually stand a chance.”

Go check out the review here.

Today we’re opening up Just Leap In to a public beta group. After an engaging private beta, and thousands of stunning, media-rich 3D worlds on the web (thanks to an amazing beta group: You. Guys. Rock), we figure it’s time to kick the tires a little harder.

... and hey, to show the world how much liveliness there is in 2009’s Fellowship of Virtual Worlds. Our industry’s Boromir may have fallen, but even the smallest person, we hear, can change the course of the future.

Just Leap In?

Just Leap In (JLI for short) aims to broaden the appeal of web-based 3D for a mainstream audience, especially – early on – the kind of audience that uses a lot of social media tools: Facebook, Flickr, Friendfeed, YouTube, you name it.

Goals

We’re focused on delivering

• • a simple, great experience of Web-based 3D media sharing
   (photos, videos, music)
• • useful social interactions (comments, chat, networking)
• • ease-of-use (everything is drag-and-drop)
• • a jaw-drapping 3D environment for web browsers on Mac & PC platforms.

We’re not (just) another virtual chatroom. Uniquely, we offer an RSSable newsfeed that syndicates 3D events ‘off-world’. While we’re delivering full game-state networking, we’re also after an asynchronous browsing experience, in order to make a 3D world function like a YouTube embed—or like any personal/corporate blog or webpage.

Mainly, though, we seek to ‘grow the pie’ for true 3D worlds on the Web, and appeal beyond an already-experienced 3D audience.

Mission

The first day I leap into 3D to find a friend or watch a film, and I forget it’s a “virtual world,” on that day the virtual worlds industry has grown up.

In that spirit, we’re aiming to make 3D part of the lifestream of the social web.

Who’s using this thing?

Most our private beta users are around the peak social media demographic (18-34), haven’t spent much time in a virtual world before, but are avid users of tools like Flickr and YouTube who are totally interested in swapping to a 3D environment. If you listen to those kinds of users, they want to do stuff like browse for friends and share photos and videos online. Other virtual worlds don’t actually make that stuff easy to do. So we’ve grown organically to make those key activities as simple as possible.

How do I get started?

It’s a free public beta—hop in over at JustLeapIn.com, create a 3D space, share it anywhere on the web, and let us know what you think.

Happy New Year to all!