What Are Shoutouts?

Introduction

Shoutouts are intended to be used by anyone in the IMVU community to send friendly messages to one another and to allow Developers to advertise their items or get contests going. They are NOT meant to be used in order to make contentious or inflammatory statements, to criticize others, to voice opinions or complaints, or to provoke argumentative responses*

A Shoutout is a scrolling message that appears in the IMVU messenger and on the IMVU website. An IMVU user pays a fee in credits to submit their own shoutout. The shoutout then goes through IMVU customer service to check for compliance with the Terms Of Service. It then goes into the queue with all the other shoutouts and shows up, at random, in the messenger and on the site.

Shoutouts are a great way of making new friends and also, if you are a Creator, a great way to market your merchandise. Literally hundreds of thousands of people will see your shoutouts so send one today.

Send a Shoutout 

The Buy Shoutout page contains information on the mathematics behind sending shoutouts and choices for a specific shoutout include the number of broadcasts per day, the number of days to broadcast, the message input field and the information link field.

Shoutout link in Catalog

You can also find a link to the Buy Shoutout page in the ‘Special Products’ panel on the bottom left of nested Catalog pages in the Shop.

Guidelines for Shoutouts

Shoutouts must be appropriate for a general audience (age 13 and up). All Shoutouts will be screened for violations of IMVU’s Term of Service (TOS) as well as for inappropriate content. This includes but is not limited to the following:

1. Inappropriate, crude, or profane language
2. Inappropriate sexual innuendo or solicitation, fetish references, blatent “hooking up” requests
3. Proselytizing (religious solicitation)
4. Complaints, criticism, contentious opinion, negative labeling, gossip, insinuation, accusatory statements, hearsay, etc *
   

   *NOTE: We do want to hear from you, but there might be a better place to voice your thoughts. If you have questions, complaints, critiques, opinions, concerns, or issues to discuss, a much better place to do so would be in the Forums. Because the structure of the Forums allows a person to follow all trains of thought, to understand the context of the discussion, and to engage in a truly Socratic dialogue, the Forums are where you should voice any concerns that would invariably beg a response (…and ShoutOut’s should be used to send simple friendly messages which wouldn’t).

5. Statements that would provoke an argumentative response
6. Anything that contains links that are incomplete or broken
7. Anything that contains links to non-IMVU sites**
   

   **NOTE: You may include links to non-IMVU sites on your own home-page, but not in Shoutouts. All links on your own home-page must still be compliant with IMVU’s TOS.

8. Any advertising for IMVU products (including credits and catalog items) that appears to be anti-competitive (ie, telling people not to shop elsewhere, claiming to have the cheapest or best prices)
9. Announcements for contests or for reward opportunities that appear to be scams (ie, promising rewards when you have none to give; promising people gifts or credits when you do not have sufficient funds to support this claim, etc) or that otherwise violate IMVU’s TOS.
   

   **NOTE: If you promise a “credits” reward for a contest, you must have those credits available in your account at the time of the Shoutout posting

10. Promotions or contests where a purchase is required in order to receive a prize or reward (ie: “the 100th person to buy one of my products gets 1,000 credits”).
    **NOTE: granting prizes where NO purchase is required is fine (ie: “The 100th person to leave me a message gets an item from their wish list”, etc), so long as it doesn’t violate rule #9.
11. Chain mail or spam
12. Misrepresenting yourself or others in your message (some call this “posing”)
13. Messages revealing any personally identifying information about yourself that would allow someone to contact you outside of IMVU, or messages encouraging such contact.
14. Anything written in gibberish (ie: using random, nonsensical lettering)