Online social entertainment destination IMVU is expanding to Europe, localizing the game into 7 European languages. These languages are Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. The expansion will kick off in Sweden and will be followed by the other destinations in the coming weeks.

This is part of IMVU’s strategy for expansion in 2011. The virtual world already has a strong existing community in Europe who create, buy and sell virtual good via IMVU. To show its fervent support to the European community and a hope for initial success similar to the one they came across in their early days in he social gaming area, IMVU decided to localize their website to make it more accessible to non-English members.

“We see a lot of interest coming from Europe, where we currently have more than 10 million registered users,” said Cary Rosenzweig, CEO of IMVU, Inc. “By introducing localized versions of IMVU, more people will be able to enjoy it in the language with which they are most comfortable.”

It’s a tactic many online social networks have taken.  MySpace, YouTube and Facebook  in particular had an arms race for localized versions of their sites.  For all of these channels, mobile’s been a big area of interest for international growth as well.  Applying this to a virtual world, however, is an interesting expansion of a marketplace, which is already more involved in terms of virtual, digital goods, versus their social media-sharing counterparts.

IMVU also released a Mac Client and iPhone app called IMVU 2Go just recently. This makes the social destination accessible whether you’re at home or roaming.

The metrics around virtual worlds are growing in importance as they relate to social interaction. Other virtual worlds like Habbo Hotel are incorporating metrics more into their business, and this will really power the global growth of virtual marketplaces.