Wanted: Meaningful SL-to-Web Experience Integration

After a brief trial, I'm giving up on Weblin's SL avatar-to-Web technology.  It's cool and fun-- pictured at right, there's the backpacking burro Headburro Antfarm stopping by to say hi on this very site-- but ultimately, a bit too functionally limited for now.   It's mainly just a chat interface, which sort of defeats the purpose of a Second Life crossover.  (Also, Weblin's avatar templates are limited; a friend complained how she wasn't able to bring her gorgeous diaphanous wings with her.)  My main objection is that I tab browse, and when I do, my Weblin avatar follows me from site to site, even though I'd rather he stay put on New World Notes.  Still, there definitely seems to be a demand for a service like this. 

So much Second Life activity happens on the Web, on blogs like this, social networks like Facebook and Orkut, and microblogging sites like Plurk and Twitter. Trouble there is, none of them really capture the freeform, improvisational nature of Second Life. This is probably one of the major factors causing Second Life's growth to remain flat-- maintaining activity in SL requires a client download/installation, broadband and high end graphics cards, and perhaps most demanding of all, an extensive time commitment even to attend a single event. If much of the experience could be carried over to the Web in a compelling way, these dynamics would change drastically.

Comments

[LifeFactory Writer]

I was so tempted to drop you an IM yesterday, Hamlet, to ask if you had tried this service. I even typed it out before deleting it again. Glad to see you posting a thought about it here!

I went through the process of capturing my SL avatar, which came out a monochrome grey, and then took it over to a few sites I frequent, including the NYT and the Economist...there were no other weblinzins around.

I can see the value of such a service in making the web feel smaller and smaller as we begin to knock elbows into one another all over. But, I am also not immediately compelled to make this a part of my regular digital day. Not yet. Besides, the few weblinzins I did bump into, did not chat hello back.

Happy new year!

[Hamlet Au]

You too, LF!

The Weblins I bumped into weren't very social, as well. Then again, I'm not always in the mood to talk with avatars when I'm reading about Middle Eastern politics or whatever.

What was fascinating to me is how many Weblins I saw wandering around *on Facebook*. Like the social network wasn't social enough already!

[LifeFactory]

You read about Middle Eastern politics? Me too...maybe we would have run into one another after all!

I just had to come back, because just after I posted here saying Weblin was not for me, I signed on once more before uninstalling, and ran into one of my few SL contacts at the Linkedin site. So, maybe I will try it for just a l-eee-tle longer!

As far as the popularity of interfaces upon interfaces...I think the 2.0 crowd is essentially one of service addicts! [smile!]

[Negko deVinna]

When you tasted how many things you can do ISL, it's hard to be reduced to a shrunk animated gif who dances like a robot.
The reduced avatar is the perfect symbol of the reduced features of Weblin, compared to SL.
Still, I dream of forbidden love between SL and weblin, that would give birth to Weblin avatars with SL friendlist and Web to SL IM features.

Damn, Christmas is over...

[Spinloop]

Hamlet, if you want to fix your weblin on New World Notes rather then taking him with you from website to website you have to 'disable change rooms' on the weblin tray icon. Simply press CTRL + right-click the weblin tray icon to choose this action.
From now on you take your weblins with you though but only from nwn.blogs.com.

[HBA]

Hi Hamlet,

I've stopped using it too - no one spoke, it was in the way and slowed things down and just wasn't useful to me. Still, it's quite cool to bee a wee Burro wandering about outside the grid :)

[Dedric Mauriac]

Perhaps weblins would be better if they allowed you to leave something behind on the website (only seen if you are using weblins). If people could get creative and slap stickers on sites, post-it notes, houses, landmarks, shops, scripted objects, etc - you would start to see the beauty of second life come into the environment. However, you'd have to allow people to own sites to return things or set restrictions just as we can with parcels today.

[Doreen Garrigus]

You are all just male. I get spammed with "Hello, how old are you?" chats every time I log on to Weblin. I haven't had any trouble getting into conversations. I convinced a guy I talked with for a half hour or so to make a Second Life avatar. He was a little overwhelmed by the SL interface and told me he was going to be "sorting it out for quite a while", but I consider getting anyone to log in a success. A thing to note, though. Nobody seems to talk about the site they are on. It's just social stuff.

My irritations with the service vary depending on the page I'm on. Mostly, I am annoyed by the chat spam: Why are there so many Turkish and Brazilian men who know just enough English to ask me if I have a webcam, and how can they forget that they asked me that three minutes ago? On sites like Facebook, there are so many little Weblins at the bottom of my screen that they actually obscure the page I'm trying to see. I also use a tabbed browser, which makes multiple little Doreen Weblins with the option to go to each page. It leaves me on the first tab I looked at, instead of the one I am looking at now. My final pet peeve? My Weblin av randomly does the Macarena.

[Joan Kremer]

You might want to keep an eye on what's happening at The Learning Experience in Second Life. They're working on creating a conduit between SL and Facebook as the start of a much more open connection between SL and the rest of the Web: http://tleinsl.blogspot.com/2009/02/tle-begins-building-conduit-between-sl.html