Lindens Developing Web-Based Social Network For SLers

The Lindens recently announced a community-driven support portal (a potentially useful resource when it propagates more), but to participate in it fully, you need to log in with your Second Life user name and password. After doing so, I noticed that "Hamlet Au" had his own page on the site, with a place for putting a profile photo and other info -- there's even a points-driven "leveling-up" stat, based on your participation rate on the site.  In other words, this is the beginnings of a web-based social network for Second Life Residents, a feature the Lindens have suggested was in development in recent appearances.  It is still very much in a construction phase, and few SL users seem to be participating yet, but will be interesting to watch it evolve.  If it's architected to work within Facebook and MySpace, and allow the embedding content from Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Koinup, SL Profiles, and of course, Plurk, it could become a powerful community-building tool.

Comments

[Art Fossett]

Interesting... my attempt to do this kind of a couple of years ago with Second Friends struggled because of a lack of a decent API to content on the SL website.

http://secondfriends.net/

LL will be able to get round these limitations and do a much better job I guess.

[Csven Concord]

"this is the beginnings of a web-based social network for Second Life Residents"

And this was suggested on the official forums when? 2005?

I honestly don't get what took so long.

[Random Merryman]

I'd say it would make an interesting Venn diagram to plot 'things SL residents want the Lindens to work on' and 'things the Lindens want to work on'. Except it wouldn't be a Venn diagram, it would be two circles with clear air between them.

[Ari Blackthorne]

Have you actually *tried* to change any of that information?

Even while logged-in, you cannot put in an avatar picture, change any of the "about me" fields, put in your wen site address and all that stuff.

Last time I was there (couple days ago) - it was LOCKED and DEAD.

It appears to be default "proile" page that comes bundled with whatever off-the-shelf system they are using and never bothered to turn it on - or actively turned it off.

Just my impression of it.
But based on my impression - it's nowhere near or looks anything like even the beginning of what you are describing, Hamlet.

Just saying what it looks like to me, that's all.

[Kwame Oh]

Interesting move if! this is the aim ? and if it becomes all inclusive by which i mean we can point our friends to this "social page" to continue our various "other business" such as politics, games and all those other shenanigans we get up to on Facebook.

would be a major coup for the Labs if this is the direction it takes, as recruitment to SL would then be not only a click away, but an extension of the "social group"

To get the results that facebook has though, openness, and being all inclusive would have to be the name of the game,take the numbers on facebook from developing nations for instance which has aided its growth and to be perfectly honest do not think LL are ready yet.

We watch with interest and thanks for bringing this up

Julius Sowu virtually-linked London

[ArminasX]

Their web-based social network is based on Jive Software's SBS software (formerly known as Clearspace). It's a totally web-based service that can handle documents (wiki-style), discussions (like forum posts), blog posts and even social bookmarking. Participants can have a customizable view and set up various profile info as Hamlet shows above. But it's not real time - it's essentially an asynchronous service, but it does provide a ton of feed possibilities. I am not sure that it integrates with FB, Plurk or Twitter out of the box, but well, anything can be built. It would not replace any of those, but still will be pretty cool, depending on which features they enable.

[Sue Baskerville]

I'd need to see some supporting evidence in the form of quotes from Linden Lab staff before I put much stock in this report.

There has been a "community support portal" for SL users for years, it's at forums.secondlife.com.

The Second Life blog system and the new Second Life Answers system have technical problems that include ones mentioned at http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-982 , Problems for blogs.secondlife.com.

Some folks frequently can't access the blog. Others find that Firefox will lock up completely, while others have reported their entire computer is locked up and requires restart as a result of using the Second Life Blog and Second Life Answers system. I can personally vouch for the reality of all these technical problems, using several different browsers on multiple computers.

There's a poll in the Second Life Answers system for people to record their views of the Second Life Answers site. Unfortunately, the poll apparently does not work. The comments there include reports from several people of the polls failure.

There is a functioning poll asking exactly the same questions, with the same answers to choose from, in the SL Forums, at http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=323658 , in the event any SL readers would like answer those questions or see how other SL users responded.

I think the comments about connecting the SL Blogs etc. to Facebook and so on might well pure conjecture on Mr. Au's part.

At this stage of the game LL might want to be looking ahead to figuring out how to connect SL together via Google Wave.

[Metacam Oh]

How about making this available in-world? Why do the Lindens make something web based that can hardly even be accessed inside their world? Why do they use blog posts instead of communicate in their own medium, their own world. Why bother going into SL, when I have to minimize my client to browse the web.

[Viorel Daviau]

Nope, not a social network. This has been brewing among mentors for some time now.

This is an "enhancement" for SL support, basically providing a web-based Q&A space.

You won't see the typical tweets/plurks comments (or shouldn't) since that's not the intent of the site. It's a support line.

[Sue Baskerville]

There might be a bit of a problem integrating SL with Facebook since Facebook wants users to register with their real names; avatar names are against the Facebook rules.

[Sue Baskerville]

It appears that LL is asking for saying they will make a forum out of their Jive software and are seeking input from users; see Nika Talaj's post in the SL forums at http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=2452376&postcount=85 and for discussion there's a thread at http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=324153