Avatars Disunited: A Tale of Two Hamlets

A reader just told me there are multiple "Hamlet Au" accounts on Avatars United, the virtual world social network recently acquired by Linden Lab, and so there is, at least two. Evidently Tom Wolfe wants my Second Life identity (and really who claim blame him.) Or maybe more likely, someone knows my avatar was inspired by the great new journalist. For the record, though, the guy with the sad robot hoodie is the one writing this post. Yet another reason to hope the Lindens introduce an authorization system but soon.

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

Just more gasoline for your anti privacy bonfire where all the books are being thrown eh?

After the boatload of crap i went through in a long IM session to make sure an account there was the person it was supposed to be I gave up. It is a child's toy. And it is full of defects.

But it is obviously serving the anti privacy lobby's interests by creating drama so that must be why LL bought it.

[Dirk Talamasca]

I believe that have already hinted at that by making signing on through other web services OPTIONAL.

[Monica G]

Avatars United is so glitchy I can't believe they went public with it. They seem very unprepared for the user load. Half the time I try to access it, it says Server Not Found. My profile picture still isn't displaying and signing in through other services failed the one time I tried it.

[ColeMarie Soleil]

just like my name is stolen on IMVU XD

[Adric Antfarm]

Yeah, but did he get M Linden cake?

I think not.

[ColeMarie Soleil]

where's my cake?
=(

[Sidney Smalls]

What bothers me more than the fact that they bought this lame site is the obvious fact that none of the lamers who made it seems to have any actual interest in SL. They seem to be more interested in Eve online.

[Sidney Smalls]

And any way you spin it, having confusion over identity on an official, LL-owned site is a complete disaster.

[Fuzzball Ortega]

Yea I thought that guy with the robot hoodie looked familiar when I sent the "Unite" request.

I have NO idea what I would use AU for, to tell you the truth. Wait and see, I guess.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

To be honest, I've been trying Avatar United for well over a year now, and it always worked fine. It's just right now where everybody is registering massivel to it and link to all the friends they have in the universe that AU is starting to crumble under the load :)

On the other hand, while I understand that LL was eager to show the world how cleverly they're buying innovative companies, they have done exactly the same silly mistake with XStreetSL. LL already runs OpenID internally, but it took them months to integrate XStreetSL with their internal OpenID system, and in the mean time, there was some confusion as you had two different accounts with two different passwords... But even if they wished to do something very, very simple, all they would need to do is to have an ATM box in-world to validate an avatar's name on AU. That takes a few minutes to develop. I'd be happy to offer the code for free. And that would be pretty much all that would be needed.

Please do a little bit more thinking next time, Mr. M Linden :)

[Ann Otoole]

@Gwyneth - Did you forget AU serves all those other MMOs? Before LL bought AU the SL community there was a tiny fraction of the membership. Is LL going to change AU to be SL only? I keep having to point this out to people that think everyone on AU is in SL.

There is a blip app you can use to verify your AU account. I guess we will have to use it even though it is not an LL application.

[Adric Antfarm]

SL Blips was a breeze and maybe something we all need to do.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

EVE Online is a fine game, and I enjoyed playing it for a time. But I would tread cautiously in any realm created by or populated largely by EVE residents. While the vast, vast majority of them are perfectly reasonable, rational human beings, the mileau does attract some small fraction of players who regard cons and scams as the highest form of fine art.

[Tateru Nino]

The same can be said for any society, online or offline.

[DB Digital]

Apparently anyone can have (or change) their name to anything at any time. What doesn't change is the actual url of the profile. The other persons is http://www.avatarsunited.com/avatars/hamlet-au-second-life While yours is http://www.avatarsunited.com/avatars/hamlet-au. And of course search looks at name info more than the links apparently.

-DB

[Arcadia Codesmith]

"The same can be said for any society, online or offline."

That's absolutely true. But EVE Online is one of the few virtual environments where most scams within the game are legal under the rules.

Eve empires have been toppled by infiltrators who get access to the guild vault, sometimes to the tune of thousands of US dollars worth of virtual cash and gear. The company running the game regards this as good clean fun and will take no action.

Phishing and hacking are against the rules, of course, but some people have trouble drawing ethical distinctions between what's allowed in the game and what's allowed in the metagame.

Again, not a blanket indictment of EVE players; overall they tend to be a more mature and helpful group than you find in most MMOs. But the predators that do exist are emboldened by the 'caveat emptor' policies.