Lifestreamers Forming Community in Second Life

This quintessentially cool chick with the Run Lola Run hair is Jessica, an MFA student who lifestreams, a kind of extreme blogging which as she puts it, "is the act of documenting and sharing your life online." That's usually done via a site with a constant feed of your photos, Tweets, etc. and in her case, video reports on Second Life (her SL name is JessicaElizabeth Diabolito) which she uses as a meeting space with fellow lifestreamers:

"Many of us are self-employed or want to be self-employed. We want to have profitable online businesses," she explains to me. "But without a boss or a workplace to go to, it can be hard to get motivated to get out of bed in the morning. By scheduling meetings in SL, we can keep each other accountable for 'showing up' to work." You could of course do that with Skype or another online communication service, but Second Life actually proved to be less complicated: "SL actually lowers the barrier to entry -- you don't have to put your makeup on to meet, just roll out of bed and log on. That's all most of us need, just a tiny push, a small group of people who will care if we don't show up." Her aim is to expand the group because "SL is a great place to do that because of the embodied communication." If you're interested in joining, JessicaElizabeth Diabolito's in-world group is called, cleverly enough, "Lifestreamers". Her own lifestream site is here.

Comments

[Jessica Mullen]

Thanks for writeup! Our lifestreamer meetings in Second Life are still going strong. We keep them to about 15 minutes so it's not too much of a time burden... and now we're looking for new things to do during that 15 minutes. We're considering making it some sort of lifestreaming workshop, but current discussions end there :] Would love to hear any ideas from readers!
Thanks again!
Jessica