In Second Life's New Basic Viewer, User Profiles Come With Leveling System That Encourages Adding Real Life Details

The new "Basic" Second Life viewer is now the official default viewer for SL, Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble announced yesterday, and along with point-and-click movement and instant avatar selection, it comes with a couple interesting features: Resident user profiles now have a "Profile Completeness" progress bar, a kind of leveling system popular in gamification. (Yes, I hate that term too.) The more information you put in your user profile, the closer the Profile Completeness reaches 100%. It's a subtle addition, but when a job network added a similar feature to its user profiles, the CE0 of a gamification company recently told me for a report I wrote on the topic, "conversion skyrocketed." I tend to think we'll now see many more complete Resident profiles too.

To reach 100% completion in your Second Life profile, you have to add some interesting details: Specially, your Real Life Biography. While doing this isn't mandatory in the least, the subtle nudge of making it a perquisite for a "Complete" Second Life profile means more people will add some information there. And again, there's no obligation to add specific real world identifying details to that Biography. (Far as I can tell, putting any info in there will bump your progress meter upward.) But again, the nudge remains. And with this move, Linden Lab under Rod Humble's management takes another small but significant step away from Second Life as many understood it for years, as fostering identities that were separate from users' real selves. But this is probably another necessary nudge to make Second Life mass market. Because to the best of our knowledge, avatar-only identities have likely made Second Life niche.

Comments

[Joshua Philgarlic]

I think you watched the webprofile for the very first time, right? Cause the progress bar existed all the time since webprofiles have been introduced ;-) .

[Laetizia 'Tish' Coronet]

"Your World. Please, No Imagination, Thank You."

[Kaas Kistensen]

These new browser based profiles don't load for me (a good 80% of my friends experience the same)... I miss reading profiles so much ... and it's amazing how blind one feels without being able to open/read profiles. And it always amazes me that LL introduces new stuff without fixing the old flaws ... which in this case even prevent to use the new stuff.

[Bryn Oh]

I was just speaking to someone the other day who may take a project into second life. One of their main problem with SL was that it was not point and click movement interface. He wanted SL more like World of Warcraft, which I have not played but assume is based around that movement. I had dismissed it as just a personal preference for this particular person, but perhaps it is more important than I had initially thought.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

World of Warcraft utilizes the standard UI paradigm for movement in a 3D space, a combination of WASD/arrow keys and mouse. It's intuitive, robust, and useful even in environments with nothing to click on.

Click-to-move is best suited for 2D isometric environments. There's a subtle but important distinction between feeling as though you're moving through a virtual environment and sending instructions to a playing piece to move.

[Adeon Writer]

I think I'm a little unclear on what you consider an Avatar-Only identity.

Here is a list of Information I have always given in my first life tab of my SL profile, while at the same time still keeping my SL and RL identities separate:
-My age
-My gender
-My general location on the planet
-My work feild
-My marital status
-A picture of my RL face.

And here is a list of Things I do not put in my first life tab in order to keep my RL and SL identities separate:
-My address
-My company of work
-My real name
-My phone number

[Emerald Wynn]

Annoying. Do we get a cookie or something if we level up to 100 percent?

Yeah, I kind of wish SL would have given us a heads up first before completely jacking around with our profiles . . . mainly because they COMPLETELY ERASED the one I've had for a couple of years and I had to create my profile all over again from scratch.

And sorry to be one of those "I hate change" kind of people, but I liked being able to click random AVs and perv their profiles. Now I have to sit around tapping my foot waiting for the Web profile to load.

Dislike!

[Indigo Mertel]

>> Because to the best of our knowledge, avatar-only identities have likely made Second Life niche. <<

If avatar-only identities have made SL niche, how do you explain WoW's success?

[kanomi]

Do taxpayer funded sock puppets for corporate propagandists get imaginary points for filling out their fake profiles too?

The world is called "Second Life", not "First Life". Or as Rodvik Linden said:

"Privacy is extremely important for anyone putting themselves out there, expressing themselves, or expressing a side of themselves through an avatar. People don’t want other people to connect the dots from their avatar to their real life person or even, for that matter, to an alt. One of the ethical obligations we have is to protect people's privacy."

RedZone got the boot for that - though what RedZone did is standard behavior for Facebook apps. The primary impetus for tagging comments and online activity to real life individuals has nothing to do with "authenticity" and everything to do with marketers like Facebook strip-mining human relationships for the latest cyber-gold.

You want to be corporate cattle, go play Farmville. Just be aware who's branding your cow.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

As Joshua said 'Profile Completeness' has been there since the advent of web profiles in Viewer 2.5.
FYI there is a major bug that has been there as long that is wiping web-profiles so we are seeing quite a few more blank profiles!
What does make a welcome return in Viewer 2.6 is 'Interests' which promises to make finding people, places and events you like easier in the future.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

As Joshua said 'Profile Completeness' has been there since the advent of web profiles in Viewer 2.5.
FYI there is a major bug that has been there as long that is wiping web-profiles so we are seeing quite a few more blank profiles!
What does make a welcome return in Viewer 2.6 is 'Interests' which promises to make finding people, places and events you like easier in the future.

[Ciaran Laval]

It's not anonymity that makes Second Life niche, the real life tab has been avaialble for goodness knows how long.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

The rl text space is great. It is more space to use for marketing advantage for SL businesses. Once we see what LL is planning for the interests section then that too will become useful for marketing purposes.

And, yes Hamlet, the status bar was there all the time on web profiles. It isn't new. So your article needs to be altered to simply highlight an existing feature that just became more interesting with the new interests section.

[Sepp Schimmer]

Old news, but it would be interesting to hear what the Japanese think about it. I've heard the biggest reason Facebook never made it big in Japan is that handing out your real identity online is simply a no no in Japan. Is that true? And will a careful but still notable move towards connecting the real identity to your second life one make second life less attractive?

[Ciaran Laval]

@Sepp Schimmer, the reports I've seen on the lack of Facebook uptake in Japan do indeed cite Facebook's openess as a reason for the slow uptake, it's not the done thing in Japan.

There are big social networking sites in Japan, even Twitter does ok in Japan, but Facebook does seem to struggle:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/technology/10facebook.html

[Leondra]

Un-like

get me a button

I want an avatar that is NOT linked to my RL. One must be invited.

But, an interface that had it all linked, in 1 account, on 1 device, and I controlled access, I'd be interested.

[Cole Marie]

I am not against change but prefer Phoenix Viewer.

[Laetizia 'Tish' Coronet]

If I may be less than modest for a moment:

http://www.thoughts.com/LCoronet/why-i-dont-make-it-real

[Arcadia Codesmith]

In my (purely anecdotal) experience, the most common entry in non-blank real life profiles is some tactful or not-so-tactful variation of "None of your goddamn business". This is completely satisfactory to the progress bar.

It's so prevalent, they should consider putting a checkbox on that page with boilerplate to the effect of "Resident does not share personal information"... or perhaps a bold-font "(OPTIONAL)", with a prominant warning about the potential dangers of exposing your identity.

It might reduce liability when they start to dig up the corpses.

[Sepp Schimmer]

@Ciaran Laval, thanks! Something to think about, this race towards full transparency everywhere. Now what is it they say, "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I am not being followed"? ;)