New World Notes

Second Life Social Profiles Now Come With Plurk Integration (Plus Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn)

Here's another cool feature that's part of Second Life's new Social Profiles: Integration with Plurk, the microblogging social network that's a much-used communication channel among several thousand highly active SL users. In the Profile tab, you just click the Social Identities slot, click Plurk, and that gives you the option to connect and link to your Plurk profile. (Linden promise: kept.) As you can see, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn are also connection options, and I rejoice at this assload of integration choices. Now I'd really love to see an option to actually display, for example, your Twitter or Facebook updates inside your Second Life Social Profile, not to mention your latest YouTube video or Flickr screenshot/photo. But unless I'm missing it, that option isn't available (but hopefully soon)?

Again, to try it out for yourself, go here and log in with your SL account info.

New World Gaming: Kinect Turns Child of Eden into Immersive Synesthesic Experience

Here's a look at Child of Eden, a music game for Xbox 360 with Kinect integration released this month, a brain-melting experience that puts your body into a virtual landscape of 3D graphics and sound:

The gameplay aims to produce synesthesia, where the senses of sight, sound, and touch overlap. My dear friend and game writer/developer Jane Pinckard has an essay in praise of Child of Eden on Kotaku, and describes how it felt to play for the very first time: "I was suddenly falling upward through a liquid field of stars. I don't really know how else to describe it. It was exhilarating, because for the first time in a very long time I felt again that excitement of experiencing something utterly new and strange and beautiful."

Linden Beta-Launches Social Network Features (Timeline, Comments, Friending) to SL Users' Web-Based Dashboard

Linden Lab recently Beta-launched web-based Social Profiles for Second Life users, as the eagle-eyed OpenSource Obscure noticed early on, and so far, it's pretty impressive: It comes with a Facebook-ish style timeline and comment thread, so you can have web-based conversations with your SL friends -- click the screencap at left, to see what it looks like. Instead of just putting a "Like" on a Comment, as you would with Facebook, however, you can actually Love a Comment. (Carry-over from Linden's Love Machine?) You can also get in-world and e-mail updates any time other Residents comment or post on your Profile. Another feature I appreciate -- with this new social profile, you can send a friend request to an avatar from the web. Overall, this looks like a sleeker, more integrated version of Avatars United, the avatar-based social network Linden Lab acquired in 2009, but discontinued. (Though as I understand it, many of the AU staff moved over to Linden.)

Will be interesting to see how this improves and becomes more integrated with the full 3D Second Life experience. Be sure to read more astute commentary from Marianne McCann and Osprey Therian in the screencap of my profile at left.

To try it out for yourself, go here and log in with your SL account info.

Google Circles Are Cool, But Should Be Like Venn Diagrams

Thanks to fashionista Ms. Miko Omegamu*, I got an invite to Google+, and I'm enjoying the Google Circles feature quite a bit. As I mentioned yesterday, the user interface is exceptionally cool -- you click and drag your Google contacts into an appropriate social circle, and each time you add a name, it makes a satisfying, glowing "click". You can also customize your own circles, so of course, I set up a "Second Life circle" and began corralling my many avatar contacts there. But that immediately exposed a shortcoming to the circle metaphor; take a look:

My circle includes a lot of avatar contacts, people I know only in Second Life. But then it also includes someone like John Lester, formerly known as an avatar named Pathfinder Linden, when he was with Linden Lab, but now currently known for his work with another virtual world. On top of that, John's a real life bud who I have a Guinness or two (or three) with every now and again. So does he really belong in the Second Life circle? Or do I have to create another circle: Friends I Originally Knew Through Second Life Who Are Still Engaged in Second Life But Mostly Doing Other Things Including Beers With Me? I imagine many people will have this classification problem: Co-workers who are also close friends, for example. One solution, it seems to me, is to make Google Circles more like Venn Diagrams, which allow you the ability to overlap your affiliations as needed. That would make these Circles seem more relevant to how people actually live their life, or for that matter, their Second Life.

*Additional thanks to Nalates Urriah, Fleep Tuque, Tateru Nino, Naoyoshi Shimaya, Mark Lentczer, who also offered to hook me up.

Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: Help, My Friend's Addicted to Her Virtual Pets! (& Other Petiquette Problems)

Iris Ophelia's ongoing take on etiquette & ethics in virtual spaces  

If you thought breedable pets in SL would be a passing fad, you couldn't have been more wrong. It seems like every year something newer and more advanced is released-- what started as coloured turtles and chickens evolved into cooing creatures that find treasure and level up their owners. It's no surprise that the social issues surrounding these virtual companions have evolved a lot in that time, too.

My landlord threatened to evict me for having (virtual) pets on my land, but it's my land. Is he going too far or am I expecting too much?

                    - Put Out Pet Owner

Many private estates now include virtual pet clauses in their rental agreements, limiting the number of,or altogether banning, breedables or scripted pets. If you want pets, don't rent land in these places. Many sims don't have their policy explicitly stated, though, and even in these cases you are at the mercy of the sim owner. They can remove you and your pets at their leisure if they decide that they are affecting other tenants' experience on the sim negatively (from lag or otherwise). There's little recourse for an SL tenant who is booted off a private estate, fairly or unfairly, because "your" plot of land is still on your landlord's estate.

You're better off asking current or prospective landlords about their pet policies before you start rezzing your own little Kennel Club, and if you find out too late that your home and your hobby are incompatible, be proactive in finding a more suitable spot for you and your furry friends.

Keep reading for more petiquette tips!

Has Google Finally Done Social Right? Google Plus' Circles UI Makes Me Think Maybe

Google Plus, the search engine giant's answer to Facebook, is finally live in closed Beta -- my Internet sifu Om Malik has a good rundown here -- and it's the company's unstated answer to the Silicon Valley axiom, "Google doesn't get social." They've tried to create their own alternative to Facebook and Twitter and even Second Life (hello goodbye Lively) and consistently failed. But Google Circles, a major feature to Plus, makes me wonder if they've finally maybe kinda sorta got social right. Look:

You drag-and-drop your social connections into discrete circles, which, as Nalates Urriah points out, "makes Facebook’s processes look positively ancient. Drag a person to a circle certainly beats drop down menus." To me, that almost seems like the killer app to Plus. I've come to depend on Facebook on a personal and professional level, but with nearly 2000 friends, trying to sort close friends, family, colleagues, casual acquiantances, and, well, avatars, has become by now a necessary but impossible task. Especially with that fricking Facebook drop down.

No word on whether Google Plus will have strict regulations against anonymous account/avatar names, like Facebook does. But my guess is that Google will accept Gmail accounts as valid, without demanding, as Facebook now reportedly does for flagged accounts, a photo ID. Great googly moogly I sure would love a Beta invite to Google Plus, he guilelessly hinted out loud.

Coming Soon to Second Life: Havok 2k10 Physics to Make Mesh Much More Physical

Havok 2k10, a major upgrade to Second Life's aging physics engine, is coming soon to SL. It's already on the mesh-enabled Beta grid, and if I'm reading this Linden Lab wiki page correctly, it'll come to Second Life proper roughly when mesh appears in-world this Summer. Here's an avatar named Rob Danton putting Havok 2k10 through its paces, sending makeshift dominoes skyward in nicely Newtownian ways:

Read more about Havok 2k10 in SL here, with directions on how to try it out yourself. Falling dominoes not withstanding, warn the Lindens, "Do not load test the physics engine. Do not crash test the physics engine. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball." Words to live by. Hat tip: Secondlife Arts & Entertainment, which has thoughts on how Havok 2k10 will transform metaverse art.

Wednesday Machinima: Skye Performs for 75 Avatars

With his powerhouse machine did MyBrains Gottfried shoot this recent concert performance by Skye Galaxy, Second Life's breakout popstar (IRL Sean Ryan) singing for a reported 75 avatars. To capture them all, Mr. Gottfried (he with the Snoopy avatar sporting a rainbow mohawk) turned down his draw distance and used the Imprudence viewer. But never mind the geek palaver: watch, listen, soar.

IMVU Reports 3M Users & 2M+ Facebook Fans; Says Concern Over Linking RL & Virtual Identities "Not a Big Problem"

IMVU, the 3D virtual chatroom with user-generated content, has 3 million monthly active users, company CEO Cary Rosenzweig tells me by e-mail. Last week I mistakenly posted that it had 10 million users, but that's actually the number of unique visitors on the site on a monthly basis. (I've since corrected the post.)

"'Monthly active users'," as Cary explained to me, "are defined by the number of people that are signing into the product with their avatar names and passwords. 'Unique visitors' are people who hit the website without necessarily signing in... so this includes people checking out IMVU for the first time, even before they register." So that high number of visitors is still a reflection of IMVU's aggressive marketing efforts, which was really the point of my post for CMO Site I was referring to. It's also still several times larger than Second Life, which had around 600,000 monthly active users in 2008 -- about as many IMVU had in that time frame -- and has grown to just 800,000 now. 

Related to that, here's another interesting IMVU stat: The game's official Facebook page, which the company uses to promote IMVU content and events, has well over 2 million fans, almost all of whom are likely IMVU members. Since IMVU is, like Second Life, based on interaction between anonymous avatars, I asked IMVU's head of marketing David Fleck if the user community had expressed concern over linking their IMVU activity with their real world Facebook profile. He told me there’s no compelling evidence of that. “Clearly 2 million people decided they’re fans and users,” as Fleck, who was once head of Linden Lab marketing, put it. “It suggests it’s not a big problem.”

Second Life Avatar Height Ranges an Impediment to Quality Builds, Argues Veteran Creator

The male avatar at left is upwards of 7 feet tall, which is actually a typical height for SL avatars. Linden Lab's avatar adjustment sliders allow users to set their size to over 8 feet, which inevitably drives the average height upward. (Because how embarrassing is it if your avatar seems short compared to others?) That's led to a world where the female avatar on the right, who is 5'7" (which in real life is actually on the tall side for women, on average) seems dwarfish. The problem, veteran Second Life content creator Penny Patton explains in this long, detailed, and persuasive post on the official forum, has hurt the quality of Second Life building as well. (Imagine if real life architects designed homes assuming all their customers were in the NBA.)

As Penny puts it to me, "SL content creators can craft a richer, larger and more detailed world in Second Life, simply by building smaller -- but Linden Lab has to help them by encouraging most avatars to shrink down to a much more realistic size." Read her case here -- you too, Lindens reading this! While you're at it, I'll add an idea to the mix: Monetize avatar height, so that anyone who wants an avatar over 6'4" has to pay extra for that privilege. This would drive average heights down to a more reasonable proportion, while still giving the gargantuanly-inclined the freedom to do so.