New World Notes

Facebook Testing Credits on Third Party Sites -- Big Move to Become the Internet's Main Virtual Currency

Facebook is now testing the use of its virtual currency, Facebook Credits, on third party sites outside of Facebook. This is a huge move but not an unexpected one: When I wrote an analysis paper on Credits back in May, this was among the top forecasts. Since then, I'd roughly estimate about 25-40 million people regularly using Facebook Credits now, just to play games within Facebook. Since then, there's also a lot of non-gaming content you can buy with Facebook Credits, such as music and TV shows, making this install base much more likely to grow. And if this trial launch of third party sites is successful (as is very likely), I bet we'll see more content being offered for Facebook Credits, even physical products and services. That's right: Facebook Credits are on track to become the Internet's official virtual currency.

Speaking of which: Hey, Linden Lab, I hope you're applying to become a third party site that sells your own Second Life virtual currency for Facebook Credits. I really think the nearly 200,000 people in your Facebook group will be excited by that offer. As will the hundreds of thousands more who would be, after it went online.

SL Crowdfunding Update: Karl Stiefvater's Mesh Project Very Near $5K Goal, Kirsten's Viewer Project at 12% Target

A week after I checked in on the crowdfunding project to hire ex-Linden Karl Stiefvater to fix problems with SL mesh that Linden Lab has delayed addressing, another $1000 has been pledged. Just another $700 or so and the project will be fully financed -- go here to consider donating yourself.

The other major SL crowdfunding project to fund Kirsten's Viewer, the popular third party Second Life viewer, has only raised 12% of its target goal of £25,000 (about $40,000 US.) This isn't too surprising: If I correctly understand the workings Crowdfunder, the UK-based site hosting the Kirsten project, only citizens of the UK and EU can contribute*. I wonder if they have a US-based intermediary who can help transfer pledges from North America -- or for that matter, someone in SL who can handle Linden Dollar pledges.

*Update, 2:15PM: In Comments, Qarl and Maggie report they've been able to successfully contribute cash pledges from the US.

Don't Miss These Top Ten NWN Posts From Last Week

In Second Life

• Open Source Spinoff of Second Life Slowly Smothering Revenue Base of Second Life Itself
• Second Life Grows Slightly in Q3 2011: Now 1.05M Monthly Users (Good), 475K Monetized Users (Better)
• Virtual Cosplay: How to Turn Your SL Avatar Into Miyazaki's Kiki for Halloween
• In 2 Weeks, Nearly $4000 Pledged to Hire Ex-Linden to Fix Second Life Mesh -- Future Trend for SL Development?
• How to Deal with Entitled SL Customers -- And Avoid Being One Yourself!
• Kirsten's Viewer, Popular Third Party SL Viewer, Becomes Crowdfunded Project - Here's Why You Should Invest

In General Gaming

• Glitch MMO Gets Engulfed With Second Life Users, Who Create One of the Game's Largest Groups
• Google+ to Allow Pseudonyms Soon (But I Wouldn't Start Celebrating Yet)
• Google+ Has Become My Least Effective Platform for Social Media Promotion (Even as My G+ Circle Keeps Expanding)

Open Source Spinoff of Second Life Slowly Smothering Revenue Base of Second Life Itself

Hypergrid Business reports a new high for OpenSim grids, with 144 regions over the past month, and smaller grids attracting new users. Not entirely coincidentally, this news comes at the same time we learn that Second Life lost about 200 private sims in just two weeks, which brings the total loss, counting the 650 gone since the start of 2011, to 850 or so. This is deeply concerning, because private sims represent 80% of Linden Lab's revenue. This is also deeply ironic, because OpenSim is an open source spinoff of Second Life itself. However, in all likelihood, OpenSim isn't adding absolute new users to SL/OpenSim, but merely scavenging from the existing SL userbase, while also undermining Second Life's revenue. To be sure, not all or even maybe most private SL landowners who give up their sims move to OpenSim, but in my opinion we're seeing at least some exile effect in this HyperGrid chart.

And once again, this returns me to what is unfortunately a recurring theme to this blog: Second Life cannot survive as the niche it currently is, for at the moment, it is being undermined by an even smaller niche. The only way forward for SL is to replace its land revenue model with Premium accounts and other revenue streams, and the only way to fully replace the lost land revenue is for SL to have millions of highly active, highly monetized monthly users, not the hundreds of thousands it has now. To pretend otherwise is simply not realistic. And since OpenSim's survival also depends on Second Life's continued health, my strong advice is this: If you do give up your SL sim for OpenSim, at least get an SL Premium account, as an investment in the future of both.

Chart credit HyperGrid Business.

SL Weekend Event Will Celebrate Lives Lost to Gay Bullying

Eddi Haskell has news of a stellar event coming up in SL starting tomorrow: "Be a Warrior for Jamey Weekend", named after gay teen Jamey Rodemeyer, who tragically committed suicide last month. Held October 22 and October 23 at Tadd's Cabaret (and pictured) and run together with Second Pride and other LGBT clubs and organizations, the aim is to "celebrate Jamey's life and the lives of other teens... [and] let troubled teens in Second Life know that they have somewhere to turn if they have are confronted by bullying." I especially like the latter goal, since SL is a great and fun place to find a supportive global social network anonymously. Read all about the event here.

New SL Viewer 3 User Interface: Not Glorious Yet!

Inara Pey of Modem World and Daniel Voyager have a first look at the new SL Viewer 3 user interface, which was added as a user-accessible Beta candidate on the 18th, and which Linden CEO Rod Humble promises to be "glorious". Gone is the much-hated, behemoth right sidebar; instead there are elegant icon buttons on the bottom and the left, with notifications on the top right. Definitely a big improvement over Viewer 2, though it still doesn't look mass market friendly enough to me. For one I think the UI icons could be much larger and more colorful. Overall I'm still waiting to see a big, paradigm-shifting change worthy of the word "paradigm". (Or for that matter, glorious.) Hopefully we see more iterations before this becomes the official viewer. Meantime, read more about it here.

SL Poses Inspire Patricie Sapphire to Take SL Fashion Photos of Lucid and Shadowy Beauty

Patricie Sapphire shoots and blogs SL fashion photos of lucid and shadowy beauty like this one at left. Most SL fashion blogs, my sense is the photo follows the fashion, but for Ms. Sapphire, she starts with the pose: "It is true I love the art that is fashion in SL, and love to photograph it," she writes, "but for me the pose is always on my mind, some beautiful emotive pose I just bought or saw, it forms the basis for the entire picture 90% of the time." I'd say she is successful just about 100% of the time. Go here and see more, see more.

Hat tip: Cajsa Lilliehook, who has an SL fashion blog that you should surely see too.

Linden Lab Attributes Megaprim "Blacklist" to Griefing Issue, Says Functionality Has Been Restored

Yesterday I got word from Carlo Negulesco that Linden Lab reportedly has a "blacklist" against certain types of megaprims, which were disappearing from the SL grid. I checked with Linden spokesman Peter Gray, who pointed me to this Second Life Grid Status Report, which attributed it to a griefing issue. Specifically: "Due to a change we recently made to address a griefing problem, some megaprims were removed from the grid, which has affected users’ creations containing these megaprims. The issue has been resolved, and the megaprim objects can be re-rezzed from your inventories at this time." More here. Megaprim owners, are the megaprims megarestored as promised?

Virtual Cosplay: How to Turn Your SL Avatar Into Miyazaki's Kiki for Halloween

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

It's no secret that I love cosplaying in Second Life and putting together avatars as homages to my favourite characters. So, when I was considering what other Halloween costumes I could put together for New World Notes; the titular young witch from Studio Ghibli's classic film Kiki's Delivery Service sprang immediately into my mind.

Kiki, like many of the heroines from Hayao Miyazaki's work with Studio Ghibli, is brave, resourceful, kindhearted, and completely adorable. Even the Disney Princesses could learn a thing or two from her!

It can be tricky to capture the spirit of animated characters in SL, but Kiki's look is so distinctive that it was a much easier avatar to build than I'd expected. But you be the judge, here's a side-by-side comparison:

How did I create my Kiki avatar? Keep reading for a full breakdown of this little witch's wardbrobe!

Glitch MMO Gets Engulfed With Second Life Users, Who Create One of the Game's Largest Groups

Glitch, the innovative MMO from Stewart Butterfield and crew, launched late last month, and you'll never guess who's playing it. (Well actually, maybe you can.) One of the very largest Glitch groups (a bit like a guild, but you know, groupier) is SL Glitcher, i.e., as the charter explains, "For SLers who Glitch." Now with 348 members, it's among the top 20 groups in Glitch, and it's not even the only SL-themed one: There's also a Glitch group simply called Second Life now with 141. I'm actually not surprised, because SLers tend to be early adopters who not only try new social media platforms and web games/toys, but tend to do so en masse. (That's how SLers became one of the most active groups on the Plurk social network.)

The SL Glitch group was founded by SL fashion designer Dove Swanson, who's been playing Glitch since its beta period. "[S]o I kinda knew my way around," she tells me, "and when I realized that Glitch was catching on with the SL crowd like wildfire and also noticed so many people were a little lost... I decided to make the group so that everyone had a central group they could find answers and help one another out."

If you want to join SL Glitch, just contact her or another member of the Glitch group. (Many of whom seem to be using their SL avatar name in Glitch.)

Her general advice for new Glitch gamers? "Give it more than five minutes," she tells me, laughing. "It's different than probably anything else you've tried, but if you give it time it'll capture your attention with all of its cuteness and quirkiness. That and use glitch-strategy.com religiously!"

Hat tip: Sean Gorham.