Last Names for SLers Return Soon -- Plus News & Updates

After a month long absence from social media, Linden CEO Rod Humble posted an update on his SL profile, updating the company's plans for returning last names to SL avatars, along with other features to names, such as titles:

Speaking of long absences, the company hasn't updated its blog since December, and I have heard rumblings that something pretty big was coming. (And by "rumblings" I mean, "Coy non-answers from SL insiders.") But spokesman Peter Gray just pretty much confirmed to me that news is the case:

"Keep an eye on the blogs - news is coming." Also adding, "[W]e'll soon be blogging with more info about one of the SL initiatives for 2012 that he mentioned in his December blog post." Your eyes, keep them peeled.

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Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

Read some comments somewhere online a month back about the last names - people deriding this as an 'unimportant change'. One of those 'OMG the lindens need to work on important stuff, like my personal list of gripes, and not something cosmetic and pointless like last names.'

- Which I felt was very short sighted.

This issue relates very directly to one of identity. Without better control over the names of our avatars, we're not far off from the problems of any other community with 'pseudonym issues'.

Fixing the last name issue is of extreme importance - it goes right to the heart of enabling people to self-identify with their chosen little cartoon.

Your name, your handle; makes it you, and not just some 'random toon in a video game.'

So, sooner the better on this one. :)

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

The CEO mentioned rolling out "more advanced features that will allow the creation of artificial life and artificial people."

/me crosses his fingers for an "evil manservant NPC bot" at our latest Poe-themed build. I'd plop down some real $$ for something robust enough to interact with our visitors.

[Pussycat Catnap]

PS: another absence, there was no January gift for premium membership. I checked the sandboxes for premiums regularly. Its been the December boat since well, December...

Another shiny forgotten by the Lindens, but sadly a high profile one as they're still advertising that premium comes with a gift on the website...

I know its a boat that's worth maybe 300L were I to buy one like it, and the sofa was likewise... but advertising a shiny and then failing to give it out is dangerous publicity.
- If they lack staff to keep this regular, I'd pull those adverts very quick.

[shockwave yareach]

1, people get to pick a name from the list, like in the old days.
2, people can submit a ticket and for a mere 25$ US, can get a ONE TIME change of the last name to any non-banned name they choose.
3, people stuck with the last name Resident can do the same as step 2 above.

So simple even a Caveman Resident can do it. You want a vanity plate for your car? That's extra. Why shouldn't SL be the same way? And this gets the LL some extra cash, which they no doubt need in a hurry.

[Marianne McCann]

Me, I just want more work on community initiative. More support for support and governance issues. You know, give me better reasons to pay that premium charge. ;-)

[Rhett Linden]

There are Premium Gifts coming - several in the works. Please note the gifts are not monthly, there was some confusion about that based on the title of an email saying "December gift".

Stay tuned - and hopefully you met somebody new while trying out the boat.

[Chav Paderborn]

I liked the boat, I could texture it with pictures of John Barrowman and render it perfect.

[Riisu]

Bleeehhh! First, it seems that LL wants to shove the useless web profiles further down our throat in forcing us to *actually* use them to have access to information that should be on the blog. Second, "titles"? Seriously? Aren't the name tags overloaded enough already?

I couldn't care less about the whole second-class-Residents problem since I have a "real" name and a stock of them that I created when the disappearance of the last names was announced. Still, I watched the whole thing as the last soap opera from the LL Studios. And all that I see from the sideline is the list of unhappy Residents in the audience growing while all that was absolutely needed was to restore the drop down menu with last names on the registration page... at first, at least. This would have made happy the people ready to dump their second-class-Resident account. During that time, LL could have thought of a solution to the unavoidable problem of giving back a last name to those who couldn't and still can't pick one during this prolonged Resident Era.

Instead of that, LL is preparing behind closed doors another of their famous inflated contraptions and will give demeaning names to those who will dare to put their fingers in the gaping holes or simply respond with less enthusiasm than what is deemed due.

Bleh and re-bleh!

(Of course, this comment is just the expression of my loss of faith in LL to do anything good for their customers... until their sh*t hits the fan and force them to re-decorate the room.)

[Eddi Haskell]

To quote Hamlet:

"I have heard rumblings that something pretty big was coming".

My first reactions:

1. Oh crap, Second Life is going to become laggy again even though I'm running lag free due to my new desktop with an Intel I-7 and ATI 6850 card.

2. Grrrrr. Am I have to going to learn how to use yet another viewer now that I have gotten used to Firefox?

3. Dear Lord, please please please make sure Second Life stays as far away from Facebook as possible. All I need is for Second Life to plow into my data and make public all my kinky fun on my Facebook profile before giving me the option of "opting out" after the information is made public to everyone I know in real life.

[Orca Flotta]

The Resident acc should've flown outta the window the same day M Linden left the building, along with some other atrocities that appeared during his reign. Now how long is Rodvik the bossman already? And they only starting now to take care of a gripe that was already prominent while M was still at the helm?

Pretty weak, LL. No good show.

And while we're at it:
- Get rid of all the FB shite like web profiles
- Finally make a useful and usable viewer
- Lower tier prices
- Become more approachable
- Get used to the thought that you're operating in a niche market and stop luring in the ADD FB idiots. Once and for all: a VW is NOT a social network! It's a pastime, not a game. It's for creative people, not for consumers.

[Pussycat Catnap]

@Riisu: -----"useless web profiles further down our throat in forcing us to *actually* use them to have access to information"-----

I'm with LLs on this one. They really could just as well kill the blog and stick to the feeds and we'd be better off for it. More contextual - the connection to profiles and interests and snapshots allows it to be more real-time and relevant. Blogs, much as I love them, are so 2000. Blogs are for writer-geeks. :)

@Riisu: -----"Second, "titles"? Seriously? Aren't the name tags overloaded enough already?"-----

Actually it seems like a good way to handle things. Being able to set that title absent group rankings would be ideal. And would kill a lot of groups whose only purpose is to give people a title.

@Riisu: -----"I couldn't care less about the whole second-class-Residents problem since I have a "real" name and a stock of them that I created when the disappearance of the last names was announced."-----

Not everyone has that brand of special super sunday going on. Some people are newer to SL, and lacked magic powers of precognition. Yes, those of us here before it happened have names we've kept. But those who came after... Kinda harsh to 'not care less' about others in the community.

@Riisu: -----"all that was absolutely needed was to restore the drop down menu with last names on the registration page..."-----

Sometimes code is that simple. But rarely. But either way, better a good solution than a half-baked one. Case in point: Viewer 3 is widely seen as a good solution, but many state Viewer 2 was a half-baked one. Not everyone was so patient to keep on using Viewer 2 while waiting for Viewer 3 now were they? :)

@Riisu: -----"their second-class-Resident account."-----

A little harsh. The problem is that some of the single-user name are great. Many... less so.

Its a mess.

[elizabeth (16)]

hopes one of the options is to be able to choose to only have one name

[Hitomi Tiponi]

I am predicting that news will be about Direct Delivery (in the Viewer now but turned off - I am guessing it arrives with 3.3) or region crossing improvements (a bit further away but being tested on two RC channels).

We are bound to have some positive news on SL at the same time as LL announcing it's non-SL activities to show SL is not being forgotten.

[Orca Flotta]

Pussy:
"Blogs are for writer-geeks. :)"

... and for reader geeks. Short, blogs are for people. For people with a bit of creativity in their blood, for people with interests, for interesting people. Blogs are not for the new generation of brainless nOObs, right.
Blogs are so totally 2000, yes. But the whole internet is so 1995, home computers are so 1980s .. and the users, OMG, they are so 1940 - 1990.
Why not starting all over again and make a SL only for users who were not born before 2003?
Why not make having an FB acc mandatory for SL users?
Why not banning all users with accounts from 2007 and older from SL? And since we're in the swing now, why not ban everybody who built something with more than 2 prims, ban everybody who ever tried crossing a sim border, why not ban anyone with an active lifestyle in SL? Particularly all those oldbies who don't have enough time to bother with new viewers and web profiles and other off-world crap?

That be perfect for you?

[Nanu]

"and hopefully you met somebody new while trying out the boat." a Linden above
... pretty much sums up the delusion LL has about how SL works

[Shug Maitland]

Thank god for people like Hamlet who have time to find information in obscure places like SL profiles, meeting notes and conversations with LL "spokesmen". I guess the Blogs are saved for the really disastrous ---- er, important stuff.

[Riisu]

@Pussy: Yes, I am harsh but the pill would have been (maybe) easier to swallow if my trailing pseudo-tags "/sarcasm" and "/vent" hadn't been swallowed by CrapaScript censorship...

But since I'm an old-timer definitively not born in this century, my age allows me to be grumpy 24/7 and to maintain everything: I hate web profile and all that FBish/Twittish crap that LL is slowly pouring into SL, especially in such a way that makes it impossible to avoid. I just want blogs and RSS feeds like last century... and snappy profiles in SL. I have an Internet connection which is the top of the top on copper wires and the web profiles are S.L.OOOOOOO.W! And for what reason? For social-web-2.0-ish crap that I don't want to see or use? No thank you, LL!

As for the "second-class-Residents", this is just the common feeling expressed by those who lack a last name... and by old-timers who see this absence as a stigmata, the mark of the infamous noobishness.

Instead of working behind closed doors to produce new rugs to hide their mistakes, LL could sometimes recognize that they are not perfect and just undo their mistakes. Restoring the last name menu could have been quick. It didn't require much thinking nor explanations. A really big number of people managed to use it to register... I think. No?

But who am I to ask anything from LL? I'm just a customer. I guess I'm part of this "vocal minority" which is "allergic to change" as the Lindens say so often.

[Leni Bigbear]

Why can't they just bring back the old & good name system instead of bringing us an "improved" version of it with titles? Remembering Lindens record on bringing us something cool it's easy to remain pessimistic about what's ahead.

[Orca Flotta]

someone wrote this on the SL forum and I liked it so much, had to steal it:

"Just another example showing how Linden Lab hears but does not listen.

We say, "Please give us last names back because we never asked for them to be taken away in the beginning."

Linden Lab hears, "Please give us gamer titles like Noob, Super Princess, and Competant Land Owner."

Geez... the only thing that can come from this is a very very funny list of resident-approved titles to award others with. That sounds like a really fun thread in fact, I think I will start one!"

[Jeroentje Jansma]

... and the great news is...

LL fixed the sim crossings!!

Woot! %)

[foneco zuzu]

Quoting:
... and the great news is...
LL fixed the sim crossings!!
Unquote!
I wish, cause it is really one of the problems.
And would promote pleasures that only Sl allows fully!
How i wouild love to do a cannonball race, crossing mainland, or just to ride my bike for more then 5 minutes without crashing!

Quoting:
And while we're at it:
- Get rid of all the FB shite like web profiles
- Finally make a useful and usable viewer
- Lower tier prices
- Become more approachable
- Get used to the thought that you're operating in a niche market and stop luring in the ADD FB idiots. Once and for all: a VW is NOT a social network! It's a pastime, not a game. It's for creative people, not for consumers.
Unquote!

So true and seems less an less understood, not only by the Lab!

[Carlo Al-Eluria]

Titles for names that can be awarded by the 'community'? Uhm....isn't that what group titles are for? Just sayin....

[shockwave yareach]

If LL fixes the simcrossing problem, which has persisted since the first day SL opened to the public, I will be VERY impressed. It is one of the shortcomings to the architecture that has helped perpetuate the image of SL as cute, but not ready for prime time. And the fact that this high-tech company cannot fix such a crucial problem in 8+ years speaks volumes about said company. In MY world, a bug lasting more than a couple of weeks is grave enough concern to fire people over.

So if the simcross glitch is finally resolved, after most of a decade, I shall consider it a sign that the end times truly are upon us after all, and that the nuts with the signs are right for a change.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Sounds like they've got some feature creep going on.

Perhaps they should tackle this in stages.

Stage 1, reinstate the old system.

Stage 2, refine from there.

And no rush on Stage 2.

[Adeon Writer]

Avatar's First Name: [_________]
Avatar's Last Name (optional): [Drop down list, blank is the preselected one, you can also type your own in here]

[Jeroentje Jansma]

... wait.. What? LL didn't fix the sim crossings?

Hmmm... then the Maya's must be right after all

[Pussycat Catnap]

""Blogs are for writer-geeks. :)"

... and for reader geeks."

That had a smiley because I -am- a blogger. ;)

But we're the 'outdated meme' People seem to prefer sound-bytes. News went from newspaper articles to stories on TV to 30-second bytes in between screaming 'angry-man rants'...

- Modern journalism for you...

Blogs seemed like a revival for a time, but then we got 'social media' which is just another way of saying 'angry-man rant' in 150 characters or less...

/sigh

The Feeds -are- a great tool, but they need to get more use too. Blogs would be better for larger stories - and not just marketing hype. But the feeds are a great way to stay current on a -regular- day-to-day basis.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"If LL fixes the simcrossing problem, which has persisted since the first day SL opened to the public, I will be VERY impressed."

I went to former teen grid the day it opened to main grid and discovered there is no such thing as a sim crossing problem.

It was so smooth, we often lost track of which sim were were in, and once we used our maps to find the borders, we played around dancing back and forth across the sim lines.

The real problem is over-burdening of sims.

It appears as a sim crossing issue - but what's really going on is a lot of overscripted avatars and furnishings left lying about that people get stuck transitioning into and out of memory on every crossing.

Teen grid was so smooth because the land was mostly abandoned and the traffic was low. But oddly, several of the builds that were left were griefer builds - spammy objects, particle storms, and so on...

- Of late I've noticed sim crossings to be a non-issue most of the time. The people with issues over them, I'm not sure what to say. Look to both what's around you and what you're wearing. Is either too much for SL, or too much for your system.
- Can either or both of those have an impact on this? If so, LLs may need better servers, but users may need better systems if they expect smoother performance while using more and more data.

If you can't upgrade your hardware or network, you might need to downgrade your attachments - less scripts, glow, light, and flexi, more prim and mesh. Not sure on sculpty - as a furry I run with sculpty attachments a lot and notice no problems, but then I read people claim its troubled. But I have seen what appears to be -faster- performance the more mesh is involved instead, albeit so far only small-scale anecdotes.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"Blogs are so totally 2000, yes. But the whole internet is so 1995, home computers are so 1980s .. and the users, OMG, they are so 1940 - 1990."

The internet is a constantly changing creature. It doesn't reach a certain point and then stop.

Well, the first 15+ years or so of it were just Usenet (assuming we date things to 1982 TCP/IP and not 1969's first nodes of ARPANET)... but ever since the web browser came along, its been a creature of constant flux. There is only one direction - change.

We get comfort from change, or we get steamrolled.

----------------------
"- Get rid of all the FB ***** like web profiles
- Finally make a useful and usable viewer"

Personally I really like the web profiles. Ever since I saw the hyperlinked individually user-written interests, I could see LLs was headed down the right path for profiles. Its only been getting better and better as we get more and more ways to control our profile. Putting it on the web has also made it easier for a -LOT- of newbies who are not yet ready to buy lindens to put up a profile image. Snapshots in feeds has now opened up whole new avenues for explorer types to share where they've been and go places others have seen.

Web profiles is one of the four best things to come out of SL in 2011. The others being the 'FUI' of viewer 3, the under-the-hood performance gains with richer on screen graphics, and mesh.

If I seem like I'm a little too 'linden happy' of late, you've only to look at some older things I've posted - its just that lately they seem to really be going in the right direction, and I'm willing to see that we're on a road here, not just going to 'teleport' to the finish line all at once.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

I'm going to disagree with Pussycat. Sim-crossing issues are LL's fault.

Sure, I'll de-prim and de-script myself to go faster. But no well in heck I'm going to drive a 2008 vehicle when I can now roar across the deserted SL mainland in a 1967 Pontiac GTO, all to the sound of a virtual 400-cubic-inch V-8 mill drinking virtual 30-cent-per-gallon hi-test through four barrels and smoking the virtual tires on a Posi-Trac rear end.

Power and the glory of The Machine-That-Must-Be-Worshiped, on the lonely roads of a Rampant America before the Decline began:

hell yes.

Slowing down for sim crossings:

hell no.

Fix them if you want driving culture to persist in SL, Linden Lab. Otherwise, its Xbox 360 and Forza for my muscle-car fix (or my RL ride, a road-rocket, but those darned cops get you ever time!)

[Nanu]

Community Super Hero
..::Ika Design Owner:::..
Lullylovermuhhh
gwendoline.hirschenkamp
RL: Michael Steel
100.000.712 Nice Credits

the new titles ... i guess

[Dave Bell]

Way back when Display Names first was floated, I was of the opinion that the old system ought to have been better explained during the sign-up process.

What I see of new residents arriving in Kuula, the explanations during Sign-Up must still be pretty bad.

Surely a good explanation would cost them less than all the programming and testing needed for a new naming system.

[Wolf Baginski]

Titles for names which can be awarded by the community?

The idiots are introducing politics....

"[Anarchism], instead of demanding that those social customs should be maintained through the authority of a few, demands it from the continued action of all."

[Metacam Oh]

Someone might as well start the next crowd funding project to hire Qarl to fix whatever Linden is planning to release soon.

[Orca Flotta]

"Ever since I saw the hyperlinked individually user-written interests, I could see LLs was headed down the right path for profiles."

See, that's exactly what bothers me most. Hyperlinks demand you to look and work at them out of world. Another new wall in between you and your avie and the virtual world.

How do those hyperlinked profiles work exactly? I can't really say since I never spent more than 1 or 2 days with any V2, V3 viewers before I decided they are not worth my while and happily swapped back to the good old bird. Friend of mine managed almost 2 months on Firestorm ... but she just recently came back coz she was so fed up with that stuff.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"See, that's exactly what bothers me most. Hyperlinks demand you to look and work at them out of world. Another new wall in between you and your avie and the virtual world."

Nope.

Inworld. You open someone's profile, click an interest, and get a list of all people who have that interest, sorted in order of how many interests they have in common with you, if any.

You can click another button, inworld, and get recommendations of people who share interests with you, that you could then IM or profile surf...

INWORLD...

For people to meet or places to go.

ALL of it works inworld.

Even adding images. Except because they save to the profile and not your inventory, you can, using tools inworld, upload them to the profile, inworld, and not pay $10L.

All inworld.

No need to ever see them or even know about them out of world.

Likewise feeds.

ALL INWORLD.

[shockwave yareach]

For all some people complain that stuff isn't done through the viewer, you'd think they'd digitized the insides of their skulls and actually lived inside the computer as an AI simulation.

"I protest the need for these out of world actions such as breathing, eating, excretion and sleep. We don't need to do any of those things in SL; why are we being forced to do them in RL then? They have absolutely nothing to do with the SL experience and create a lower class of user who lacks the money or technology to digitize their brain and emulate it in a box. It's not right. SL should not require people to do all these non-SL actions just to play in SL."

[Pussycat Catnap]

One more benefit to the new profile system:

You can do it both inworld and outworld - at your choice. Or even as I've done before - both at the same time (two monitors, so I usually have a webpage open on the other one).

This means I can follow Rob's baking skills from within SL while fixing the prims in my kitchen, or from a webpage while away from SL - or however else I'd like to handle things.

But absolutely none of the new stuff requires one to go outworld to do it, and it all works just as easily in or out. Assuming one has a viewer that was made after mid-2009. ;)
- Coming up on 2.5 years now... A -LOT- has changed in the world in that time that people have adapted to, and this is the smallest of such changes.

[elizabeth (16)]

Adeon "Avatar's First Name: [_________]
Avatar's Last Name (optional): [Drop down list, blank is the preselected one, you can also type your own in here]"

^^ that

[foneco zuzu]

Pussycat, i'm one of those lucky ones that i don't never use a v2/v3 viewer but for testing purposes!
So i can only say i enjoy reading all profiles, IN WORD,as soon as i click on them!
And i can!
But all that uses V2/v3 based viewers and didnt change the profile option to be displayed that some Tpv offer, to revert to old style, suffer a lot!
LINDEN LAB ASSUME!
If you don't want the World to use your product just say so and shut it down!
If you do, then make it that ALL can enjoy it, without having to get distracted by any but the Second Life!

[Pussycat Catnap]

@foneco: I'm not sure I understood that last comment at all. I think there was a translation error when that one shifted into English.

The new profiles are often called web-profiles but they really aren't. They can be viewed on the web, but they're mainly still inworld profiles.

The old system -only- worked from inworld, and had a different, non-editable, page when you looked someone up from the web.

The new system can be edited from either in or out of world.

It only works in new viewers, and in new TPVs that add the code for it, simply because LLs has not been developing the old viewer since 2009. They could add the code to v1, but why, when they're on v3. It would be like asking for Photoshop to add a new filter to Photoshop 7, when they're on CS5.5. Photoshop 7 is a dead program, even if you can still run it on a computer.

The many added features of the new profiles -enhance- the inworld presence when you get people on both ends using it. That I can quickly find inworld other people who share things in common with me is great. I can either chat them up (I rarely do), or scan their profile further for places to go (I do this almost every time I log in).

You can search out Picks and groups in the old profiles too... but because you can find people by interests, you have to locate the people you want to pick/group search first - which if you're in a place you like is a no-brainer, but if not; is harder to manage.

I can log in these days, open my profile (its a button now right on the bottom of the screen, not hidden like in viewer 1 where you have to go into edit mode to find your own profile), click my interest 'reggae', and see a lit of people. If I see somebody who looks interesting, a single click and I'm looking at their profile - and from there can TP to places in their feed or picks.

No web, no out of world.

BUT... if I'm not yet logged into SL, doing the same thing from my browser, I can find that place to go, click it, and my viewer opens with that spot set as where I will log in, like clicking a slurl on a webpage does.

[Ranya Palmer]

with the possibility of last names returning, there are a few things that i would like to see.

1. entering whatever last name you want(of course linden would be excluded) and if you don't want a last name you don't have to have one and resident would be used.

2. the ability to change names for a reasonable fee(anywhere between 5 - 30$ seems fair) and this will be with real money and not linden money and unlike display names, this name change should only be allowed once a year, this should help lessen the chances of this being abused, oh and anybody with Resident as a last name should get a one time discount for a name change.

i have way more ideas but this is just me keeping it as simple as possible and easy to understand.