Founding Linden Lab Engineer Explains Why Last Names for Second Life Avatars Were Removed

Responding to the news that Linden Lab is returning last names to Second Life after a 7 year absence, reader Dartagan Shepherd recalls a Linden staffer telling him that they were removed because "they were losing a massive amount of signups at the point where people had to choose a last name." Founding Linden engineer James Cook also stopped by comments to confirm just that:

One of the last features I worked on before leaving Linden Lab was the removal of last names. Dartagan Shepherd is right -- whenever you have a registration flow for any service you lose signups for each additional step. Picking a last name from a list is unusual for an online service. Potential new users were pretty confused: "Why can't I just use the username I use everywhere else?" and/or "Why can't I just use my real name?". Of course, I worked at Linden when we added last names (dunno who actually wrote that code). So we've come full full full circle. 

I think the real problem is that the original naming system didn't include an option to change the last name at least once, and onscreen text explaining that during set-up: "Choose your last name to start -- you can change this later." This would have nudged new users to think about their avatar identity as something unique and special, and create the name in relation with the existing SL community. People asking, "Why can't I just use the username I use everywhere else?", is exactly why so many new users wound up typing in their AOL handle or other inappropriate username into the first name option, leading to thousands of avatars named "Bobbie_Joe_73 Midnight" and suchlike -- who were then treated as clueless noobs by the established community. 

By the way, when I say James Cook is a "founding Linden engineer",  I mean that -- he started at Linden Lab when the startup was still on Linden Street in San Francisco, and helped create (and did the voiceover) for this early, early, early demo from 2001 of what eventually became Second Life:

Comments

[Caroline Apollo]

Will they have the choice of no last name? (Resident)

That will help for those that don't want to make that choice.

[plain]

BS.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I think all they had before was an 'accidental captcha system'. They were losing signups, likely because the system was stopping automated bots - which were a lot less sophisticated a few years ago.

[irihapeti]

@Caroline

is funny implication :)

if this doesn't happen then all the No Last Name residents will be the No Star Belly Last Name sneetches going forward and more awesome, than the Last Name Star Bellies who used to be awesome but now overrun by all the new plebs :D

[Lukas]

Here is my recollection of why so many new user signups were terminated at the last name selection field: If an existing resident was looking for a specific last name for an alt, that search would take many attempts on a number of different portals before there was success.

I wonder if this situation was taken into account by LL when the decision to nix last names was made.

[AlexBrangwin]

Honestly I think people knew what they were getting into.
The bigger issue when I joined up was having no control over the "Resident" showing up in legacy scripts no matter what i chose.
Simply letting you select "Other" and typing your own wasnt enough?

[madeline blackbart]

@Lukas That's exactly the reason I thought there were less sign ups to. It's not that people didn't like last names it's that you didn't get the full list of all available names when you signed up. Often times the list would show a bunch of names that you didn't really like and you'd have to reload the page over and over hoping to get a good one. Honestly they should just allow people to have custom last names set to whatever the person wants (within reason I suppose). Just let us type in what we want to type for the last name!