New World Notes

Second Life Joins Widely Hyped Sharing Site Pinterest

Second Life now apparently has an official account on Pinterest, the phenomenally fast-growing content sharing site that's now reportedly driving more web traffic than even Twitter. The account's already collected over twelve SL-related Pinterest boards, like Machinima, Destinations, and Urban/Noir. Will be interesting to see how much web traffic starts to go from Pinterest to SL content. (Psst: How about an SL Blog board?)

Speaking of Pinterest, I just made a Pinterest account of my own, cleverly called "Hamletau". Please feel free to follow me there or whatever it is Pinterestas do. What is it Pinterest users do, anyway? Site doesn't seem very conducive to socialization beyond sharing, so on first glance, I doubt it'll supplant Plurk as the go-to sharing site for SLers outside SL. But I'm just starting out. What's your take, SL Pinteristas?

Hat tip: Indigo Mertel

SL Web Profiles Get More Twitter-Like With Trending Tab

Second Life's Web Profiles (basically the SL equivalent of a social network) is now even more social network-ish with the recent addition of a Trending tab. I first became aware of this when Inara Pey blogged about it, and as she puts it, "my.secondlife.com has gone more Twittery". Overall this looks like a great idea to expose cool content in SL, though right now, the updates in my own Trending tab are mostly random conversations. I'd love to see Trending better expose links (SLurls, YouTube, blogs, etc.) and SL events about to happen. Will definitely watch to see if Trending trends that way.

Second Life's Facebook Page Gains Over 200K Fans - I.E. Probably About 20% of SL's Active Userbase

Last week, Second Life's official fan page on Facebook gained over 200,000 fans, according to PageData. By default, someone who "Likes" a Facebook page receives updates from it, and since 50% of Facebook users log into the social network every day, we're talking roughly 100,000+ folks who are seeing SL content this way on any given day. Less than four months ago, the Facebook page only had 160K fans, and despite reports that some Facebook users with profiles named after their avatars have been banned, it's kept growing.

Second Life's monthly active userbase is about 1 million, so it's a safe guess that roughly 20% of that userbase is connected to this Facebook page. However, keep in mind only about 400K users are heavily engaged with Second Life on a monthly basis (i.e. logging in for 4 hours or more), and my guess is much or most of these 400K are hitting this Facebook page. Whatever the actual figure, it's a significant percent. And while Facebook isn't necessarily the best social media platform for sharing all SL content, it's probably the largest and most active. The official Second Life Twitter account, for instance, only has 27,000+ followers, and while Plurk has a very active sub-community of SLers, that social network's developers tell me they get only about "several thousand daily active Second Life users" on that system. So if you're looking to promote SL content and activity in social media, look to SL's Facebook page.

Another interesting point: As Second Life user hours continue to decline, Second Life's Facebook page continues to grow. So as I've noted before, the fact that people are logging into SL less doesn't necessarily mean they're engaging less with Second Life overall. Instead, what's likely is this: People are logging into SL less because they're engaging with SL through Facebook and other social media channels more.

New SL Viewer Comes With Mouseover Help Text, Point-and-Click Movement, Twitter & Facebook Update Integration

I gave the new Second Life viewer a quick spin this weekend, and overall, I'm impressed. The user interface is much cleaner, especially with the much-hated sidebar gone, and I like how point-and-click avatar movement now works by default. (Something I've been begging for, for literally years.) Another change, more subtle, but very important to making the viewer more user-friendly: mouseover display text, which appears whenever you move the cursor over a given icon. Now you get a short description of what function that icon performs. Finally, you're now able to post in-world updates directly to your SL web profile, and can choose to also send that update to Twitter and/or Facebook. This feature is a big step to removing the "walled garden" feel of Second Life and integrating it into larger social media and the web itself.

That's the good news. The bad news (for me at least): As expected, the Second Life viewer still doesn't play nice with my Nvidia-driven Alienware laptop. When I even tried to turn up the graphics features, it promptly crashed. And then the crash logger crashed. And then I thought about playing Call of Duty 4, which has more high-end graphics than SL, but plays just about perfectly on my Alienware.

Tell Reddit's SL Community Your Favorite SL Sites!

Second Life's Reddit community recently started a cool thread launched by "maeljw":

"Fellow Second Lifers of Reddit..what is your favorite spot in SL?" If you're on Reddit, I hope you share your own recommendations, but do please include a SLurl whenever possible, so it's easy for Redditors to jump from the thread right to the site itself.

Speaking of Reddit's /secondlife, take a look at its newest and hottest links to cool SL-related content here. The Reddit sub-community itself now has 431 members, which is a nice start, but could be much more. While Second Life has many more members than Eve Online, for example, Eve's Reddit group has 6500 members!

"Virtual Blogging": Facebook Group for SL Bloggers

"Virtual Blogging" is a pretty good Facebook group for SL bloggers who want to promote their posts throughout the social network, and for blog readers who want to keep up on the latest posts. Now with nearly 600 members.

Why Does Plurk Seem to Provoke So Much Drama?

The latest edition of SL Secrets (like PostSecret, only SLier) is now up on Shopping Cart Disco, and it includes this drama-ridden confession. It's for precisely outbursts like this that Miss Metaverse Manners wrote an advice guide to dealing with Plurk drama (click here to read it.)

Much of the drama on Plurk, of course, actually originates over various Second Life controversies (allegations of content theft, complaints about various fashion designers, etc.), but I have to wonder if Plurk's very structure lends itself to drama. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, where the update timeline is vertical, Plurk's is horizontal and expands into conversation threads, and once you reply to an individual Plurk, it's easy to return to it by clicking Responded. This makes Plurk chattier than Twitter and Facebook, and more chat means more chances for drama. Add to that, most SLers on Plurk often jump between talking about their real and Second Life, which likely causes severe mismatches from update to update, that can also provoke resentment. ("Why is she blathering about her new fashion line, when I just Plurked that my husband is leaving me?")

Just my initial take - what's yours, fellow Plurkers?

Google Engineers Suggest They Get the Importance of Pseudonyms & Just Need Time to Do Them Right

Last night I got into an interesting conversation about Google+ with a Google developer at a bar, and of course we talked about the controversy over banning pseudonymous accounts and demanding real names, and the company's general inconsistency and incoherence on the matter. While acknowledging the company has gone a bad job explaining their policies, he (or she) insisted to me that Google does understand the importance and value of pseudonymous accounts, and just needs time to implement them correctly. That's the reason they're sticking with a "real names only" policy at the moment -- those accounts can easily be integrated into the system now, and give them time to introduce pseudonymous options later on, after they've worked out all the implications.

Now, this might have only been idle bar gossip, but I just read this post on Read Write Web, which cites Google engineer Joseph Smarr basically saying the same thing:

Google's Real Names Policy an "Abuse of Power" (Which Probably Stems from Google's Elitist Corporate Culture)

Internet sociologist danah boyd has a great essay on the problem with Google Profile's "real names" policy, which I've written a lot about. To danah, it comes down to this:

The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power. “Real names” policies aren’t empowering; they’re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people.

I think that's somewhat overstated, but it does raise a question I've been wondering about myself: Why would Google push so strongly for having real names? I don't think it's simply to better monetize Google Profiles; after all, Google does a fine job monetizing Gmail with contextual ads which don't require exposing real names, just real interests. So why the fixation on real names?

The reason, I strongly suspect, stems from Google's own corporate culture, which places a high premium on hiring employees who've graduated from Ivy League or other top universities, and with high GPAs. Many friends and acquaintances who are Googlers past and present have told me it's extremely rare for the company to hire someone outside that criterion, even though the tech industry is full of talented hackers, erstwhile slackers, and artists who don't qualify. (Steve Jobs dropped out of an obscure Oregon college after one semester.) I've also consistently heard that this attitude emanates from the very top of Google, from founders and Stanford alum Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

How this aspect of Google's corporate culture might influence its policy on real names seems pretty obvious to me: When you place such a high value on an identity based on real associations from elite, recognizable institutions, pseudonyms probably seem irrelevant, ridiculous, or even fraudulent. To a Googler with a Harvard degree and a 3.9 GPA, it must appear unfathomable that anyone would want to invest so much activity in an identity where your college background (or for that matter, your job at Google) isn't first and foremost a part of your online identity.

But as danah points out, there are many many people who don't have such a position of power and status. Though as I said, I don't quite agree real names are simply "an authoritarian assertion of power":

Big Breakthrough: You Can Run Second Life in Facebook with SpotON3D's Browser Plugin Wrapper!

A new browser plugin wrapper developed by SpotON3D can run an OpenSim world in Facebook, as I reported last week, but early beta tester Hitomi Tiponi discovered something just as important, if not moreso: You can also use the plugin wrapper to access and run Second Life in Facebook. Above is a screencap she took in Facebook while also in SL's orientation area. What's more, she tells me it's easy to access, and it performs in Facebook's canvas pretty well:

"It was surprisingly easy, Hamlet," Ms. Tiponi tells me. "Just bring up Preferences -- and in the options where you choose which grid to point at, select 'Second Life' - it is already available as one of the options!" You can also access other OpenSim grids in this manner. As for performance in Facebook: "It seems to work fine running in Facebook like that. Speed is about equivalent with running it in a normal viewer with a window that size."

This isn't even the only technology that can run Second Life in Facebook, read on: