SL is really amazing in making opportunities to meet and get to know people from all over the world. It rules over sites like Facebook, where you practically only confirm what people you already know. In SL you actually meet new people, start new relations. And you can do that without going on a plane, you can club while your kids sleep and still be a proper parent, and you can of course meet up with your new found friends in RL when the possibility is there.
As the spine of everything, you'd think that all the social features would be a major priority of Linden Lab, if one of there goals was to raise the percentage of returning users.
So here is my wishlist : )
- I'd love a working 'friends online' page. As it is now this page hasnt worked proper since january the 30th. Please vote for the issue to get fixed at the Jira issue
WEB-482WEB-511 - I'd love to have a working, proper uploading friend list in-world. Please vote for the issue to get fixed at the Jira issue VWR-4570
- I'd love to be able to deliver notices in groups. Please vote for the issue to get fixed at the Jira issue VWR-1323
- I'd love to be able to chat in groups as well. Please vote for the issue to get fixed at the Jira issue VWR-2950
As Greta Umarov puts it on the Second life Blog 'This thing (Second Life) will never be more than a curiosity to the business world until REAL PEOPLE can use it, and use it easily.'
4 had something to say:
I didn't realise there was anything wrong with the "friends online" section of the website until after you posted this... now it keeps saying Helena Kirkorian is online... during the DAY! Hehehe, it must be totally borked! The old "Hippos waiting" thing is getting quite boring too. It's interesting as it highlights what makes Second Life different from a "social networking" site.If I had a specific message for a friend, I could just email them, or send an offline IM but there is a hanging out component in SL that I haven't experienced anywhere else other than in real life, where you just log in sometimes to spend time with people. Actually, if I have a specific message for someone, I usually only remember after logging out.
Good call, I went to vote on all of these. You might be interested in knowing that :
* WEB-482 is closed, the issue has been carried over to WEB-511.
* The army of hippos in waiting is a peculiarity of the official Linden release viewers. The Nicholaz viewer is not affected.
@Rob : that is because we live there, while we only display our vanity on Facebook :)
Yup, Rheta, (wow, what a great blog you have) we do live there. When I first came to Second Life I was a little unsure about the name... it seemed to invite an unfair and unfortunate comparison with "First Life". But two years later I'm still here and I understand the name better now.
The idea of an online presence or "digital life" seems to be gaining currency outside any discussion about virtual worlds. It's becoming more widely accepted that many people have an online persona. But second life is the only online environment in which I have felt alive. Its a tough thing to define, for sure and it is, as Kean says, a social thing.
As I'm writing this I'm thinking I should re-read Pierre Bordieu as the way he uses the idea of the habitus and his notion of symbolic power all seem to be so relevant.
BTW if you think we only display vanity on facebook, then you haven't seen my picture, phew ;)
Hmm... I've been mulling over this "social networking" aspect of Second Life for a while now. I wasn't sure what I was doing when I first signed up and became... "Francz Kuhn". Once I escaped the agonizing, frustrating, and absolutely isolated a-social "Orientation Island" stage, it didn't take me long to realize that a very important aspect of this Second Life was getting to know very interesting individuals. This quickly led to finding out that SL avatars formed social networks, just as we do in RL.
I still remember the first SL place I visited after orientation: Paradise Lost, where I met Juli and Trini. At first I thought this was just a place where people 'happened to be', much like yahoo or aim chat rooms, where people log in, chat, then logout. However, much to my surprise, I soon realized that "Juli" and "Trini" weren't just "screen names" of isolated individuals living in some virtual box or 3-D chat room. I found them to be much more complex persons who live in a "world" in which they interact with objects, form social relations, and create social networks. More interestingly, these social relations were defined by in-world references and roles, and not by any pre-existing RL factors. This, I think, is what makes SL different from simple chat rooms and from sites like Facebook and MySpace. As Kean says, those sites simply confirm (and possibly help to expand) RL networks. SL, on the other hand, places one in a whole new set of networks (a second "world") which we can freely explore and discover. And, who knows, by doing so, we may even enrich our RL selves! ;)
Ahhh.. but I've begun to Ramble... :p
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