Hooking SL into social networking?

I don't use any of those things myself. I'm sure a lot of people would use them in SL, fine with me.

Right. It may be necessary to use words other than "social networking" to talk about this because people on both sides of the "anonymity" debate will project their assumptions about, say, FriendFeed, into the discussion.

In contrast, the point is to improve what tools are available for social experiences related to SL, in whatever way one wants to use SL.

I quite agree that LL has shown no aptitude for any of this, yet I think the kind of features and functionality we expect of a social site are critical to the future of SL--and critically lacking.

I'm pretty sure that if it were my problem, I'd be trying to leverage integration with other apps to augment and/or replace Groups and Friends, for starters, two constructs woefully impoverished in SL at present.

I really hate the term "social networking". It's so cold and impersonal.

Awww, poor widdle Facebook users!

Which will be, in my opinion, another watering down of what SL brings to the world.

If someone wants to strut their stuff as a 22 year old babe who is, in fact a 260 pound trucker that's perfectly fine by me - I don't WANT to know what they are in RL. I like the idea of an immersive fantasy world where it's not all "*wink* wink* I'm a babe, but you can see a picture of me on my MyFace page" - er no thanks. That ruins the whole idea of an immersive fantasy.

Kalderi is a fictional construct with no existence in the so-called real world. I make no secret of that to anyone I speak to. If it becomes a requirement for SL users to be tied to RL people, then Kalderi will cease to exist. I do see a pull by many residents to use SL as an extension of their real-life. I am fine with that - that is their choice. I'd like to see there be room for all in this Virtual World, that's all.

Hey, I'm happy to point people at my blog if they want a social networking identity for me.

I just want to be able to put a link in my blog so people can contact me through SL, since I don't expect SL's social networking interface will be as good. Fair's fair.

Actually this is a cool idea. I've got a Flickr acct and a LiveJournal acct, both as Oryx, and while a little bit of RL does bleed through (I've got a pic of my dogs on Flickr) for the most part, I exist in these worlds as Oryx, and it would be nice to have direct links both to and from Flickr and LiveJournal and Second Life.

Would be nice if LL got rid of the lame Interests tab on the Profile and used that, in addition to the Web tab, as a 3D network I/O interface.

I'd like to get rid of Interests, Web, and First Life, and just have up to three tabs I can load up with HTML notecards, with possible links to external websites.

HTML notecards, too, while I think about it.

<=== This, seconded!

What she said!

Yea! DITTO!

Maybe some of the anti-social networking folks might try Rezzed.net.

Started by one of us, "RezzedNet is a social networking site for residents of the virtual world Second Life", according to the website.

Argent, you might want to start a new thread in feature suggestions that suggests giving us jabber capability and and email style id. Maybe it won't get deflected totally off course.

I'm in so many social networks I cant' even remember them all. I'm SuezanneC Baskerville or Suezanne or SuezanneCB or some such in all of them. There's no particular loss of anonymity involved.

Hey, I like that, sites like Facebook and Blogger and such give you "permanent" space to do your thing. SL doesn't. Maybe that has something to do with the growth rate differences.

I think that's pretty true. SL is a kind of enigma in that area. I mean, there's no doubt that more networking to RL is wanted by some, pretty vocally by a few, yet the flip side is the others don't care, or want no part of it at all in SL. Two very different ends of the same scale with different wants and it's easy to see why not much has changed in this area for a long time. Labelling LL as "just confused" is pretty valid for a whole range of topics, not just this one

I recall somewhere something being mentioned about that and yes it gives me pause. I see those popular social networking sites as nothing but popularity contests. Personally I do not care if people start "tweeting" about their mundane lives in their profiles as long as I can opt out. The worst thing they can do with it though is creating something like Sims Online had with Friend Webs where every one could see all your friends and their friends and so on.

SL already is a social networking medium, so talking about it hooking into social networking is meaningless. It's already done.

SL could be made into a more powerful networking medium. That might mean things like getting rid of the 25 group limit and two week limit on archiving group notices, providing more powerful features (like subgroups and interlinked groups), more filtering on group IMs and notices, and so on. Or it might mean some ability to examine the friends lists of other avatars, with suitable permissions and restrictions.

I don't see the point between connecting SL with something like Facebook or Twitter. You can already use your Facebook page as your web page in your SL profile, but perhaps there's a need to have more than one such URL. But there are a gazillion blogging and personal info sites out there. Other than using standard APIs like RSS, it doesn't make sense to expect SL to integrate with all of them.

I thought I read somewhere that facebook had banned avatar pages.

I reckon they are after facebook to get the younger people in.

It has always been their policy that the account must be created with true RL info including your real name. This is in their terms of use, if found to be using a false name your account can be terminated at their discretion.

If you had a nice interface in the SL client that allowed you to interact outside of SL, with your "social graph", not necessarily connected with the purchase of land in SL, it's a conflict with the LL business model, isn't it?

I already have that. On MS Windows, it's the alt-tab key. CTRL-C and CTRL-V also come in handy.

No, because LL will understand the value of people. SL is nothing without people.

Especially real people.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I did say "in the SL client". Alt Tab takes you away from the SL client.

If you are trying to make a point, you aren't doing a very good job of it.

Standard APIs? You think that might be a good idea?

It's people! Green dots are peeeeeople!

A more robust, yet flexible profile would be great. I'd love to have a Business tab where I could have information on my rentals, etc. instead of having to use Picks. A Friends tab where one could include names, shout-outs, pictures and links to profiles would be fun. A Character tab would be great for roleplayers - a place to put your character bio and abilities, limits, etc. RSS feeds are a great idea. Expand the web tab so people can include links to their Facebook, Livejournal, etc. IF THEY WANT TO. Increase the character limits on all tabs so we can have the space to include whatever we want.

There is nothing wrong with giving people choices. Just because you're not interested in social networking elements, that's no reason to deny them to others. People will self-sort by how they view SL. For example, I've recently decided that I will not in the future allow myself to become close friends with, or employ in management positions, people who are very cagey about their RL. Not that I expect them to shout their name and address to all of Waterhead, but if someone is truly my friend, they won't mind me knowing their name, gender, and what city they live in. I certainly have no problem sharing my RL info with them. I have friends who use avatars that are not their RL gender, that are thin when they are fat in RL, etc. My own avatar differs from my RL appearance in a number of ways. But my true friends know that, and they accept BOTH the SL me, as a representation of my inner self, and the RL me. I have nothing to hide and I prefer to be around people who feel the same way. But, I also respect others who want to roleplay on here, as long as they are honest about it and don't mislead people in such a way that real feelings get hurt.

P.S. Enough with the meme that no one uses voice. Tons of people use voice. I use it every day - not with strangers, but with friends. I hear public voice chat used every day. Most Linden Lab meetings use voice. I would bet that at least 25% if not 50% of SL uses it.

Better would be getting rid of the specialized tabs and letting people put whatever they want there.

A webcam tab would be cool!