Invite friends into SL , they appear at your location

I just saw the following thing that's news to me.

You can now invite a friend to join SL and give them a slurl, and when they click the slurl, they will get an option to join SL, and if they join, they will appear at the slurl you gave them. bypassing the Help Island and other portals.

Torley describes it in a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B47ojt8IMD8&sdig=1

Yup...I just saw the blog on this. Very interesting idea. My first respons is that it's a cool idea and will drastically reduce all the clutter and harassment for new folks popping in at OI. On the other hand...it could be terribly confusing for some new users, even with the tutorial on their screen.
So much of that intial experience depends on an individuals learning style.....some folks love to jump in feet first and learn as they go (myself included, tho I spent a decent amount of time in OI getting the hang of things...I was off and teleporting just as soon as I understood the concept) Other people are a bit more slow and deliberate about how they learn new things and they seem to need to tap into every learning/tutorial they can get their hands on before they will begin to immerse themselves.

This will be really interestng to watch unfold. I think it's cool.....but I also think we'll find a lot of totally confused and possibly overwhelmed new comers in all sorts of unexpected places LOL. (oh wait....that happens already doesn't it..... )

Something nice is that now the "refer a friend" affiliate program has more use.

For those that don't know, you can earn L$ from LL by using your special code to send people to SL. (look for the "Refer A Friend" option from your account menu.)

For example, If I owned Waterhead and wanted to send people there from my website, I could use this slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Waterhead/128/128/128/?u=8a384c6d252b48e89a1fe0e4078359ed

And I would get paid a few L$K if they sign up as premum members.

A nice touch to the existing program.

zg

Well, the OI doesn't exist anymore and the Help Island is pathetically useless so, giving someone a SLURL so they can go directly to a place with people that can help them out may just work better.

If your friend is one of those who needs help - you help them when they come in. If they need to start in a n00b friendly place you go to your favorite starting point and help them figure out how to use the place. Makes sense to me.

OOOOOO, NCI!

Good idea for helping friends.
Also massbot farmers can now skip the newbie stuff and log their infinate supply of bots straight in at their first/permanent botting locations

Isn't this just recognition of the nuisance that having to go through Help Island is for the 90% of new avatars that are alts?

Pep (A cynic is just what an optimist calls a realist)

It means that new people will be able to SLURL into SL from links on websites. This is a good idea in principle, but one could find that some sites direct people to places that give a very unfavourable first experience.
I quoted the silly example of a hypothetical website about Goguen Sandbox, showing how you could go there and build stuff - but when you get there it's mayhem.

Hmm, if you offer a slurl to your business, you'll presumably end up with some brand new people entering your business, folks with no cash to buy anything with and who don't know how to walk.

If you make thousands of web pages of various sorts with various slurls, that would , well, it would do something, I"m not sure just what it do.

You could wear a scripted item that causes a web page to provide a slurl with your current location, thus enabling new users to appear wherever you are at any moment (given the contstraints of teleport permission) if they join from that page. Existing users can too.

*giggles* BL "vampires" would have a field day with this ^.^

BINGO!!!! =^-^=

With the map like a year+ out of date, I'm wondering if this won't just create more confusion for new users.

I know if somebody sent me an slurl and I hadn't used SL before, I'd be wondering why the map showed the location as in the middle of an ocean..

All I see is LL washing their hands of it..... have others do it, have volunteers do it, we cant be bothered.

1) drop newbies somewhere random since no matter what you do only 10% sticks around
2) sell the +/- 150 sims used for OIs/HIs to residents
3) profit: $150,000 in sales + $44,250/month "free" (they had the sims/servers already)

Extra credit: make it sound like you're "enhancing" SL

Are you absolutely sure?

I made an alt about 3 days ago...on the signup screens, away from all the boxes and groups and "where do you want to rez" options, I clicked a link that said something like "just skip all this and take me to LL's Orientation Island", and I'm pretty sure I rezzed there. Also, I could not TP my alt right off of there - I had to click the sign that said "teleport to Second Life, choose an infohub below" and go to an infohub before I could get ported to my main's house.

I know it's been "common knowledge" for a while that OI was gone, but I'm just saying - I'm pretty sure I was there 3 days ago.

No, you were on the "new" Help Island. I just passed an alt through there about a week ago. It is totally different from the OI and much more useless. But, yes, you still had to click the sign for a LM to get to the mainland.

Isn't that the central mantra of the Tao of Linden?

Lot of good comments here...

Cody...were you at the place with the castle, and the city, and the volcano? That's OI. Or did you arrive on a raised dais, with a house and some billboards off in the distance? That's Help Island, which is where all new residents currently come in (unless you've found a loophole somehow).

LL says that user retention is better using the Help Island model, rather than OI with its tutorials, but I agree with those that say HI is pretty useless. The main questions I get there are: "I'm confused, what do I do?" and "How do I get off this *bleeping* island?" Having new residents check in at some place they are at least interested in can't be worse, and may just be better. That way, they will 1) see the "real" SL for themselves straight away, rather than having some Mentor describe it to them, and b) their Map and Search and Build tools will work properly. On HI, they don't.

And (sigh) Tegg is right. Anything that makes the registration process quicker and easier for real people is going to make it easier for the bots, too.

The downside is going to be finding noobs to Mentor, because now they will be popping in just any old place. I think a device like Help People!'s greeter HUD, that hands a notecard and a landmark to any newbie within 96m, is going to become necessary. Then some Mentors can wander the grid wearing the HUDs, and others can hang out at some newbie training camp somewhere, waiting for the latest haul of noobs from the field agents.

I was surprised at this, when I heard it from a mentor friend. I'd think that some sort of quick boot camp _must_ be better to get new people up and going vs just dumping them into the world without knowing how to search or mess with inventory or even walk around. And, OMG, please, _PLEASE_ teach newbies how to use the camera - I'm gonna start pulling their heads off if they don't stop walking up and standing 2 inches away to stare..

If LL is convinced that OI didn't actually help, I guess I believe it. I'm just surprised..

My biggest disapointment with the blog post is their failure to even acknowledge that the slurl map is so horribly out of date.

Sindy, it may be better just to skip OI and HI and dump them off in world to sink or swim. It's certainly, as another poster said, one way to learn.

If it were me, I'd require everyone to take a three day training course. But then again, I read user manuals before firing up a new program for the first time.

Can I create a web site that SLURLS all thos newbies to *your* island?