Is this good or bad news for SL?

There is no *there* there. G. Stein

Yeh, actually, they are, a lot of them. People use lots of different systems. They're in There and IMVU and SL and Facebook and LinkedIn and Warcraft and Free Realms. Same people. It's not *just* competition, so long as the different platforms are strong in different ways. And as long as SL is unique, it's going to have people using it. Some of whom are also using There and Activeworlds and Everquest and Twitter and Livejournal and Twinity as well. It doesn't bother me that there are different kinds of things out there. It bothers me that there's no competition for the niche that makes SL unique.

I honestly don't understand this criticism. I cannot think of any time when I have logged in to SL and not been able to find people to talk with if I wanted to. There may be times when I don't want to, either because I'm doing something else or because people are talking about things that don't interest me, but there are always opportunities for social interaction: dedicated discussion events, artistic/cultural events, classes, and help and new user areas. (I hang around NCI and Help People! because I know that people will be interacting there.)

I'm socially awkward most of the time, but "SL isn't a social platform" is so strangely out of touch with my experience that it's hard for me to make sense of it. Maybe "SL isn't being used as a social platform *in a way I think is right*" is what's meant?

The point of the OP was not so much the direct competition to SL, but the new releases of Virtual World creation software, for free (in Unity and the Unreal Engine 3 SDK).

Blue Mars took the modding of the CryEngine 2 into the Virtual World direction, as did Entropia, and now others may do the same now with Unity and Unreal.

The Opensim software, which allows SL-like Virtual Worlds to be created has largely flopped. Its development has been painfully slow, a direct result of trying to be cross-platform, which slowed progress enormously. Is the Linux community, with just 0.9% of the Operating System market, really worth pandering to? After nearly 3 years of hard work, Opensim is still only alpha, at only 0.6.7, and with no end in sight.

Openlife and the OSGrid are even more deserted than SL. There is no economy in Opensim core, and consequently not in the OSGrid. Its failure to retain is quite alarming, but understandable.

But both Unity and Unreal are not alpha software. They are both mature, and have fully-functioned editors, with tutorials and documentation, and before long we will start to see the emergence of Virtual Worlds built on these software platforms.

That almost everyone I meet in Blue Mars is from SL, (which was also the case when I hung out in both Openlife and the OSGrid), then the more Virtual Worlds that spring up can only be bad news for SL (IMHO), as it does look like many SL residents are actively looking for an alternative, for whatever reason, and the more choice there is, the more likely they will find an alternative that matches their needs.

Rock

SL is a social platform, period.

Maybe it does not meet the definition of a few people, but the use of SL by the masses since 2006/7 show that SL is a social platform more than anything else.

Saying SL is not a social platform is like saying SL is a game since it all depends on the user and not a particular individual labeling it for the masses.

Honestly, Anya has some skewed opinions about SL being a social platform because of her experience. I am definitely social awkward and deal with agoraphobia among other things and SL is a social platform for me.

If someone says SL is not a social platform, then they need to say why it is not, and that still won't matter to me since the majority of what i do is social.

Could SL be a better social platform? Sure, but it serves my purposes fine as it is now.

Linux is the dominant hosted server platform, Rock. It's also the cheapest by far... and OpenSim has to be about doing things on the cheap. Not supporting Linux would have cut their legs off at the knees.

The biggest problem OpenSim had, if anything, was using the .NET/Mono platform instead of making it *just* a Linux environment. Taking a factor of 2-5 performance hit for an interpreted environment (even with JIT) is just nuts for a server application. Running it on Windows as a VirtualBox or VMWare virtual machine would be more efficient.

I've lost track over the past 6 years of the number of gloom-and-doom, SL is closing because of X threads. Competition is good if something comes along and does what SL does. What SL has is content, and creators, and a tried and proven platform that works (of course with issues...there will always be issues). If something totally blows away SL on all accounts...then that is a good thing. But I won't hold my breath every-time an SL-killer comes along.

These are mutually exclusive? SL is a place for building stuff but not for socializing? Are you saying that because there are good places for each, there doesn't need to be a place that has both?

But they can't be both somewhere else and in SL at the same time, or at best while they are doing other things their avatar in SL is slumped over and non-responsive. Those other things are competitive in that they take people who could do those things in SL and put them somewhere else.

It's a person at the keyboard that makes someone "in SL", not the existence of an account.

Heck, I've got five SL accounts. That doesn't make me a great contributor. From a social perspective I contribute nothing while I'm not signed in.

Not that it isn't a social platform, but that it's a poor social platform, full of people who don't want to socialize or who are bad at it (like me). I'd like to see more people who are good at it. A room full of people who are bad at socializing does not make a good social experience. A few gregarious people in the mix make things so much more fun, and make openings for the socially inept to improve their social skills. IMO.

I've talked about this across the street. The challenge I see for SL is that people who are good at it have better options, mostly IRL.



For instance? Are you willing to share some specific (i.e. named) places you go to meet people?

If the masses are here socializing...where are they?

Anya....have you met Hal the Robot yet? Did you catch his introduction a few weeks ago?

Track down Hal's location. You get the best of both worlds. A fairly large group of people who are really chatting.....and an awesome conversation with Hal.

Here's how to track him:

http://www.zabaware.com/sl.asp

I shared some. I'm sure others have shared many more across any number of threads.

SL surely fails as a Social Platform for the type of person who adores Twitter and Facebook, because SL lacks one of the two main attractions of Twitter and Facebook, and is inferior in the other.

The most fundamental appeal of Twitter and Facebook is to two human traits: narcissism and competitiveness (specifically, competitiveness over popularity).

SL works--to an extent--for the narcissism: just as you can Express Yourself in Facebook and Twitter, you can Express Yourself in SL with your avatar's appearance, custom animations, what you've done with your land, etc. But SL fails to let you Express the minute details of your life. And people who adore Facebook and Twitter DO want to express the minute details of their lives to the public---that's a big part of what makes it compelling for them.

The other big thing that makes Twitter and Facebook compelling to their fans is that EVERYONE CAN SEE HOW POPULAR YOU ARE.

SL completely fails, here. We are actually limited in the number of groups you can belong to. And when you walk into an SL club, who notices how many Friends you have?

Linden Lab could fix this latter by making it mandatory to have floating text with the number of Friends an avatar has, visible over the avatar's head at all times. And there must be no numerical limit.

This would bring in some Facebook/Twitter fans. However, the fact that there's no real way of communicating-at-a-glance a load of personal information about a person (and telling people to go to their Blog Profile or even their inworld Profile is no substitute) makes SL a fail for these people.

I do mind. You read "all". I did not write "all". I took care to not write "all". Argument for the sake of argument is lame.

Then it becomes a debate.

I'm not saying that at all! I am saying that the market is already oversaturated with novel social networking applications, and nearly devoid of virtual worlds where nearly every aspect of the world is in the creative hands of its residents. Second Life is both, and does both quite well. But when push comes to shove, the one distinguishing factor that separates SL from all the other 3D environments is not its social networking tools. It is its user creativity tools.

Blue Mars has potential, but also a long way to go, content creation is much more complex, nearly on a professional skill level and I would miss watching other creators swing prims around inworld.

You shared the same things that always get shared. NCI. Got it. I also got Blarney Stone, Nancy Blakes and The Shelter. These are the places that always get named. If that's where everyone's hanging out they must always be packed...except they're not.

Yeah, watch the events. There aren't very many social events and they aren't very well attended. This looks like common wisdom rather than personal experience. I rarely hear mention of specific events people like to attend.

I'm also likely to be told again that most conversation is in private IM. I don't believe it. That's like being told I can't see your invisible friend BECAUSE HE'S INVISIBLE! It's not like I arrived just yesterday. I remember three years ago when there was actual conversation, in open chat, just about everywhere. Why would it be in private IM now?

Any number of threads? Yeah, I probably instigated most of them I've been keeping track of every single social suggestion I've read here for three years. I have a file that is now about 1500 lines of text, mostly listing things that people have suggested as their favorite club, or a good place to hang out, or whatever. Every single one of them that I've encountered, and I've probably encountered most of them, as I read all those threads.

Almost all those places are empty nearly all the time. Or they're full of bots. Some prominent forum members have recommended some ridiculous social vacuums. They're clearly talking from common wisdom (which isn't so wise) and not from personal experience. Why do people do that?

Be specific. Name names. Where is everyone?

On the other hand Twitter and Facebook FAIL completely as a social platform for people who don't desire those features.

Who cares? I don't, that's for sure.


Thank goodness SL fails there. Do we really want that nonsense in SL? Keeping score of how many friends you have? That would be worse than that stupid rating game that they used a while back.If that's the kind of stuff we have to look forward to for SL, then I'll start packing now. Blech!

No. I don't enjoy what Facebook/Twitter fans enjoy---neither the narcissism nor the competing for Highest Number of Friends.

But when I see the Wonderful New Blog with its emphasis on the Wonderful New Profile page, it becomes clear that the LL decision-makers are all agog over bringing these F/Tw fans into SL.

I'm just pointing out that it seems doubtful that LL has really thought this through.

Thank You. I've seen it from both sides, I have a FB account for my avatar to promote a project I am involved in, and it has given me a good opportunity to see what banal nonsense it is, at least for me. RL me has absolutely no use for those things, and I would have no interest in SL if it were to become like them. No thanks.

I think so, too.

I think that fundamental aspects of SL make it unsuitable for the mass of people who spend time on Facebook and/or Twitter each day. (And I don't think the decision-makers at LL have noticed this fundamental disconnect.)