MySpace / Facebooking SL

While wandering the various blogs and feeds I digest once in a while I came across Google's "Social Design Best Practices" and started wondering how relevant or if they could be applied in SL. http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/articles/bestprac.html
Probably best if you have a look and ponder yourself...

Briefly it's:
1 - Engage quickly - There's a known problem here in that many first time users have difficulty with orientation island and the first minutes of SL. In fact the only two new users I've seen appear recently dodged the island entirely and were guided through by a friend in SL.

2 - Mimic Look & Feel - Bit of a non started since SL is a one off entity.

3 - Enable Self Expression - This is possible to an extent with the current profile system, but to take on the popularity and immediate assessment available in MySpace / Facebook etc ... a more detailed profile with entries for musical tastes, moods, links to user maintained blogs, likes, dislikes and possibly even making peoples friends lists visible (by choice) may be an option. Stretched far enough you can begin to compute compatibility ratings for people a la LastFM. Though that depends on more structured data.

4 - Make it Dynamic - Is talking about the socialising aspects, not the Windlight side of things (though that provides a talking point). Voice was probably the most recent big move in this area. Improvements in group IM's, personal IM's and introducing new possibilities to open chat, as well as improvements in the self expression category above might be a way to go here?

5 - Expose Friend Activity - Is problematic in a world where privacy is valued. To an extent this is handled by the current "picks" system, though the fact this area is used for personal comments on other users illustrates the degree users are compressing social information they want to get across in to places that probably weren't intended for it. Perhaps the top 5 most visited regions for each user could be listed along with a "HIDE" tick box if people didn't want them to be known? A separate "Freinds" page would also help split "picks" as being a locational list from a social list of known and liked avatars.

6 - Browse the graph - Would only be possible if the steps above were implemented and integrated with the new search. Then it becomes possible to search for people who are happy for everyone to know region X is in their top 5 most visited sims. It also becomes possible to compile region popularity by users locational pick lists and most visited sims. Stretched further you could even start searching for users who say they like (or dislike) classical music for example. In a way it's moving towards a "matchmaker" set of data and related searches to enable more meaningful hookups in world.

7 - Drive communication - Seems to feed back in to 4 above. Adding >>poke<< and >>wink<< etc. commands might be an option, and the sharing walls might best be considered group related noticeboards. If there was a link from a group information page to a "Group Notices" page where all or nominated members could post persistent data, then many of the in world group IM's for events can simply refer people to the group white board for information on upcoming events, news and information.

8 - Build Communities - Introduces the idea of grouping friendships. How handy would it be if you could define a "Customers" group, and drag all those casual customer friends into that group? Or a "LiveMusic" group and drag all the freinds you have related to live music in to that group? By adding a structural system to the friends list it becomes possible to maintain larger lists in more meaningful community driven ways.

9 - Solve Real World Problems - Already happens to a large degree within SL with a variety of real world related groups, sims, charity events etc. The advancement of some of the points above would only help make these things more easy to research and implement.

Uh .. kay .. think I'm done now. You can call it "Blue Sky Thinking" if you like that kind of turn of phrase. But the popularity of social networking sites is one as yet untapped area in SL as far as I can see... Who know's? With all that search information, maybe LL may be able to pull off the equivalent of google ads sometime in the future? I'm certainly not against LL making a profit from well targeted non intrusive ad's popping up alongside searches. Especially if it means greater revenue and upgrades to the creaky SL infrastructure.

Phew. Think my brain needs a rest. Would be interested if anyone is perked by the above rambling though...

A MySpace page directly reflects the real world person that created that page, an SL avatar may have nothing in common with the real life person that's actually controlling it. That's a rather big difference between the two.

Most of what you're suggesting doesn't require LL to do anything (your web tab can link to your MySpace, picks *are* for telling the world about places you like, etc). The remaining things (another space for friendships people now use picks for, grouping friends into folders, better group functionality) are things (some) people already want.

There's a more or less happy balance now between "immersionists" and "augmentationists", the balance shouldn't be tipped in either direction while you seem to be favouring turning SL into a RL mimic.

I think you miss-interpreted maybe.
A lot of people have entirely Second Life orientated MySpace pages to allow the kind of social networking that Second Life doesn't. Some people will happily put real life details in to Second Life, others keep it entirely Second Life. That's fine.
I'm just advocating a look at "best practice" in enabling social networking and seeing what aspects of that can be adapted to Second Life. The current system relies on "who you bump into" rather than enabling searches on relevant interests or group memberships, allowing clustering of people by common interests, providing computed "match" information etc.
By that measure the current Second Life is more like real life, where it really is who you know rather than what you know ... isn't it?

Playing the Devil's Advocate:

Will new people feel pressured to put in personal information (such as music preference) because there's a blank feild for it?

I created a MS page just for Glowbox Designs. I only use it as an online portfolio...it works well.

Second Life is still 18+ right?

yes....?

Ha ha..very funny. The kids only use MS thing again...har har...

Colette...a few searches will bring up tens of thousands of adults:

* Myspace Film
* Actors
* Directors
* Writers
* Musician


That's just a few examples of myspace searches that wield thousands of adults. You don't have to use MS to 'hook up' or 'plan a PJ party.'

Silly robot, My Space is for kids.


The poster should suggest things SL is lacking rather than try to draw comparisons.

Well .. I guess SL could become as RL focused as My Space .. but at that point I wont be around to care.

Uh ok.
Forget I mentioned Facebook or MySpace. They are obviously far too real world?!
In fact forget the real world entirely.
The post was about trying to get better social networking tools within Second Life. So it would be entirely focused on social networking within Second Life. NOT the real world. The only overlap there is if you dare to admit you like Mongolian Pan Pipe music in Second Life, then you have actually admitted your preference for Mongolian Pan Pipe music in real life. What you do in Second Life, where you go, your favourite shops, groups and people, are all Second Life information.

The post was also about trying to come up with ideas for better Second Life social networking tools that don't already exist, or improving the ones that do exist. The post also suggested people that were interested might want to go and look at what Google are up to in the social networking scene and have a think about what's lacking for themselves.

So that's: No it's not about the "real world" and yes they would be improvements / new things in Second Life.

Draco18: No more pressure than they do already. And thanks for the post.

However. I give up. Why bother? (Rhetorical question btw).