LL acquires avatar social network Avatars United

Well I tried to be delicate about the subject, but Scylla got straight to the point!

LOL yeah good idea Brenda is a dark horse for sure and if you or anyone else wants to hook up on this new site heres our profile URL http://www.avatarsunited.com/avatars/constanza-amsterdam

Actually, I have it from a very disreputable source that the esteemed Mr Harris has recently joined LL......

Constanza is way ahead of you, she's already united with me!

LOL ok she does most of the network sites I tend to stay in the forums

I came, I saw, I yawned, I deleted the account.

Well, I saw plenty of oppourtunities to out oneself.

Like the ability to "add an avatar" to your profile, which by default makes ALL your alts visible to everyone on the service as connected to one account. And the ability to turn that off is hidden in a low-key "privacy settings" option, and not displayed clearly.

Or the "Personal Information" page in the "Account" tab, where you can, if stupid enough to do so, put your full real name and mailing address info out for the world to see.

And you gotta love that the defaults for them e-mailing you any time anything on their service so much as burps are all on by default. Just what most of us do NOT need, more spam.

You can have a Blog there, or send IM's to each other.. Wait, LL forced me to have a WordPress Blog in order to be able to post in these Blogs (never used that one, either), and if I want to IM someone, I'll do it in-world.

Sharing photos? What's wrong with Snapzilla ot Flickr for that?

Some on-line games, none of which looked the least bit worth bothering with.

Several "apps" specific to gaming worlds, like a "Kill Tracker" for EVE Online. Yawn.

Oh, look at that... To get them to DELETE my account, they require "sending an email to [email]info@avatarsunited.com[/email] specifying your name, user-name, email address and telephone number." Which means that to get my account WIPED, I have to provide MORE information than I provided to sign up? No. They are NOT getting my real name or my phone number for their data mining. I'll just abandon the account, and never use it again.

Another "first time user experience" that lasted less than an hour, and the person never came back.

I sent them the e-mail, with just as much as they already had on me: The user name and e-mail I used to sign up, and I told them I will NOT give them my real name and my phone number just to get out of their database.

Not happy, M. I should not have to reveal personal info to unsubscribe from your new toy.

But where would those ties show up? I don't see them in either of mine or either of yours.

I'm not sure why that's there...as you said, I do not see any link other than the fact that I added my BM account as a friend so I would see posts from both on the same wall...nothing seemed visible until I added that. But there may be planned features that will use the account to link avatars.

I sign up with so many things. That was one of them.

http://www.avatarsunited.com/avatars/suezanne

My first thought on looking at their site was "Why in the world would I care at all about avatars that are on World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, eve Online, or any of those other 30+ sites that I have absolutely zero interest in participating in? And why would any of them care about my avatar in second Life?"

Argent and Veritable:

The tab to "add an avatar" to your profile is the one that, by default, makes ALL your alts visible to everyone on the service as connected to one account. The ability to turn that off is hidden in a low-key "privacy settings" option, and not displayed clearly. This feature is different from just "Uniting yourself" and friending your own alts. If you use it, apparently you can log in with a single account's sign-on, and then swich between your alts at will as you hop around, with each avatar having their own blog and home page.

That feature, minus the outing the linkage publicly, would be a great one for SL. Imagine being able to log in to the forums or the blog as one account, and then being able to switch on the fly to an alt to make a post. Or having a single login and password for all your accounts, and then selecting from a list which one appears in-world for the duration of that new login to the grid. Maybe even if you select a second alt while logged in to the grid already, it automatically opens a multiple login session, with the new alt in its own window, and no additional logging in needed?

I know the tab, I can see the setting, I've looked at the setting, and added my Blue Mars alter ego. Veritable has done the same. I do not see anything on Veritable's profile that indicates he's got an alias. Where is this information exposed?

Is there any reason to think that folks at Avatars United showing Linden as a last name actually are LL employees?

Not sure. Just reporting what their FAQ said. Perhaps there is a link to "list alts" on someone's profile, if they use that option and don't choose to hide the alst in the profile setup?

None at all. In fact, they clearly state that they don't validate in any way that a given account is the person in the virtual world that they claim to be. They say that since this is a social site, fake accounts should get isolated pretty quickly if they try to interact with people who know the real one.

There should be a way to tell if an account is a part of the staff - I haven't looked for such a thing yet, got to go back to work.

That is not the same as accounts with Linden in the name being LL staff, but it is related.

Woah.. I think you just talked me out of using this..

That's what I thought but I can't fine one.

The very fact that the thing might have the ability to show all alts *should* scare off anyone who would not wish for all of their alts to be public knowledge.
A user preference setting to hide the information is no protection at all.
Think of the recent Facebook fiasco, in which a level of privacy went poof due to an 'enhancement'.
Think of the possibility of a simple programming error or a database glitch.

Any system that has an *option* to show more than you would like to be shown is a bomb waiting to explode in your face.

It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce swallow could not carry a one pound confirmation email

Joined the flock today myself http://www.avatarsunited.com/avatars/argus-collingwood

I read that as tying your other Virtual World avatars to one place not your SL alts. BTW I used the feature to correct my typo on my SL avatar name added the correct spelling and deleted the wrong one. lol

The Terms of Use are quite wide open. Looks like they stuck in a "No pron" clause, but, everything else seems to be a free-for-all. (^_^)y

From what I could see, and I wasn't interested in creating multiple accounts to test this idea, one can keep all their alts seperate IF they sign them up seperately, possibly requiring a different e-mail address for each, but I am not sure.

It looked as if, to create a linkage so one sign on can switch to another, and to expose those links to others, you had to go to that Accounts page, and manually indicate there that an existing or new account was you, and in what world. So, for example, If they had the "Meta7" Virtual world listed (they don't), I could register Ceera Murakami as both existing in SL and in Meta7. Each incarnation would have her own page and profile, so I could indicate that in SL I am a Kitsune, and partnered to someone, and live in sim XYZ, while in Meta7 I am single and thus far still Human. I could swutch between my AU account pages and blogs with a menu list. And presumably others could see something in my profile (unless I hide it intentionally) to confirm that I'm the same Ceera in both worlds.

Maybe someone who intends to stay there and who doesn't mind outing some of their alts can experiment with that, and have an un-related account look at their profile to see of the link is visible.

Yes. That would be the main thrust of Avatars United.
However, even at the level of connecting avatars in separate online worlds, the principle applies.
Anyone who would not wish their avatar connections to be public should not trust *an option* to keep the connections private/public.

An African or a European swallow?

Just finished reading thread, and although didn't sign up, went and looked around at AU. Has it been 'a couple weeks' yet? Could this AU be the application that is expected to replace these forums? Just pondering......