LL acquires avatar social network Avatars United

Just for the heck of it I have created an inworld group called Avatars United.

Everyone wanting LL to establish a direct relationship to SL accounts missed something. AU is not SL exclusive. Are you suggesting LL create accounts for all those people in other MMOs that would not touch SL with your stick or more importantly the fact MMOs in general are full of kids so all of us are now mixing it up with kids on AU?

Indeed. I registered just to head off any such mischief (not that I'd be on the list of Most Likely To Be Impersonated or anything but you never know.)

Then I made my first, and quite possibly only, What Are You Doing Right Now entry:

Thinking that I really don't need yet another daily Internet obligation. But: there it is.
...9 minutes ago



(No one needs to know What I'm Doing Right Now. They really, really don't.)

You made me laugh out loud.

(I wonder if you'll get a threatening email from LL about that....)

You can do that yourself, just create a new avatar and delete the original.
Something like "Message from Second Life: the object "Avatars United" has asked you to verify your account, click on http://... if you're really Veritable Quandry"?
Apparently some MMOs don't have unique avatar names.
Yes.

Something like "Message from Second Life: the object "Avatars United" has asked you to verify your account, click on http://... if you're really Veritable Quandry"?

No.

Well when I first registered it didn't send the email, so after about half hour I figured I may have mistyped and tried again and then it told me my yahoo address wasn't a valid email, so I used another address and eventually received an activation mail for both addresses.

I've ignored one email just to avoid confusion.

I can't remember if WoW does, they might just need to be unique per server and they have a lot of servers.

I had 2 separate AU accounts with separate email addresses associated with them. I didn't see a way that I could delete an account by myself unless you're talking about associated alts and such which isn't what I was doing. I wanted to associate a certain email address with my full name AU account but I had used it already with the first name only AU account, so support had to delete one account and allow me to reassociate the proper email address. It was all done in less than 15 -20 minutes.

I was going too fast clicking on "Accept" and now want to unfriend someone on Avatars United. I don't see that option anywhere.

How do you "unfriend" someone?

Even after all the Lanbot threads?

And the drama begins......

It's a bit tricky to find but it's from your accounts link then "manage friends" ... manage them like Wallace does conversations ^^: http://www.avatarsunited.com/friends

I was not too gungho on this- but what the heck - I signed up peeps - just setting up now - if anyone is interested, look me up

so how do u find people and groups etc?

Thanks. This illustrates the advantage of doing an exhaustive search instead of just looking everywhere that makes sense to you when trying to figure things out.

Once you get to the list of friends where you see the option to "Remove Friend", you can't search by name, you have to page through the uselessly ordered list one name at a time, slow page after slow page. Not at all well designed.

It would seem to me that the list of avatar names could not BE unique, since it is quite likely that in games where you are not forced to use a funky list of surnames, one might be quite likely to use the same name in each game.

My name in SL is the same as my name in the Meta7 virtual world and in the (now defunct?) Legend City Online virtual world. So How would they deal with that? Say, for example, if someone has the exact same name in SL as they have in Blue Mars?

I don't think that the names need to be unique within AU, but there should be a way of verifying the authenticity of the link to SL identities to avoid impersonation.

Again, if some really meaningful functionality that links SL with AU isn't introduced, I really don't see the point of this thing. It's new and shiny right now, but in a week or so the lustre will have worn off substantially.

I think before announcing this that the Second Life Dashboard should have been outfitted as a way to create 'authentic' Second Life avatars linked to real accounts in SL.

But a free-for-all is good also. Let the account harassment begin!

I bet they have some problems with that. Inevitable. Particularly, since that site allows access from anyone. I pulled it up, without joining anything.

So you've got someone in SL that is pretty well known....maybe running a successful business....yet they've been fairly discreet on the Net as a whole.....and only close RL friends and family know their persona and SL name. Someone else uses it on this site, and opens up a can of worms. I suppose these names will be googable.

Also might want to consider the same things that you can consider with Facebook. I ended up on everyone's pages without joining. So anyone has access to you - your SL persona - your connections - whatever. Say you mentioned your avatar name to your wednesday night bible study group, one evening.....and that freak who sits across from you, and drools.....decides to track you down on the web.

And I'll expand further.....

Dude that is stalking you in SL....can pull you up there....get a ton of tidbits, like where you're hanging out right now....who you're connecting with....what island your new home is on....

Just in the same fashion that people in RL use myspace or facebook to track a whole history that can be laid out in court for a divorce or custody battle.

Make sure you don't have your avatar name written down on your scratchpad at home, either You just gave your spouse the key, without having to log into SL.

Yep....I just explored for about 30 minutes there. Only 24 hours for some of you....and you've laid out a map pretty good. Whatever concerns you had about Facebook....this is no different....you just laid it all out for public consumption with full access by anyone on the web.

Thanks for checking that out. It sounds exactly like I had imagined.

I agree with you on the linking avatars to AU as at the moment you can sign up for an account with any name that you want. another avatar a Linden name etc. so it could get really messy very quickly imho

Here's how far I will go on this. When I meet someone in world, that I am going to spend valuable time with....I check them out on the web - their avatar name - to see if they have a blog....because I do not want some account of "my adventures with Mickey" slapped onto a blog page on the web. I'll use this AU tool the same way. Simply pull them up and see how much they blab....this will be very informative....thanks, LL