Hamlet Speaks to Rod

Hamlet has an interview with Linden Lab CEO, over at New World Notes, which you can read here. Inara Pey has a decent analysis here, whereas one wonders whether Tateru Nino will get a chance to interview Mr Humble for a different perspective.

Hamlet’s interview is good, even if he does pull out the Facebook hammer, which Mr Humble sidestepped well, although he did stagger. This contrasts with my visit to the Second Life website this evening when I saw yet another Facebook widget, uttered “Oh FFS” and then went into a rant that is not fit for a PG audience, but included lots of “!$#’s. I’m not getting this Facebook stuff at all, particularly why LL are hellbent on getting people to login to Facebook.

However it’s the interview with the new CEO we should focus on for now, and it was decent enough, no earth shattering moments and nothing too worrying.

Continue reading “Hamlet Speaks to Rod”

Extending Reach – Facebook and Other Options

Hamlet, over at New World Notes, is on a Facebook offensive, as opposed to Ciaran, over here, who is on an offensive Facebook campaign.  I do agree with Hamlet with regard to Facebook having the potential to extend reach, which it clearly does have.  Indeed I have no issue at all with Linden Lab or any other Second Life residents promoting Second Life on Facebook, where I do have a problem is with Linden Lab promoting Facebook on Second Life, as they did again recently on the spring break blog post.

I fully believe LL are doing this all arse about face, they should be offering Facebook exclusive promotions, on Facebook, to Facebook users (as opposed to Second Life users, although some clearly fall in both categories). People may well moan about promotions on Facebook, but the idea is surely to extend Second Life’s reach into Facebook territory, not extend Facebook into Second Life territory, which is more akin to driving the wrong way up a one way street.

However Facebook isn’t the only way to extend reach and Facebook simply does not welcome Second Life users, to use their Second Life names, full stop. Facebook doesn’t like pseudonyms, beyond the rich and famous and those whose cause Robert Scoble takes up. Continue reading “Extending Reach – Facebook and Other Options”

Stagnating but by no means dead

I was ready to move on from Facebook, with Inara Pey frowning at me on her blog, and Hamlet Au covering different angles over at New World notes, I was all Facebooked out, but, in a turn of events not related to privacy and more in line with some of the points Hamlet made in his New World Notes post, there’s a very interesting post over at Gamasutra about virtual worlds, social media and why the easiest pathway often wins.

What’s interesting about both the Gamastura post, and Hamlet’s post, is the numbers, the number of people using Facebook compared to Second Life is quite staggering, this is largely down to Facebook being both cheaper and easier to use than Second Life, but that only tells part of the story, World of Warcraft has something like thirteen million registered accounts, so people will engage with a client based system when the appeal is there.

Both posts point out that at one stage Second Life was considered best placed to capture the largest share of the market, with 3D worlds set to replace 2D webpages, and that will happen eventually, whether Second Life is that 3D platform is a different matter because they were ahead of their time with their ambitions and now have issues with trying to scale. However this will happen one day, and it will be easy to participate and will be the path of least resistance. There was a time when people poured scorn on Amazon for having a website and felt that angle had no legs. Continue reading “Stagnating but by no means dead”

Facebook won’t eat your children

As much as I dislike Facebook, the company that is, it needs to be said that Facebook isn’t going to eat your children, run off with your wife or burn you to death whilst you’re questing in the Wetlands, as Deathwing did to me last night!

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept of Facebook, it’s the practices of the company that make it an area of debate and some of those practices are not comfortable viewing, this is why when Blizzard wanted everyone to use their real names on the forums, there was a backlash and complaints to privacy bodies, because Facebook goes beyond your circle of real life friends and neighbours and that’s where the issues start, hence why Facebook have been in talks with the German authorities regarding privacy settings on their friend finder feature, as reported by AFP here.

Over at New World Notes, Hamlet Au is talking of how Second Life was once considered the social networking platform of the future and how Facebook has passed it in spectacular fashion. There’s an interesting video there from 2006 featuring Robin Harper, who has been working for Playdom since November, a company who specialise in Facebook games. Continue reading “Facebook won’t eat your children”

Creepy Facebook Advertising Should end Widgets

The news that Facebook will soon be using likes in a new advertising initative should be enough for Linden Lab to get those widgets off web profiles and quite frankly it should be happening now. The idea is that someone will like a brand and this will appear on their Facebook profile in an initiative called Sponsored Stories, as reported here at Cnet. Oh it’s organic advertising, it’s a revenue stream for Facebook which is a free to use service, there’s no harm in it, right?

Well it’s not just sponsored stories that are an issue,  let’s take a case of a Second Life user who decided to like his Second Life profile, and then went and signed into Facebook,as described in this forum thread. The Second Life user found, upon signing into Facebook, that that Like had been recorded on his Facebook profile, even though he doesn’t believe he was signed into Facebook when he clicked the Like.

Now Facebook does like to try and get you to stay signed in and there are of course cookies, but the whole thing is quite frankly creepy. There are also issues of just how easily one can link Second Life to First Life via clicking likes and engaging with Facebook. Linden Lab have not been upfront about the consequences of running Facebook and Second Life on the same computer, maybe they aren’t aware of them, but this is another reason why those widgets should be taken off people’s profiles right now. Continue reading “Creepy Facebook Advertising Should end Widgets”

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