Ciaran Laval

February 1, 2010January 12, 2014

Forums To Be Nerfed

“Upgrading the forums” shouts the blog headline, as Linden Lab announce that they’re, well upgrading the forums, as you can read here. However having used the new forum software for some time, both inside and outside of the Second Life experience I have to say, the technology may be considered an upgrade but the experience often isn’t.

When the Xstreet forums closed people complained that they were losing a community, the commerce forums are a very pale shadow of the old Xstreet forums. People do not find the clearspace platform as user friendly and this isn’t just a complaint from Second Life users, I saw the same complaints when Frontrange closed their old forums and moved the platform to clearspace, some people who used to post on the old forum never migrated across and the same will happen here.

Continue reading “Forums To Be Nerfed”

December 29, 2009January 12, 2014

2009 Reviewed

As 2009 draws to a close and people debate whether the forthcoming year is twenty ten or Two thousand and ten, it’s time to look back at the year, warts and all.

January

January was a strange month, we were still feeling the fallout of the Openspace fiasco when Linden Lab pulled a distraction trick by purchasing Onrez and XstreetSL! The rumours started to surface a few days before the official news was announced and covered here by Nobody Fugazi. We were treated to an official press release, FAQ, a forum thread and an official blog post. Interestingly back in January they were talking about new features such as shareable wishlists, they were also talking about merging accounts and balances, they partially got there but Xstreet would become a major bone of contention later in the year. Continue reading “2009 Reviewed”

September 12, 2009January 12, 2014

Listening To Communities

With a hat tip to Desmond Shang for his forum post, and another to Kamilah Hauptmann who brought this to Desmond’s attention in the first place, there’s a very interesting blog post from Eric Ries, who has been involved with IMVU regarding listening to your community. I’ve touched upon this before with the example of how Champions Online rectified a situation over limited discounted subscriptions, but Eric’s post is probably a better example because it took IMVU a bit longer to figure out the harsh realities of not listening.

The crux of the issue is that IMVU didn’t listen to their community, made changes that as far as they could see would only have an impact for 0.1% of their community and that everything would be fine. However things weren’t fine, people whom IMVU hadn’t even considered would be interested in some of these policy changes were concerned to such a degree that IMVU was losing both revenue and customers on a scale they hadn’t imagined was remotely likely. Continue reading “Listening To Communities”

August 3, 2009July 26, 2014

Gene Roddenberry Junior talks in Second Life

A noob was in town at the weekend, Gene Roddenberry junior (AKA Rod Roddenberry), son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry…umm senior…spoke to an audience in Second Life as part of a Science Fiction convention that I didn’t even know was going on. I’ve talked before about how I expected more Science Fiction to be apparent in Second Life and there’s a convention going on and I know nothing about it! Heh, Second Life is too big for its own good at times 🙂

The podcast will be up on LCCC Radio (The Duck) sometime this week, I’ll post a link when it is ready. Rod talked of many things, his enthusiasm for Star Trek the next generation shone through (he’s a bit young for Star Trek the original). He spoke of how he had a teenager/Father relationship with his Father and how Wesley Crusher is not based upon him!

There was talk of copyright issues, talk of his own projects, what he saw on the set of the next generation and much more, the podcast should be worth listening to.

However he spoke extremely enthusiastically as a noob to Second Life, only an hour after being registered. Why did he have the surname he did? He had no idea, we do of course, as you choose one of the generated names.

He was prompted to move his mouse so his avatar didn’t slump in the away mode look and he was enthusiastic about the fact there were furries present in Second Life as well as the look and design of other avatars.

Continue reading “Gene Roddenberry Junior talks in Second Life”

July 29, 2009January 12, 2014

How Paid Communities Can Work – Hillcrest College A Case Study

I’ve talked previously about how venues can’t easily make revenue from a pay to enter scheme, Seven Ultra Lounge has apparently closed down. However I was recently contacted by someone who wanted to show me how you can make a go of charging for entry to a parcel. The theme is adult RP, which may disappoint some, but the concept can be transferred to other social venues.

The place is Hillcrest College, a place where people roleplay students over the age of 18, teachers and faculty staff. To avoid any confusion that this is a place that engages in banned sexual ageplay activity there is a clear “No child avatars” rule and a height restirction bar to try and hammer home this point that has a minimum height of five foot two. Summer Haas gave me a guided tour of both the existing location and the new location on Zindra. I didn’t actually see any adult content in action whilst I was there, maybe Summer directed me away from it or maybe it’s due to the fact that this place actually has a sense of community, as Summer explained; “The sex aspect is very low key, the funny thing is the sex brings them in but the friendships made keeps them around and the the regulars don’t generally engage in sexual activity on campus” Continue reading “How Paid Communities Can Work – Hillcrest College A Case Study”