A day of oddness to say the least. I have been logged in with Firestorm, I’m not a huge fan of TPV’s, as good as they are, there’s always that “who are these guys” issue. I’ve also downloaded and installed Phoenix because I am completely fed up of people telling me I’m Ruthed and showing me pics to prove it after I told them I look fine on my screen! Performance with the latest official viewer has been poor lately, I have to try something else. I don’t know if this will help but when I was logged in with Firestorm, it felt better.
However the more shocking news is that I’ve engaged with the Facebook borg! I know, I know, but I figured out that you can create Facebook pages without needing a Facebook profile. Therefore I currently have two Facebook pages, one for me and one for my sim. However a Facebook page is not the same as a profile and people need to be aware of this.
On their wall, Second Life have posted information regarding using pages rather than profiles, as I’ve said before, this information should really have been around earlier. I created a fictional character for Ciaran Laval and a community page for Isle Of Dee. Neither of these are perfect but they seemed the best fit.
Now, from my own observations, pages are limited. I can add other pages as a favourite and they appear in my likes, but I can’t comment away as a page, so in terms of social networking, it’s not ideal. However as I’ve also said before, if you want to social network on Facebook, then you abide by their TOS or risk the consequences of having your profile deleted, those are the rules and whilst I feel they’re missing a trick and that there is potential for allowing avatars to have profiles, Facebook don’t agree with me.
Other people have suggested that if you do have a Facebook profile, you can create a Facebook page and nobody will be able to link the page back to you if you set your settings correctly. There do seem to be advantages to having a Facebook profile, I wanted to install the events app on my page but I was told I needed a Facebook profile to install that, the Second Life Facebook page has the events app installed, so it can be installed on pages.
To be honest, I’m not sure I’d trust Facebook not to change their privacy settings at some point so that page owners are revealed, if they have a profile, but maybe that’s just my deep suspicion of Facebook. I also wouldn’t want to post my Second Life stuff to my friends if I still had a Facebook profile as it would be of no interest whatsoever to them.
However, I’m not surprised that pages don’t have the functionality of profiles, otherwise people would be getting round the Facebook real names TOS by creating pages and doing everything a profile can, so it is understandable that they are limited.
Does this mean I think Facebook aren’t getting too big for their boots and entering areas where they are not welcome? Absolutely not, I still find Facebook comments to be abhorrent and stifling free speech and I still think that Facebook expect people to reveal too much about themselves in a fashion that is neither healthy or natural.
I still maintain that Linden Lab’s Facebook push is arse about face and that they should be pushing Second Life on Facebook, rather than pushing Facebook on Second Life via the message of the day nonsense we’ve had. I still feel Linden Lab should have made a better fist of Avatars United.
I also maintain that it’s an absolute load of rubbish that “Facebook is the best place to find out about cool things going on in Second Life“, as Amanda (you should know better) Linden once claimed. Seriously, that’s such a load of rubbish.
Then there’s the time issue, am I really going to maintain these Facebook pages? I already have multiple blogs, flickr, sim community pages, Twitter and actually going inworld to keep up with, this is another time sink. We’ll see what happens here.
However if you have got the time, you want to engage with the Facebook borg and you have your eyes wide open about the risks and issues, then a Facebook page may well work for you.
If you don’t want to engage with Facebook, then there are sites like 2ndHub, a social networking site that is very much Second Life centric. I haven’t tried this yet, did I mention I have multiple blogs, flickr, Twitter…. yadda yadda yadda. Inara Pey tells me she will be reviewing it soon, so keep an eye on Inara’s blog for a review.
Review posted. 2ndhub not perfect, but oodles of potential, especially in terms of integration. You can “tweet” from SL to the website; there is Flickr / Youtube integration, the ability to manage Groups, etc.
There are some annoyances to the site (what site doesn’t have them?), and I hope to follow-up on things with a interview with the guys behind the site in the new future.
Firestorm / Phoenix: putting your trust in s TPV is risky. However, at least Jessica Lyons has her rl information available and out there, which puts Phoenix/ Firestorm a huge cut above the burned green gem from whence Phoenix grew.
Facebook? “Thhhput!” (and that’s a direct quote from my official spokesperson :).