The first time I heard of Avatar Social Network was due to a forum post over at SLUniverse asking for feedback on the site:
“So there is this new website that is similar to the Facebook concept, only it offers a lot more, it has an “Activity Reward” system and doesn’t require any RL information, it is built for Second Life, Inworldz, Avination, There.com, IMVU and other virtual worlds’ residents.
Avatar Social Network
Take a look, tear it apart and tell me what you think.”
People told Arkad exactly what they think and at times it wasn’t pretty, nor were Arkad’s responses. One big concern was who the hell are you? Fair question. Things could have been worse for Arkad, he could have taken his question to Second Citizen MKII, where people also would have told him what they think.
Personally I think Arkad is missing a trick or two, he could have gone beyond the Second Life style virtual worlds and also invited users from World Of Warcraft, Eve-Online etc. and maybe even entitled the site Avatars United, that would have been catchy ….. oh wait!
However moving on, what of the site itself? Well for a start it seems active, there are blog posts, discussions, videos, photos and there’s a way to earn a small amount of Linden Dollars via a rewards scheme, although I’m not sure exactly how that works.
However the most interesting looking section are the pages, These are basically areas where places can advertise events and sales to users, an example being the Equilibrium Nightclub page. This is a trick I’ve long felt Second Life has been missing with their social media stream, the ability for groups or sims to advertise their wares on a page. People complain about inworld search, this is an area where a social media stream can be to the advantage of everyone, people can easily find updates on their favourite store, sim, club, art gallery, reading group etc.
However for that to work people need to keep those pages updated and that’s where the challenge lies for any social venture, people need to have the time to engage with it.
I do wish this venture good luck but I would like to see an about page there with a little more information about the site and its aims. However it is early days, so we’ll see how it grows and if it does grow, we’ll see how it scales because how it scales will be a very important test.
This sort of site certainly won’t appeal to everybody, but the concept isn’t a bad one at all.
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