Mitch Wagner has a blog post up where he explains why he doesn’t go inworld much these days. There is much that can be agreed with, Second Life is time consuming, the less you login, the less interaction you engage in and then when you do login, you wonder what to do.
Over at New World Notes Hamlet has a post on the subject, but inevitably these days seems to think Facebook is the answer, Facebook is not the answer here because the issue is one of time and convenience and whereas those who want quick and easy interaction may well prefer Facebook, that is not a solution for those who prefer 3D virtual worlds or MMORPG’s.
Where Hamlet and Mitch are both correct is with regard to Second Life being more time consuming than other options, however there is no one size fits all solution here because people who are prepared to commit time, want the feature rich experience virtual worlds like Second Life offer, you aren’t getting that from Facebook or Twitter.
One of the reasons I am not overly impressed with Linden Lab’s recent Facebook love in is because they are promting Facebook on Second Life, whereas they should be promoting Second Life on Facebook, the aim should be to show Facebook users that Second Life is a vibrant virtual world experience that can offer experiences that Facebook simply cannot. However what disappoints me most is that Linden Lab do not seem to appear to understand that their own world is social media, they should be working to engage us under the Second Life brand, within the Second Life umbrella of inworld and official forum sites, there are inevitably some areas where they can’t directly host everything, but YouTube and Flickr are good links to Second Life content that can exemplify the inworld experience and can be linked to from the Second Life forums or inworld.
Toxic Menges has a YouTube channel that demonstrates her inworld Machnima work and also links to other work from Inworld Machinma creators, where on the Second Life website do we see goopd promotion of Machinima? Linden Lab should be promoting this kind of work, we should all be able to easily find where this work is being played inworld.
However Machinima, content creation, socialising and building up friendships inworld all take time and there are plenty of Second Life users who are prepared to invest time, Linden Lab should concentrate on these folk, those who are prepared to spend plenty of time with a platform instead of thinking that Facebook has lots of users so that must be the way to go, Facebook and Second Life attract a different kind of user and whereas there is some crossover, there is no one size fits all solution.
Time is a challenge to us all, I wish I could slow it down, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day, but the answers to growing Second Life and improving the experience lie within Second Life itself, they lie in improved communication tools, improved stability, improved inworld tools, improved search, improved communication with Linden Lab but most of all they lie with Linden Lab understanding who their users are and why they engage with the platform, chasing shadows is not the way forward.
Those who don’t want to invest the time, aren’t going to come, people have different work and social schedules, some people like to play a game for ten minutes and move on whereas others are happy to spend several hours online, there are different demographics, no platform really has the ability to keep everyone happy, it’s a complete pipe dream to try and create this utopia.
Second Life is what it is and 3D virtual worlds will always have appeal for a share of the market, they will unlikely have the share of all the market, certainly not for many years to come, Linden Lab should concentrate on the here and now, they have plenty of users and there are plenty more who will enage if the appeal exists, but sending people off to other social networking platforms just means more time spent out of world, the real heart of Second Life beats inworld.