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”

Marketplace maturity ratings off to shaky start

The new marketplace maturity ratings system, as announced here in the merchants round table on the official forum has got off to a shaky start, the first shaky start being moving the discussion thread to the merchants roundtable, because unless Linden Lab have changed something, plenty of merchants won’t even have access to that forum…..ah someone has their eye on the ball, since I first posted this and people mentioned it being in the rountable, someone at Linden Lab has sensibly moved the discussion back to the commerce forum where people do have access.  Another part of the shaky start being people wondering why their items have been set to a certain maturity level, general, moderate or adult being the levels.

This is a sensible approach from Linden Lab, maturity ratings on the marketplace should match those inworld, so this is a sensible move. This really should have happened long ago, but one wonders whether Linden Lab departments actually converse with each other, not only because this change has been brought in because of the arrival of teens on the grid, meaning it really should have happened prior to the grid merge, but also because the maturity ratings appear to be different to those inworld in terms of content. Continue reading “Marketplace maturity ratings off to shaky start”

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”

2011 – Linden Lab really need to listen to their users

2011 promises to be an interesting year for Second Life, a new CEO, Mesh, LL finally looking at inworld activities other than shopping if their blog post about games in Second Life is anything to go by.

The Linden Department of public works, who don’t get anywhere near enough credit, have been quietly going about their business of installing switches on the railway network known as the SLRR, as explained here by Michael Linden.

These are the sort of posts we should see more of, more what’s happening inworld, more on developments, more on what people who don’t want to run a business but want to come here and have fun can do, this is the sales pitch, this is where marketing can triumph. Continue reading “2011 – Linden Lab really need to listen to their users”

2010 Reviewed

As the new year approaches and we all get ready to look forward, it’s time to look back on a contentious, frustrating and disappointing year for Second Life. However there were highs as well as lows. This really was a topsy turvy year. This will be a fairly long post, I will warn you of that now, it will also miss some important subjects as my time is restricted, feel free to add your own highs and lows in the comments.

January

We were greeted with a very chirpy blog post from CEO Mark Kingdon. The post looked backwards and forwards and talked of the need to get users to that moment where they really embrace Second Life faster, by the end of the year we were still waiting for that moment, proving just how difficult a step it us but Linden Lab have made some progress there. Continue reading “2010 Reviewed”

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