Second Life seems to be developing some very concrete steps to provide its residents a genuine social networks experience.
A few days ago Second Stindberg offered a way to have a look at the beta version of SL Dashboard using this link: https://secure-web2.secondlife.com/my/
It was supposed to be a limited beta, on June 24 an official Second Life blog post said: “right now, only a portion of logged in Residents will be able to try the beta because we are carefully monitoring the load. In the next few days we’ll open the beta to everyone.”
Anyway, the dashboard shows friends and their status (online or not), recent activity, upcoming events, blog feeds, video tutorials, groups, account information, shop information (for virtual land and goods).
As Wagner James Au says on the New World Notes, it is impressive but it would be great to add a group chat function and a feed into Twitter and Plurk.
Dusan Writer posted an detailed analysis of this development. He is very positive, and makes a number of very useful suggestions to improve the Dashboard. One of them is API integration:
API Integration: Let me integrate outside gadgets if I want. Keep them in a nice ‘clean space’ below the fold, but let me pull in a Twitter stream or two if I want, so I can load in a few of the “must follow” SL Twitter feeds. And while we’re at it, throw in a little API OUT so I can send a Twitter notice from this page. We have Twitter integration with Immersive Workspaces and it works like a charm.
Second, I’m thinking here of things like BlogHUDs or Koin-Up maybe. The ability to take photos and post them to your Web profile with cross-posting to Flickr or wherever. The ability to blog status with cross-posting to Posterous or FriendFeed or whatever.
The official Linden blog says:
In future releases, you’ll be able to customize the dashboard with your favorite features and preferences. We’ll make it easier to invite friends and add content from your other social networking sites – and integrate Xstreet shopping with the rest of your web experience.
I think what this new development shows, is that the momentum of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Youtube and the many other social media household names is so strong that they will be integrated soon in the virtual worlds and gaming environments.
Whether we talk about the upcoming virtual world Blue Mars or the Xbox, it seems they all promise to provide access to online social networking – which is far more popular and mainstream than virtual worlds or hardcore gaming.
They will be integrated in this sense that the social media data streams will be integrated in various ways, but also the big fundamental lessons of online networks will be learned, such as the importance of managing your friends groups and events, and the importance of providing intuitive interfaces.
Linden Lab will profit in two ways: enabling a richer user experience will attract more users and make it easier to keep them coming back, and the virtual goods and services business can get a boost because of a clever integration of the land business and XStreet SL.
Roland Legrand
