Second Life has been tweaking the user experience, with promises of more to come.

The most recent change has been the log-in screen, with in-house photographer, videographer, tutorial enthusiast, and neon-pink-loving-Torley giving us a picture of an empty, er, virgin land:

My initial reaction was: is it really such a good strategy to show empty sims – I mean, how compelling can that be to the new user? But as always, I’m reminded that not only am I overly fascinated with buttons and overly complex menus, but that I’m generally too geeky to know what the ‘usual user’ wants.

So I took Second Life for a test drive, signing up a friend and sitting at his side as he navigated a bit of the virtual world. Now, he didn’t get his own avatar – we didn’t have a lot of time, so he test drove mine. (Um – whoever that was who I bumped off a cliff, that really wasn’t me).

And on the log-in screen, these new ones, the shiny sparkly ones, he actually went “oooooh!” See, I guess there is something to the idea of being on the froniter – the unexplored, virgin territory and all that. An empty world can be a good thing, can hint at possibilities and exploration.

So we’re surfing around, and as he gets the hang of movement and even camera controls (I tried not to be toooo instructional, but he did pick it up very quickly, and he’s never played a game in his life) he then asks the killer question: “So how do I find people?”

Ick. I need an easier answer to that one. Something a little simpler than a ramble about groups, and green dots, and to not confuse campers with people, and how it takes time to find a cross-section of friends who can sort of ping you about events, and how there are Web sites, and now there’s that Showcase thing. I mean – how do you answer that?

A long time ago I posted that “The World is Not Empty”. And it isn’t. Second Life is much like the real world:

- If you show up at a club at 9 in the morning, don’t judge the club, judge the time you show up at.
- Just LOOK at all the green dots!
- There’s so much conversation going on, so many IMs and people sitting alone when they’re actually chatting, although that begged the question of my friend: then why don’t you just use messenger?

OK, so the problem is, popular places is borked, because green dots don’t mean people, they mean avatars, and half of them can be bots. The event listings are moderately helpful – they show you times and places, although they give no sense of the people who might be there. And locations don’t generally post their hours, as in “Hey, welcome to the club, come back at 10 when there are people here.”

See? It’s about people. And as much as the public channels in things like Warcraft or Tabula Rasa or whatever can be annoying and spammy (you can also turn them off) there’s no sense in Second Life of the ‘chatter’ – a kind of stream of conversation.

I had no problem directing my friend to builds. To neat places to explore. There are tons of tools for that: Web sites, search, whatever. You want new clothes? Easy. You want to find the university sims? Click here. You want to get a sense of what the people are like? Well….find some dots, drop down, chat aimlessly, or maybe try your luck at an event which has little context other than “live music tonight at 8″ and hope for the best.

Oh – and back to the log-in? The folks at the Lab promise that the RSS feed will be up again soon, and that little tiny tiny grid symbol is where you go to find out what’s broken and what the status of the Grid is.