Following was my response to Wallace Linden and his post about how nifty neat and cool it would be if Second Life could take advantage of all those super-awesome social networks out there. If my voice seems like it’s dripping with sarcasm, um, it is. Read on:
First, let me start by applauding the following (and the more general attempt at a conversation):
And as Web and mobile services continue to work their way into all corners of our lives, these aspects will continue to proliferate — and as they do, we’ll start facing important questions about how we handle these collections of selves. Their answers will do much to determine who we become as the next generation of connected human beings. How we as technology providers handle such questions largely determines what choices we as individuals have open to us. And the choices we make as individuals in these contexts can have a surprising impact on who we are — in “real life” — and who we can become.
If the rest of the post had lifted off of this basic premise, I think we’d be off to a good start. But let’s be clear: this shift into a conversation about linking identities is built on a basic premise – that a move in this direction will make Second Life more appealing to new users, that it will allow Second Life to somehow ‘go viral’ in Facebook, that it will hep facilitate wider adoption of the platform.
While I recognize that the Lab has all kinds of data and ideas on what can improve the platform, the first hour, the user experience, and acknowledges that providing tools and resources to the current user base is important towards facilitating a robust platform, these are all in the broader service of making SL more accessible, more appealing, and larger.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
However, I’m rather stunned that in the service of these kinds of metrics and growth targets that the Lab neglects its larger mission of improving the human condition and in so doing has the potential to dilute the power of its brand in much the same way that AOL diluted the power of its brand in favor of becoming that “other thing” – it needed to be less community and more media, less niche and more mass market, less craft and more consumption.
Second Life is at a similar crossroads. In the effort to make the transition that AOL was not able to accomplish, the Lab risks making the same mistakes, and in trying to conform with what you perceive as broader cultural and digital trends may risk leaving behind a model for our lives on-line that is a welcome counter-balance to all the Facebook pokes and endless circling, seething masses that are the tribe of social media.
The Ultimate API
Second Life has, I believe, the most robust and stunning API on the planet today. While the server itself might not be “open”, the APIs built on top of that provide a range of tools for expression, connection and sharing unparalleled in any online environment.
Think Twitter – a simple source, an API, and a robust ecosystem of value creation. Similarly, SL has created an API that lets us train, act, create, play, dance, listen to music, make love, collaborate, teach.
With the Media API, HTTP-IN and other tools, Second Life is increasingly INFORMING the Web rather than being informed BY the Web. We’ll start to see data on a Web site and be able to click through that data to its 3D representation in SL.
Reality will increasingly embed sensors, feed data through Web interfaces INTO SL, where it will be responded to sending data back out.
This is a position of privilege. Second Life succeeds as an API because it was not informed by the same protocols that drive today’s Web 2.0/profitless mobs – it was informed by a system of code, governance and tools which have allowed a deep exploration of new modalities for living our digital lives.
As such, the interlinking concepts of governance, identity, and commerce have created a powerful force which does not need to “fit in” with wider cultural and digital trends. Rather, SL is in a position to inform those trends, to change them, to show how our lives online can be rich in creativity and connection.
To take the meme that “the network is everything” at face value simply demonstrates that you’ve taken on, in a non-critical way, the thinking of the Kapor/Kelly crowd, something that surprises me after the often insightful thoughts you put forth in your book with Ludlow on governance and identity.
The network is NOT everything. My individuality still has more power than the collective. I am not part of a hive, although it increasingly feels like technology is being crafted so that we feel compelled to be part of it, to conform to the social Web 2.0 mentality which tells us that we need to be plugged in, connected, networked if we’re gonna “get it”…..while relegating a more individualistic approach to our lives and humanity to the trash bin of fading concepts.
Second Life was never built for mass conversations or networks – just look at groups! It kept growing and expanding and being a source of incredible creativity in spite not being linked into that neural flow of data and social conversations which we’re all supposed to be part of.
And yet – well, and yet history is not a foregone conclusion. And we may yet discover that building technology towards this vision of the networked collective got it all wrong, and we’ll start clawing our way back to our humanity.
Identity
So – first, this idea of linking to identity is to facilitate tapping into the viral power of social networks, and it’s meant to make people feel somehow ‘better’ about coming into SL. As if somehow people just WON’T come in if they can’t use their real names. As if in a world of Twitter handles, anonymous blog posts and fake mySpace pages we’re suddenly all terrified of digital spaces where we have to put our real life names in our profiles rather than in a corporate database somewhere.
And if you can’t figure out how to be viral without linking to real identity – well, it’s over then. There is no power left in the plant.
But let’s just pretend that you’re not motivated by these things. Let’s pretend you think of this like some kind of new “feature” (which is, um, highly unlikely).
If that’s the case, then let’s think about this from the perspective of what we mean by identity in a virtual world and use a little more imagination and foresight than you seem to be able to muster. I mean – look, everyone gets it – identity is all over the place, social media is a seething cauldron, let’s tap the wider wave of the world blah blah.
An avatar is, I believe, something different.
First, an avatar (in the long view) does not necessarily equate on a one-to-one relationship to a person. No, I’m not talking about sharing avatars. I’m talking about avatars that will increasingly become automated. There is already some interesting work in-world on using avatars as a repository and channel for information, linking our avatars to wider systems. This “oh, it will merely be optional” linking to ‘identity’ sets up a mind-set in which we start to think of avatars as expressions solely of ourselves (or one aspect or persona) while neglecting the longer-term power of avatars to begin to exist semi-autonomously and to have variable presence.
I’d like it for my avatar to signal when I’m only partly “there”, I’d like it to be a repository of sorts, I’d like it to fade in and out as my attention does, I’d like it to sometimes link to my real life facial expressions and to sometimes be masked by clever AOs.
This rush to link avatars to “identity” funnels us into a way of thinking about avatars that saps them of their potential magic.
This magic also works on the level of heuristics. My avatar, to me, is a representation of a particular mental modelling of the world, a way of interacting with information, and a mind-set through which I view creative work and value generation. Avatars increasingly become representational not of the “person” but rather of a particular data-rich persona which signals to communities the cultural and values-driven perspectives which we enact.
Again, the rush to link avatars to “identity” saps them of their power to signal the creative domains from which we tackle problems as other users bypass this signalling capacity in order to find the short cut to “real life name” with all the promise it seems to hold of “oh, ok, now I know you”.
These may seem like esoteric notions – but let’s look at the 5-year time horizon not next year. In 5 years, Facebook won’t even be around, and in 5 years someone, somewhere, will realize the power of the avatar as an interface device.
In fact, I’m of the belief that the avatar will be perhaps the most powerful interface device on the planet in 7-10 years or sooner. And we’ll all look back and say “Aw, could have been Second Life avatars, but they did that Facebook linking thing and missed the point in their rush to go viral.”
See, I think you’ve made more than one mistake in how you’re thinking about this: one, no, the network is NOT everything, bigger networks are NOT de facto BETTER; two, real identity may provide short-term platform gains but you’ve given no apparant thought to how it would impact the power of the API, and three, you state the following:
The thing not to miss here — and it bears stating despite how obvious it sounds — is what all these online “identities” have in common. At the center of them all, the hub that ties all these personae together, is the very real, non-virtual, analog and offline “you.” Whether the connections are public or not, your Second Life avatar, your World of Warcraft toon, your Facebook profile, your LinkedIn employment history — all of these and more are just different aspects of a single entity: the person reading these words. They are all already connected to each other, via you.
And that may be true in many social spaces on the Web. But I’d beg to differ with it being how we think about our digital “selves” – because it is not ME that links them together. It may be a common element but the fact that there IS a common element and that common element is ME does not lend those social networks their coherence, nor does the explicit and visible linking of that “me” thing in the middle lead to a clear advantage.
First, our online persona is linked by all kinds of systems, data, sub-routines and procedures which are increasingly more powerful than the ME behind those personas.
Second, there is no clear reason why the linking of these things together should happen, either philosophically nor commercially, and I’d argue that so long as every Web click and Google search is being mined for my behavioral tendencies, I have every reason NOT to participate in this cross-linking, even though I’m often helpless to stop it.
In fact, I would argue for the opposite of what you said:
The thing not to miss here — and it bears stating despite how obvious it sounds — is what all these online “identities” have in common. It is that technology increasingly wants to connect the very real and personal YOU behind the avatar, the Warcraft character, or the GMail I.D. into ever larger networks of data, links and connections. The offline “you” SHOULD be scared – because technology is taking no prisoners in its relentless effort to sap the exploratory and creative potential of things like avatars in order to make them conform to the wider economic imperatives of this “network”.
Second Life works as an API because with fairly rare (and usually disastrous) exceptions, the Lab focuses on keeping the code running and not upsetting the delicate balance of governance, policy and economics which, combined, has created a unique vantage point from which to view the many negative and frightening trends going on in the social media tidal pool outside the garden walls.
At the very least, the Lab should acknowledge that it is the resident’s use of the API that have led to the profound possibilities that is the Grid. Any attempt to restructure the server code with such a short-sighted view of the so-called joys and benefits of social media while neglecting the deeper potential for SL to inform rather than be informed by these wider trends is, in my opinion, a mistake.
Leave it to the Residents to make whatever links they like, give them APIs into the group system or the first life tab – but don’t impose some kind of optional new field for the ‘real me’ without realizing that it has the potential to sap SL of the very things that CAN make it a place from which we can improve the human condition, anonymous avatars and all.
I should just comment on something I didn’t touch on – which is that I think part of the Lab’s long-term end-game here is the idea that the Linden can become the Web’s micro-currency, that to make that happen those who want to receive that currency (to read a newspaper article or buy a widget in Facebook) will need assurance that the purchasers are linked to some form of authentication.
Idle speculation, maybe, and it doesn’t undermine my central points I don’t think.
Great article Dusan. Too bad LL doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks. They don’t use SL, They don’t want to be part of SL. They do not know anything about SL once you go inside. Not a clue about how the SL business environment runs and how SL stays alive for all those reasons you pointed out.
LL does not eat their own dog food. They are blind.
Religious organizations do not like Second Life. Why? Because in Second Life everyone is God. So one distinct possibility is that Kingdon is being paid (or on a self appointed religious mission) to destroy Second Life to get rid of it. Just one theory. I’m sure certain maniacal invisible deity polygamist extremist cults want to see SL gone because of the concentration of LGBT in SL.
But there is something more precise and to the point. You really touched on the core problem there at the end.
“Leave it to the Residents ”
People that are used to controlling their domain and that do not get their sexual rocks off unless they do directly micro manage and control every aspect of their domain do not want to concede it is the residents that make the wheels turn.
And if they can’t get their way they will destroy it. The selection of a CEO was critical and sealed the fate of SL. Pick a control freak and guess what is going to happen? Too late now. It is all a done deal. LL is going to drive this train into the wall at the end of the tracks like Runaway Train.
http://www.alaskarails.org/sf/film/runaway-train/rt5.jpg
Given the current growth rate the alternatives are on track to overtake and bypass SL in a year anyway. What really needs to happen is for a team to get the venture capital needed to make a full bore drive to beat LL at this game so people can make the jump. Blue Mars isn’t the solution. It is looking like Open Sim may be. Everyone can run their own sims or have one hosted cheaply. What is missing is central asset management and the problem of assets migrating from region to region. We really need someone to form a team that includes people that know how to get VC and then maybe we can solve this riddle. I wouldn’t mind working on the challenge but I am not the type that knows how to get the investments.
Again great article. Too bad you posted it in one of LL’s little gaming threads where they solicit responses and in the long run cherry pick out the sycophantic replies to justify their decision they made in the face of logical opposition. Same old game. We see this game over and over from LL.
Excellent comments.
Personally, I would hate being required to change Riven’s name to my real name. I’d be very likely to leave SL if that became the norm.
SL residents are a mixed bag – I love having an online identity that is more interesting than my real one. However, it would be useful to have another avatar with my real name that I could use for professional purposes.
My boss hated having an avatar with a fictitious name, and eventually she managed to create an alt who has almost her real name. If she’d been offered the option of having her real name, I have no doubt she’d have preferred that.
I pretty much live on SL. My boss has come in about 5 times, and sees SL as a potentially-interesting platform for occasional meetings and professional conferences.
I’m convinced that FaceBook requiring real names and deleting avatar accounts is mostly about monetization. When you are charging people advertising rates that are based on your large user base, they are quite likely to balk at paying for users who are fictitious people.
LL *does* have a dilemma. For the sake of their enterprise customers, they have to allow and promote RL naming, crosslinking to other identities, and a general RL invasion of SL. As you nail, this threatens SL’s brand, and decimates their ability to improve the human condition through transcending real life.
I continue to think that the solution to this is a separate reality-only grid. LL would have to provide some sort of very primitive teleport between that grid and SL … difficult but not unsolvable. The software platform would have to be the same, except for an application configuration/permissions matrix that would be invisible to residents.
I’m not wedded to this solution, it’s just the best one I can think of.
This has the added benefit of giving Frank Ambrose something new to do! Since planned concurrency has failed to materialize, I’m sure he’s beginning to chomp at the bit, having gotten the grid redesign well in hand. Give him the challenge of deploying/maintaining two production grids … and, of course, a bottle of valium.
Why can’t it be about choice? If I would like to use my real name- let me use it. Like on Twitter, I can use a real name or be creative with my name and then place my real name in my bio if I choose.
It’s all about WHY people are in SL. It is an environment, and it is as diverse as our homes or communities. We don’t have to chase OUT anyone wanting to gather with others for a business meeting, rally or even a worship service. For those in SL just for business use, I believe it would be helpful to have that choice of using one’s own name.
For those wanting to express a more creative self, it is simple in this wonderfully rich environment! For those who are trying to hide form another life and other people….well they are probably the one’s on Twitter trying to get us all to whiten our teeth and follow them with their avatar of Brad Pitt!
Perhaps I am naive but this does not seem to be such a difficult problem. Let the people decide for themselves how they will use the environment and the account they create–as long as LL can acquire and verify real world contact information if needed.
Im going to whiten my teeth now
Gina – you hit the nail on the head really. Because I’m not advocating for no choice, but rather a more profound way of thinking about these issues of identity, names and authentication. In the rush to link everything to names and Facebook accounts, the Lab is missing the opportunity to redefine entirely the concept of an identity portfolio based in the avatar and before you know it, we’ll be facing a Metaplace log-in where you choose Facebook, Google or Twitter as your log-in and everything gets scraped out to the data farm cloud in the sky.
Instead, the Lab should lay down some firm principles and protect its core values, and then open up the system to an API that allows different organizations and users to construct different ways to authenticate and name.
Why should this be a fiat from on high where you tag another field instead of doing what SL does best – letting the users decide, code and create new models for identity and social connectivity?
“Religious organizations do not like Second Life. Why? Because in Second Life everyone is God.”
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. I doubt any serious religious organizations think about SL at all. Being God in a cartoon world? Whoopdedoo. SL has a lot of uses, but being a god is hardly one that tranfers back to RL in any meaningful form.
I can think of a lot of things about SL that are harmful, but the notion of people having too much real, actual power is hardly one of them. They may delude themselves into thinking they do, but they’re free to be wrong.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dusanwriter: Linking Second Life to real names http://ow.ly/10pwn My response to Wallace Linden @wallacelinden…
Great post Dusan. While I agree on most of your consideration, I disagree on one key point.
Linking Second Life to real life names is intended as an OPTION available to those who want to use it. Pseudonimity is another OPTION, available to those who want to use it.
I think having the option of using one or more pseudonymous alternative persona for online activities is a fundamental right. For those who have not noticed it, we are already heading toward a benevolent (?) dictatorship of the nanny state, with Big Brothers who claim the right to know everything about us-the-sheeple and control every detail of our lives. I don’t like this, I will always support the right to anonimity / pseudonimity, and I will be the first to stand up against those who want to take it away.
But we are not talking of removing the option of pseudonimity. We are talking of adding the option of using real names. I am one of those who think having less options is always bad, and having more options is always good.
While I support those who want to stay pseudonymous, I am not interested in pseudonimity myself. So as soon as the option of using my real name in SL, and linking it (if I want) to my Facebook id, Openid, Twitter id, etc., I will use it.
How does anonymity improve the human condition?
Anonymity is great in that it makes us feel safe and protected. But at the same time it also makes us appear to be creepy and secretive.
Do the majority of humans prefer anonymity when online?. Does Linden Lab want to appeal to a minority or a majority?.
At the moment Second Life doesn’t encourage people to be themselves. The virtual world is still being seen as a place to escape.
If Linden Lab has come to the conclusion that the majority of folks aren’t wanting anonymity then why is it so wrong for Linden Lab to try to appeal to the majority by taking steps to change its image?.
I personally dislike anonymity, but that doesn’t mean that if you tell me your real name then I’m going to magically feel at ease. A person is much more than just a name.
But I’m in support of anything Linden Lab does that may help to them to shake of the bad image their product has.
Don’t we all want to be proud of using Second Life?
This isn’t about having the option to anonymity, if it were all they’d do would be to improve the capabilities of the first life tab. However once you link that anonymous name to your facebook profile, as long as you’re not breaching the facebook tos by having false details, the anonymity is gone. That’s where the concern lies.
The idea that knowing someone’s real name makes them more trustworthy has been disproven for centuries. There’s no need for all and sundry to know everyone else’s name, location, age, gender.
Plenty of people have joined Second Life because as it name implies, it’s escapism from first life. The same goes for those playing World of Warcraft, it kinda kills the buzz when you’re sent in a fear loop by some thirteen year old from the same city as you, you don’t need to know that, it adds nothing to the experience.
However our avatars do have an identity, this seems to be the point being missed in all of this, some are an extenision of their real self and others are creating themselves all over again but they already have an identity, let those identities flourish, don’t stifle them.
[...] At the center of them all, the hub that ties all these personae together, is the very real, non-virt… [...]
I speculated about the L$ to become the metaverse’s microcurrency (and beyond), and SL becoming the metaverse-backbone in my recent blogpost here: http://stindberg.blogspot.com/2010/01/many-facoes-of-peter-stindberg-across.html
One solution has not been mentioned yet (I think) – provided LL will give us an actual choice. All the mentioned problems could be avoided if SL would allow to share inventory among multiple avatars – and those mulitple avatars could even be online at the same time. A while ago I created an alt account with as close I could get to my realname. But he lacks all the nice and useful stuff I have in my inventory. Why not give this kind of accounts full access to a shared inventory? If you need your RL-avatar, you can, and if you want to use your dream-avatar you can as well?
@Ciaran – Plenty of people have joined Second Life because as it name implies, it’s escapism from first life.
And plenty of people have joined it for other reasons. I understand that many SL users are interested in escapism from first life, but I am not interested in it myself.
@Giulio: Your post sounds reasonable to me. EXCEPT … look at the post following yours, from ‘God knows’. This is the phenomenon I’m worried about. Many people who are using their real identities within SL will feel uneasy being around anonymous avatars, feeling they are “creepy and secretive”. There will be both inworld social pressure to share RL identity, and RL pressure on LL to eliminate anonymity. “Serious” sims will begin to close to anonymous avatars, and voila, there are two classes within SL. “Real” people, and a shadowy underworld of less privileged anonymous avatars.
Dusan, I think your urging LL to manage identities so as to resist marketing pressure to tie our avatars to our credit cards is excellent. But even if LL does so, I fear that a massive influx of “Real” avatars may change SL society irrevocably, so that people will regard anonymity solely as a shield behind which to be sleazy, and not as the passkey for personal re-invention that it truly is.
@Nika: I share my RL identity, but I have no issue at all with anonymous avatars.
Some of my best SL friends are “digital persons” who prefer using nyms. In some cases I know their RL identity (and keep it secret), and in other cases I don’t. In some cases I know and understand the reasons why they prefer using nyms, and in other cases, well, it is not really my business.
I am hardly the only one with a live-and-let-live approach, and in my experience the co-existence and even friendship between different types of users is perfectly possible.
When they introduced voice in SL, many users were scared that this intrusion of RL into SL would destroy the magic world of SL, that non-voice users would be excluded… and these things did not happen. We just learned to live-and-let-live in SL. I hope we will learn to live-and-let-live in RL too.
Giulio, non voicers are often excluded. Go visit the ahern Welcome Area and you’ll see the divide. Although the relationship between both parties isn’t necessarily hostile. The text chatters are the audience for the more extroverted voice chatters. But just like the divide between the actors on a stage and their audience – there’s rarely any communication between both parties. If a text chatter were to attempt to cross the divide then they’re often treated as hecklers.
Nika is right in that anonymous avatars will be ignored in future, but I don’t really see this as being a bad thing.
I think the inherit problem here is that the Lab thinks of themselves as a web page where linking to facebook and real life identities explains why people arent flooding into SL right now. The thing Dusan reminds me of when he brings up AOL, is that SL is more like a web BROWSER and not a WEB PAGE like Facebook. Facebook could be considered a large Sim in the terms of Second Life. When I’m browsing the web off a browser theres no way for anyone to interupt me or contact me or “spy” on me as I view Amazon.com or whatnot, in Second Life, if it ever becomes mainstream and people can find out who is who, your experience will change. Imagine having to deal with all your old High School alumni requesting you on Second Life, potentially invading your “internet” experience. I don’t know if that makes sense, so sorry if it doesn’t
My mind is usually mush after reading a Dusan post 
From the perspective of business users, the current avatar name system leaves much to be desired. For example, I cannot tell people to friend me as “Maria Korolov” — I have to explain that my SL name is “Marie Kolache.” I have no connection to “Marie Kolache” — it was a random name that was as close as I could get to my real name at the time. I don’t like getting messages addressed to “Marie Kolache” or seeing “Marie Kolache” come up in chat transcripts.
That lack of choice in the name bothers me almost as much as the fact that I can’t use my real name. If I wanted to create a separate identity, I would want to be able to choose my own name.
I do see benefits to anonymity. For example, on a dating site, I can see people using pseudonyms to avoid unwanted attention or stalkers. If I was playing a role playing game and didn’t want sore losers tracking me down at home after I’d killed them, I’d want a pseudonym instead.
If I was starting up a side business, and didn’t want my boss to know I was moonlighting, I might want to use a pseudonym.
These are all rational, valid reasons for pseudonyms. Not all people using pseudonyms are “weird and creepy.”
Personally, however, I prefer to be in environments were people use their real names. And I would probably hold more meetings in Second Life if I were able to use my own name as my primary identity.
If my vote counts here, I’d vote for choice.
- Maria Korolov
Editor, Hypergrid Business
I admit, I also riffed on the concept here ( http://tinyurl.com/yaaswmq ), but that’s a point I didn’t make in my post. If it’s about the choice? I’m fine with people having the choice. Right now, as it is, people can list whatever RL information they want on their First Life page, and it would only take adding another tab or so that said *Network* or something, where one could check off their contact info on various other platforms.
I just don’t want it to be *mandatory*. Because I don’t *want* Em connected to the rest of my netlife *unless I want that*, and above all, I don’t want her connected to my *real* life (she’s already close to me as it is).
If it’s my choice to reveal or not? Wonderful. If SL is going to evolve into MySecondFaceLinkTwitterBookLifeSpace? Count me out.
Well, I too, Dusan, am very doubtful about the main theoretical idea that linking to social networking sites is a good plan. If I am ejected from Facebook, I will not care a damn, there are so many of these sites… who really cares…..but only one SL.
I am very suspicious of data mining as I am of ’stalkers’…fans or fanatics…. I would rather keep some privacy if possible.
In a recent survey on NWN, two thirds of people agreed.
I think, however, that there are some very naive comments posted above. RL names, like voice, like age authentication, are all parts of the control mechanism that LL wants to maintain power.
Luckily we can all jump ship to another VW when they really lose the plot….. even if we have to leave hair and shoes behind.
“Religious organizations do not like Second Life.”
Ann, if that is so, there certainly seem to be enough of them setting up shop in SL anyway.
And on a similar track…
I don’t know if God knows is a LL troll or just a snoopy control freak, but if he or she had been following the thread over at Wallace Linden’s blog on this subject, he/she would know that sentiment is running about 3:1 against RL name linking to SL, which places him/her in the minority. And I agree, SL shouldn’t cater to a minority, especially a minority of snoops.
Can I just say that I’m amused by the irony of somebody putting “God knows..” in the name field in order to argue against anonymity?
mcgurk,
I’m fully aware that I’m a minority in Second Life. But I do feel that I’m one of the majority on the outside of Second Life that dislikes anonymity within a social setting.
As for being a snoopy control freak – I only care who people are when they’re try to befriend me. Is it too much to ask to want to know who somebody before answering *their* personal questions?
I’m tired of seeing people using the avatar as a trojan horse to intrude into other people’s lives. I’m not the one who is doing the snooping. I’m one of the Trojans that’s sick of the damn Greeks and their sneaky ways!
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!
and god damn you typos!
It is important, I think, not to mix up accounts and avatars, otherwise it is easy to lose the sense of anything that the Lab is talking about – unless they too have mixed them up.
I like Gina’s point – let it be the choice of the residents whether to link to RL names or not. Some of us may not mind being RL identified. The rest of us should be free to choose NOT to be, so let that be the option, not the default. After all, it shows respect for the residents’ privacy.
I no longer exist in SL as Zendra. I was there for over a year. I mistakenly told friends that I am a published author and magazine writer in RL. I was hounded for my real name, writing tips, money loans,an address where manuscripts could be sent for my perusal and offers of marriage in SL within 10 minutes of them believing I might be an Important Person. I am not that. I learned quickly that most of my ‘friends’ only hung out with me because of my possible fame. I regretted EVER telling anyone the truth. Some of us want an anonymous avatar so that we can explore another world, and friendships that are fulfilling for our own selves, without RL baggage.
Maria, I love how you start off your reply with the “From the perspective of business users” and then slip into talking about consumer products.
Your blog, HyperGrid Business is badly researched and misleading. Which is not your fault, as I think the blame is with Linden Lab. It’s like the solution providers, suddenly jumping into being “experts” on training, corporate use etc. From a recent conversation with one provider, they pointed out that 99% of the, so called, Solution Providers, don’t have any experience or clients in the corporate arena.
IF you’re such a guru, why have you neglected to mention companies being able to acquire their own surname? Which matches the email system in most companies e.g.
My work Avatar in Second Life:
David.Stephens (firstname) Verizon (surname)
My work email:
david.stephens@verizon.com
Shock! Horror! this option has been available for years. The problem is, most solution providers and so called business experts, don’t have the revenues to buy their own business surname. Which is another issue all in itself.
If I’m attending a business meeting, it’s on my company’s dime, not my own personal play time. Therefore, I would expect to represent that company, not me. Use your alternative name for your own privacy, on your own personal time. The split between personal and business works well. I do it, what’s the issue? I have a business email account and a hotmail account for personal stuff.
The interesting thing, it looks like this is an alternative option, not a requirement.
The problem I see, Linden Lab are not communicating the difference between companies using the SL platform for their own private meetings and projects VS people who have set up business in SL for personal gain and social interaction.
Mark Wallace has stirred up a hornets nest, or was that the plan all along?
What?
LL trying to have its cake and eat it too? “Everybodies welcome at Tommy’s Holiday Camp”
Just pay at the door.;)
@Ann Otoole…perfectly said!
@Zendra Whitfield…While I’m certainly not in a position to have people hounding me because of what they feel I might be able to do *for them*.
I too, choose to remain totally anonymous…just no way of knowing who might choose to come knocking on ones Real Life door.
Last I heard *freeze, eject, ban* doesn’t work in RL.
Brinda,
Seems some people want anonymity on the internet because of the anonymity on the internet.