Twitter + Second Life = Spontaneous Web Meetspace
Duncan Riley
33 comments »
We’ve been rather harsh in our coverage of Second Life in the past, the sad truth being that this year Second Life has provided a range of tabloid fodder that we’ve seen fit to print.
Of late our coverage has started to change. The initial rush of “build it and they’ll come” corporatism has given way to something with more useful substance. Companies including IBM, Cisco and Amazon are now using Second Life as a corporate collaboration space, and conferences such as the Metanomics Series are bringing serious discussions on the benefits of virtual worlds to the virtual space.
Voice came to Second Life in early August, and although it wasn’t widely popular, particularly with old-time Second Life users, it radically changed Second Life in terms of functionality.
Lately I’ve discovered the benefits of voice in Second Life in its ability to be used as a spontaneous web meetup space. Last Saturday night I noticed that Australia’s answer to Robert Scoble (in a good way) Microsoft’s Nick Hodge was in Second Life chatting to The Podcast Network’s Cameron Reilly via Twitter. I jumped into Second Life to join the conversation, making it the three of us. I Twittered my presence and provided a link. Within 30 minutes three had blown out to around 15 people, or 20 different people over 3 hours. With voice in Second Life we discussed a variety of topics, from Second Life itself, to Web 2.0, politics and the environment.
The natural comparison is to the conference facility on Skype, but as a long term Skype user who built a startup that relied on Skype I’ve long known that any more than 4-5 people on a Skype conference call is a recipe for unusable. Second Life on the other hand never skipped a beat at 15-20 people. The visualizations and point of reference speech (SL delivers audio from the point of reference, so if the avatar is to your left you hear the voice from the left of your headset) made for a workable meetspace.
The ability to join and discuss anything in Second Life delivers something between a Barcamp or Podcamp, and a discussion at your local bar (or pub) amongst friends. I’ve read elsewhere suggestions that people who spend time in Second Life are sad; to that I can only respond: married with children. Whilst my wife was catching the latest episodes of America’s Next Top Model (streamed over the home network on a Zensonic Z500…which is probably pretty geeky) and my son was asleep I participated in a virtual recreation of many a good blog meetup or barcamp, and better still it was spontaneous. Over time more will see these benefits in Second Life and other virtual worlds as a useful meetspace. No longer is it necessary to hold a discussion in person in a real world meeting venue when you can have the same discussion via Second Life, at no cost and with virtual reach.
I wonder if the deaf community on second life have an issue with the audio component, the few that I chatted with last night on SL did.
Of course there is the whole the audio destroys the avatar’s persona debate as well.
I’m just waiting for a SL 2.0 with a better interface.
@Gary, take a look at the new SL viewer that Electric Sheep just announced. It isn’t ‘SL 2.0′ but it certainly looks like ‘SL experience 2.0.’
http://tinyurl.com/2ktj5m
Gary. I know that voice has certainly changed the dynamic in some group situations where some do and others don’t have voice. This is a fact regardless of whether you can hear or not and is largely a matter of people thinking about others. Inclusion shouldn’t be disregarded just because it’s a virtual world.
Dave
I would have loved to take part in that discussion, perhaps you could arrange to do this again, and send out an invitation to open discussion once a week here on TC.
Best regards
Mads
I’m also waiting on a better, more usable interface. I’d also love to see the learner’s curve adjusted a bit so that new users aren’t so confused as to what they are supposed to do in the game. I think it has great potential, but fear that SL 2.0 might just be accomplished by a completely different company in another virtual world.
The best way to find out about these SL meetups is to be on Twitter. People will twitter that they are going inworld, and a gathering will form.
If you drop by TPN HQ in SL during the Australian night time, you’re sure to find people there. I’m writing this comment while at TPN HQ. There are 12 of us here now. Many people are using the voice feature.
The TPN HQ is located here:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Co.....ond%20Life
@ gary, that’s an interesting observation. on the flipside, i know visually impaired people who are quite happy to have an option for them.
overall, i find that people are overwhelmingly considerate about using the voice feature in SL. i have often seen a room full of voice chatters switch back to type when someone without that option joined the group. because voice changes the dynamic in a room so drastically, people tend to be hyper-aware of who does and doesn’t have the voice indicator dot floating over their head.
that being said, most people i know who have been in SL as long as me (nearly two years now) prefer to type still, for a myriad of reasons. it seems people are more comfortable with voice either in small conversations with good friends or in a large conference situation, but not for hanging out and meeting random people.
nice to see SL finally starting to garner some good press. i know so many amazing artists, programmers and designers there, and they deserve some coverage.
You are mistaken. Voice is wildly popular in SecondLife. Huge percentage of active users.
Even companies like Cisco enjoys it a lot for virtual meeting on SL.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
I work in the videogame space, and the people I work with and myself often do something similar. Whenever we need to have an impromtu meeting with more than just a couple people, rather than going to the trouble of setting up a conference call, we’ve found its faster, easier, and cheaper to just all hop into an online game via Xbox Live.
We can talk through whatever work issues we need to talk through, but also casually race a few laps, or whatever the case may be. Works really well.
“… the sad truth being that this year Second Life has provided a range of tabloid fodder that we’ve seen fit to print.”
This is the internet. You aren’t printing a damned thing.
oh wait, I’ve been banned from TC, sorry I forgot.
This is a great social capability. Interesting that Vista isn’t supported yet in second life. The ramifications of a new operating systems….how it makes a great deal of work for so many smaller companies.
So is anyone going to buy Windows XP from Microsoft and continue to support it?
I always hated upgrading the whole operating system.
Here is another interesting take on this topic:
http://www.informationweek.com.....nd_li.html
You’re right Duncan, you guys have been harsh about Second Life!
But seriously, the whole corporate interest thing might not have worked out the first time around, but it did provide for some interesting experimentation, that will no doubt bode well for future developments.
I personally think that 3d worlds like Second Life and There are edging towards a point where they’ll either merge with or integrate into micro-blogging services and social media & social networking venues.
It’s a paradigm our primitive brains seem to be most comfortable with…
Next time IT bubble bursts, all tech companies will transcend to second life.
VRWorkplace is developing a workplace in Second Life. Eliminating distance within global workforces and remote workers. As a former outsourcing exec (US/India) this would have helped me tremendously.
I ended up at the SL TPN HQ last night after getting sick of everyone twittering about it and wanting a piece of the action. Never really “got” SL - never managed to get off Orientation Island, but with help through Twitter I managed to end up at the right place and get set up. Didn’t have a mic, so couldn’t contribute to conversations - but all the peeps using mics were kind enough to also respond to my chats - either using audio or text chat.
But I still feel weird about using voice chat in team fps games …
This is how we will hold our board meetings next year!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
I support this merger as long as I don’t get hit by flying penises that abound in SL.
There.com has had voice since 2003.
Second Life - Virtual Worlds. What a turd.
This ‘meeting up’ business will surely never be as efficient as either:
(a) Video Conferences - almost as good as meeting up.
(b) Meeting up - First life style.
Second Life is to Webcams what those hilarious ‘now turn the page’ online magazines are to websites.
My experience with Voice in SL has been sadly disappointing: the few times I’ve turned it on just to see what it was like, my speakers were assaulted with a barrage of bad language and sexual explicitness.
@iHero: SL does work on Vista now, I know players who use it, I think Lindenlabs are simply saying that it’s not supported yet so they don’t have to provide tech support. The near-impossibility of getting any kind of tech support for SL is in my opionion, its biggest drawback, and the biggest obstacle to major corporate participation.
@iHero concur with Karl. I’m running SL on Vista. Been working for a few months.
@Karl - come to TPN HQ. The whole purpose is to create a friendly atmosphere for our audience to experience SL. You’ll be most welcome.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Conway%203/127/155/22
The Electric Sheep Company is about to release their own version of the client and it has an actual interface! (SL has the worst UI of anything I’ve ever used).. I believe it will be launched around the CSI/SL thing.
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/.....sing-.html
Also, for the haters, there are like 30 virtual worlds now, so hurry up and upgrade your digg-worthy peanut galleries beyond SL. Don’t forget that other industry built on fake stuff like Banshees and Needlers.