Second Life gets more Social

I’ve been following the conversations on Twitter and reading different blog posts about Second Life’s new social network that they are implementing into the web profiles and I have to admit, I’m kind of excited about it.

I’ve been experimenting with the beta version here and getting myself familiar with it. According to this tweet, it looks like the social profiles are going live tomorrow. So make sure to go to your web profile tomorrow and check it out.

It’s similar to Facebook where people can write on your profile and you can interact with them by “loving” their posts and/or replying. There will also be several other features such as sending friend requests, having the ability to post to Twitter and having the option to link to more of our favorite social networks (such as plurk).

I’m looking forward to seeing how often this will be used. I am a social media addict and always looking for new sites to play around on. I recently blogged about getting on Google+. I was enjoying it immensely until suddenly my account was disabled because I was not using my “real name” and I’m not alone in this, several other SLers have had their accounts disabled. Some have left in protest against Google’s policies regarding people using pseudonyms. I did get my account back, but I had to give them my phone number in order for them to restore my email so I can have access to it. It was quite the mess, but I am back on there (for the time being).

Adriel Hampton, chief organizer for NationBuilder, shared his thoughts about all this which sparked a huge, but interesting, discussion about online identity. Read both of his posts on his blog:
Google+, Identity and The Corporation: The Second Life Purge
Identity+: When Corporations and the Social Mob Determine Who You Can Be

The SL community has also been quite vocal about this. Botgirl Questi and Tateru Nino have written some informative and humorous posts as well.

I know that I will probably not use Google+ unless I am able to use my Avatar name. That is what I am known as and that’s been my online identity for over 4 years now. If you google both my RL and SL names in quotes, my SL name brings up 57,300 results all directing to my blog or my social networks or wherever else I can be found online. My RL name brings up 47,900 results which are mainly about a princess that has the same name as me. 😛

There’s a few other sites I’ve recently joined, like Diaspora, therefore I’ve gone ahead and updated my Social Media Page so y’all can stalk me on different networks if you please.

But for now, lets all check out SL’s new social network which is being launched tomorrow!
My SL Profile – https://my.secondlife.com/strawberry.singh

Credits:
Skin: Chain And Vine by Lyric Demina (Currently free in the inworld group, group is free to join).
*Hair: Truth by Truth Hawks
*Eyes: Exodi by Ryker Beck
*Promotional copies