Now, I’ve read dozens of “white papers” claiming to be guides to Second Life and other virtual spaces and most of them get mocked and tossed into the circular file here at the Intellahome but, as much as I would have liked to claim that “even O’Reilly doesn’t get it!” I can’t. This is a great white paper.   It’s actually useful! *gasp!* I know! You probably think I’ve lost my marbles, but listen up.

If you’re someone who needs to make the argument to your company or organization for a foray into the virtual, this little baby will actually give you some really decent ammunition: non-inflated demographic and population stats, useful information about money exchanges and purchasing habits, and context for Second Life as one of many new virtual spaces that should be on your radar. It even has a fair assessment of adult content in Second Life that neither glosses over risk or over-hypes it like some of the conservative press has tried to.

It’s worth a read.

Disclaimer: I should note that I did get my copy of the report for free though I would still have been happy to trash it if it deserved it. You can’t buy Intellalove

So, being the nutsy person that I am, I couldn’t help but run off and download the VLES software and make myself an avatar. It was, needless to say, very interesting. I had the choice of about five haircuts in five natural colors (so disappointing for us pink-haired folks), about a hundred clothing options, skin color, and the choice of five celebrity faces. I chose “The Portman” because “The Ricci” had anime-sized eyes. I could choose my height but there was no slider for body shape. Everyone is eating-disorder-skinny in VLES.

Here’s my avatar in her Herby Hancock tank top and red Joan Jett haircut.

She’s “like sooo New York! OMG!” When I logged in I was surprised to see that VLES was announcing that CSS (that Brazilian band who sings the song about music on the new Ipod commercials) would be playing.

Log-in screen with concert announcement and menu for choosing the club you’d like to pop in to.

It’s grungy; it’s emo; it’s an opportunity to market to a self-selected audience of people who like virtual worlds, socializing, and new music. In my opinion, VLES is a pretty good idea. But will it work?

• What is a virtual world? what definition works best to aid research? Is it different than a virtual environment?
• How does the ability to see others’ friends list change our perception of them? How is that perception different in a space where we can’t who someone is friends with?
• How can identity formation mechanics be made interoperable? Should they?
• How is the style/goal of the world or environment tied to expected avatar behavior (ex. Miis with guns?)?
• What are the trust implications of communication in multiple virtual spaces? (ex. Do I trust someone more who I know in SL and on Twitter?)
• Are social networks virtual worlds?
• Identity: does more information = more trust, does more or less choice allow for more succinct identities?
• Are we more or less immersed in spaces where we have more choices in identity formation?
• Does less identity = less immersion?
• Does greater choice in identity formation result in more accurate identity portrayal? more trust worthy identity?
• How would MUVEs and MMORPGs be changed if more SNS mechanics were added to them?
• What influences greater number of friends in an MMORPG/MUVE? mechanics of friendship? purpose or advantage of friendship? personality expression?
• Do SL or FB users have more friends? How does introversion or extroversion influence number of friends in each space?
• Is FB a more powerful social network because it can incorporate multiple identities and connections? Pull info from other spaces?
• Do we “know” people more if we”know” more than one of their online identities? If one of those identities is a SNS rather than a MUVE or MMORPG?
• How do we verify someone’s identity? What info do we need to feel that we know who they are?

These are pretty disorganized but you probably get the drift of where the ideas are going. I haven’t had a chance to think through any one of them to the point of satisfaction but Mark and I have been wrestling with the definition of virtual world because we just don’t feel that the definitions offered by others are prepared to deal with the multitude of spaces that are popping up online. So far we think that a virtual world is one in which:

• the world goes on whether you’re logged in or not; you can’t pause the world
• digital
• hosted remotely
• capacity more multi-user
• users are represented by some kind of avatar, identity that they create (even if it’s text-based or very limited in construction)

What would you add? Would you take anything away?

Thanks to their involvement in the CSI: New York Project, the Sheep have developed a new viewer interface for Second Life that looks more like a browser.

Notice the back button, “My Stuff”, and “Shopping” buttons on the OnRez viewer. The changes are intended to help newbies who join via the CSI project get around without having to learn too much Second Life jargon. It’s a super smart idea.

According to the Sheep press release, the  new viewer will be available to new users who register through the CSI site and existing SL uses on October 24.

I gave a talk about education in SL at the convention and managed to stir up some big ideas from folks I talked to afterwards who have my brain bouncing around to big big things. First, let me point out that SL is very much a web 2.0 space. Let me go back to my 4 traits of web 2.0:

1. Off-site data: Yes. Your avatar, its inventory, and the rest of the SL world lives on remote servers so no matter what machine you’re on when you log in the world looks and works the same.
2. API: Yes. SL is becoming more open by the day but there are already significant API opportunities for porting data in and out of the space.
3. Prosumer: Oh Yes! Everything in SL is user generated. EVERYTHING! You don’t get much more prosumer than that.
4. Social: For sure! SL is people. Without the people who use the platform, who build and create, and who host events SL would be as empty and dead as the press claims it to be.

So what’s the big deal about SL being web 2.0? Integration. There are lots of 2.0 apps that let you pull info from other services you use but none that has such huge potential as SL. I’m on a constant search for a web 2.0 space where all of my other info feeds and social networks are easily integrated and accessed. But for that to be truly practical you need a space where folks are eager to spend their time, a central “space” that people can call home and pull all of their relevant info to them. In my mind, SL has the greatest potential. If I could sit in my house in SL and edit a rich text doc, see friend notices from other systems such as Facebook, listen to music, and peruse my RSS feeds I’d be a very happy girl. So why do all this in an immersive environment? Why not just a mashup website? Because SL offers tools that are not available on the 2D web. I can’t bring easy 3D modeling of ideas, spatial understanding, custom visuals etc into a 2D mashup site but I CAN bring all of the 2D functions into the 3D space (or at least I hope we’ll be able to soon).

SL could be the most powerful virtual global village around. Imagine dragging a headline onto a friend so he could read the same blog you’re looking at. Or even better, dragging the headline onto a wall so you could read it at the same time. I dream of websites that look more like groups of rooms with doors and teleports to other rooms where I can “surf” along with other people who are in the space and we can talk about what we’re seeing and then add those ideas back to the sites we’re visiting together.

Why can’t the future be here faster!?