Avatars disunited

A semi-interesting e-mail pinged up this evening, thus:

Dear Avatars United Member,

In January of this year, Linden Lab purchased Avatars United for its underlying social technology and to integrate powerful social networking capabilities into the Second Life experience.

Today, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue Avatars United and will be taking down the site on September 29, 2010. Over the next week, we encourage you to save any pieces of content (such as pictures, friend’s names, etc.) that you want to keep. We will also soon update you on your AU Coin refund, if you have an account balance.

Over the two and a half years since launching Avatars United, we have welcomed avatars from many virtual worlds and MMOs to connect on our platform as the only social network catering to the needs of virtual identities. We are proud to have served those needs and honoured to have shared this journey with you all.

Going forward, pieces of the Avatars United technology will be integrated into the Second Life platform to support a richer, and more dynamic, community experience. Read more about these efforts on theSecond Life blog.

Thank you for being a member of the Avatars United community, and part of the Second Life family.
Sincerely,

The Avatars United/Second Life Team

Am I surprised? No. Even at the height of the Mark Kingdon “inspired” (if wrongly attributed) push that “SL = Facebook = SL”, the purchase of Avatars United seemed a little odd, even for Linden Lab, despite the latter suffering an identity crisis of its own at the time.

While there was some potential for Avatars United to enhance Second Life, the fact remains that it always was the square-peg-meets-round-hole situation for Linden Lab in terms of offering those of us already engaged in Second Life with anything truly beneficial. Similarly, as a marketing tool to draw others involved in on-line games into Second Life, its value was perhaps less than useful.

That LL had no idea as to what they should do with their new shiny once they had it was perhaps most clearly indicated by the massive flurry of Linden activity over on AU that dropped off faster than a rock disappearing over the cliff as the novelty of the new toy wore off to be replaced by the taxing question, “OK, so we’ve got it, not what do we actually do with it?” In fairness LL were not alone; the number of us who probably did the same is likely to be legion.

I’m actually surprised that AU has lasted this long; to be honest, I can’t even bid it a fond farewell.