Speaker

• Mark Viale (Viale Linden), Integrated Marketing Team Manager
• E-mail: community@lindenlab.com

General

To provide an update on community strategy and community tools, and examine the social experience within Second Life – where it is today and where it could go.

• LL having a change in its community philosophy; LL used to push a lot of events and activities – newsletters, “kiss a Linden”, etc., but now want to focus on bringing the community forward & work with sustainable communities in-world
• LL want this to be “organic”, so LL will be “Going out there and finding stuff that exists and then bringing it forward” in terms of promotion. Cited examples:
  • Event: Relay for Life
  • Product: Meeroos
  • Community: The Zen retreat within Second Life
  • Activity: Month of Machinima
• LL want to work to promote “organic communities” by working with in-world groups and residents and harness what people have and promote it through the channels they have available (e.g. Destination Guide and the new Viewer 2 log-in screen)
• Community Resources Portal: presents a series of resources people can use to help their community “come forward”

• The portal provides a range of links to further information within the wiki (such as how to suggest a location for inclusion in the Destination Guide) and links to social media resources that can both be used for promotional purposes and for getting on LL’s radar:
  • SL Facebook wall: used by LL as a means by which LL can identify movements that are happening within SL which they can then promote
  • YouTube channel: subscribers can suggest videos that can be added to the channel, promoting both machinima and the events / destinations to which they relate
  • Twitter: those on Twitter can follow @SecondLife & get followed back; LL actively monitor Twitter for news and information
  • Flickr: users can join the SL Flickr group which is used to source the “picture of the day” on the In-world section of the official blog
• Community Gateways have not “gone away”, but have been folded into the “new resident resources” within the Destination Guide
• LL operate an Affiliate Programme for communities to bring people in to Second Life and get paid for doing so this is enabled through:
  • Use of the Create Ad widget in the Destination Guide to embed a Destination Guide entry in a website / blog
  • The Linkshare Affiliate Network offering $USD payments only
  • (see my own blog post on this)
• User Groups offer the opportunity for users to bring matters to LL and discuss a range of topics and provide feedback – venues and dates for UG meetings in the User Groups link of the Portal’s Second Life Resources

Social Profiles

• Social Profiles seen as a means for users to keep abreast of all that is happening (via information appearing on their feed) and to inform others (by posting to their feed)
• Can be used to promote places / tell people where you are and what you’re doing through the “Add your location” icon in the Feed Share Something box
• LL see the Social Profiles as enabling users to express who they really are because there is no tie to real world links. This is also viewed as a powerful tool over the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+
• LL looking at means of enabling a “follow” function so users can follow one another, rather than having to Friend one another / have feeds totally public in order to make / receive comments
• The feed will become “more robust” allowing greater potential flexibility of use
• LL looking at ways of introducing the ability to create “groups” or “circles” within the feed capability so people can focus on information they want
• LL look on SL as the only social platform “out there” with unlimited self-expression (within the ToS!), and see the additional of the feeds, etc., as a means of complementing people’s ability to express themselves howsoever they choose

Q&A Session

• LL “thinking about” ways of making Friends list more granular (so business contacts can be grouped aside from social contacts, etc)
• Suggested that the “love” option in the feed could be used in a yelp.com manner to help recommend places in-world, although admitted this needs to be “figured out” to prevent gaming
• LL not going to promote communities “willy-nilly”: LL will seek to get behind communities that are sustainable (e.g. ACS / Relay For Life), i.e. can function without support from LL, so initial effort needs to come from those behind the community
• New log-in screen may be personalised in the future, so that a new user would have more help & resources (e.g. newcomer-friendly island to check-out)
• Reporting back to owners of communities / venues / events on things like click-throughs from Destination Guide, etc., may be looked at