Linden Lab thinks about RL/SL friends matching
by Christian Scholz on February 13, 2008
Yesterday at Robin Linden’s office hour she asked at some point if we are ok with the following idea: On signup to Second Life you will get asked if you want to find your friends from Real Life who might already have a Second Life account without you knowing. The idea how to do that was by matching email addresses from your contacts with those of Second Life accounts. These people would then get notified about one of their friends being in SL now, too.
The idea behind this is that many people don’t know who of their friends do have a Second Life account already and might be able to help you. Having a friend already in Second Life when you signup might mean a better retention rate. We all know that one of the problems still is that you don’t know where to go or what to do when you sign up to Second Life. This might be better by directly having somebody who might help you.
The issues
Of course there are issues involved and people might not want to have their email address to be matched. The big question then is again though if this should be opt-in or opt-out. If it’s opt-in not many people will have this enabled in the beginning (for new accounts though the checkbox could be enabled by default and they can uncheck it if they do not want it. They at least see it directly and have to go through such a screen while people already in Second Life will not see such a screen if they not actively search for it). Opt-out of course will eventually be opposed by many people not wanting their email addresses to be used. Here I wonder though how many people actually have setup a separate email address for their account and thus would not be matchable anyway.
Now one option would be to not let the new user see who actually got matched. That way only the recipient sees it (via IM or so) and can decide to react or not. Then it might also be opt-in.
How to retrieve the list of email addresses?
The big question I have though is how the email addresses are obtained. Some very bad practice which unfortunately emerged on many sites is to ask for e.g. GMails username and password to retrieve the addressbook and match email addresses that way. But this is a big social hack. First of all with that username/password you might have access to a lot more, not just GMail but any Google service you might use (think Adsense) and it also trains people that it is ok to give out their username/password. But this is the number one thing every security expert (not even expert) will teach anybody: Never give out your password!
So in this light I wonder how this matching is supposed to work. There was also some talk about OpenID but the problem here is also that first there needs to be a) more widespreach use of OpenID and b) some defined process of how this should work.
So what do you think about that? (It’s not a plan afaik, it’s more a thought on how to get better retention). I would definitely like to know how they want to retrieve the email addresses. Besides this I like the approach and would hope it wouldn’t only be possible for new signups but also for existing accounts. Who knows I might find in SL.
Technorati Tags: secondlife, socialnetworks, lindenlab, retentiondataportability
14 comments
I don't think this is a very good idea, Mr. Topf. Every social website does this when signing on and sometimes it us usefull. At other times it leads to spam.
Networking like this is NOT a core competency on SL. They should be focusing on what they do right – not add stuff, which is already done much better by others. It should be done on the social platforms (facebook, linkedIn, Orkut whatever) and could be imported in SL easily. THAT would make sense.
If I clearly state in my Facebook profile, that my avatar's name is "Pham Neutra" then every "friend" of Markus Breuer with a published (!) avatar name in his or her Facebook profile could have that connection exposed and transferred to SL. Such a system could easily be implemented by having one or more HTML tabs in the profile.
This model would be opt-in automatically.
Before adding stuff like that, the internal "social networking" features of SL should be optimized, of course … with HTML-based profiles and public and role based friends lists. But maybe that could also be sourced out.
I would love it, when Linden Lab would finally realize, that there is a whole world wide web out there, with which you can do mash-ups (when you don't suffer from not-invented-here-syndrome … that is)
by Markus Breuer (Pham on 13.2.2008 at 19:17. #
That's why I think they should join the Data Portability Group ;-) IMHO in the future every website might have some social networking capabilities.
Of course that won't work if you have to define your friends all the time over. Thus Data Portability.
But isn't what you say similar? Just using FB instead of emails? I think this discussion was mostly because they see emails as the easiest part. How would you retrieve the SL profile information? What about people who are not on Facebook?
I think it does not matter whether you do it via email or FB, the process would be the same or similar. But IMHO it shows that we clearly need some way of porting your data from A to B.
Regarding HTML profiles etc. I guess this will happen anyway if the Open Grid project comes to live. Then the Agent Domain would be some sort of social network and I am actually already thinking about how to hook this up with Plone (and using DP standards should they exist someday).
by Christian Scholz on 13.2.2008 at 19:28. #
I am no sure if we are really talking about the same stuff Christian. I should check out "Data Portability" ;) Actually, I don't think I was talking about "porting" date, but about linking/mashing-up … but I might be confusing terms.
Me, I certainly DON'T want to define a social graph on every new website. If a website has some functionality, that can make use of my social graph, I want an option for connecting this site with one or another already existing social website. Everything else is BS in the long run.
I don't want Linden Lab to enhance their own social networking stuff beyond some certain basics. Because that's not their core competency. Other platforms are already doing this much better than Second Life will ever be able to do it.
A simpe Facebook (exchange with any other platform you like) plugin would be able to this – some attempts like this already exist. All that is left is a way to use this information *efficiently* inside Second Life.
In other words: having HTML inside Second Life and some simple APIs with which to allow true interaction between inworld content (and functionality) and web based systems. Implement that once and you don't have to think about adding functionality to SL – which is already available in abundance on the web.
by Markus Breuer (Pham on 13.2.2008 at 19:51. #
DP basically means that you can copy your social graph from A to B, if there's a central server (which you choose) or if it's coming from all your services is open right now.
But I also don't think that LL wants to enhance the social networking story. It is more a one-time match to find people you might know and who are in SL already. They might help you better than the Orientation Island.
Now I am not sure what is more work, building a FB app or building an email matching algo. I am not sure if you now talk about somebody else doing that instead of LL.
The problem here might be that you have to be in SL first to actually be able to use it and thus it wouldn't be of much use for new users except LL endorses it and puts it into the OI.
Having HTML inside SL is AFAIK substantially working but some enhancements have to be made. Of course that might not mean it's available tomorrow ;-)
But I think this is for later in "the game", not for when you sign up.
Data Portability can be found at http://dataportability.org btw.
I will also hopefully publish a podcast about it this evening.
by Christian Scholz on 13.2.2008 at 20:04. #
I fail to see how people's friends are the only ones in their address books, for example. There are simply too many holes in the existing paradigms that need to be addressed.
The best way to check if your friends are in Second Life is to email them yourself… personally.
by Taran Rampersad on 13.2.2008 at 23:28. #
Of course you should be able to choose those people you want to notify before notifications are sent out.
by Christian Scholz on 13.2.2008 at 23:33. #
So, writing code to give the person the options that they already have in a new way? I fail to see how that is useful. Further, it can actually put some friendships at risk.
An email address is not a friend. Separate the two. An email address associated with a Second Life account may not be the same as a friend. People have alternative Second Life existences.
No, no, there are plenty of things that already work. There is a Facebook/SL app, for example.
From a technical standpoint, I have never found reinventing the wheel worthwhile. From a user standpoint, I think that it diminishes the weight of a connection I have with friends.
And as a human being, I don't like to be thought of as an email address to be harvested. ;-)
by Taran Rampersad on 13.2.2008 at 23:40. #
Spamming my complete address book (or even just selected friends) with asking them if they are on a new network I just joined might also put some friendships at risk ;-)
Then I think it's much better to know in advance who is on this network and be able to find them. This is usually not a problem with social networks because you can find people under their realname. It's not really possible with Second Life even if you wish to do so.
People who do not wish to be found can simply say "no". But again it's the question of opt-in and opt-out.
I know that an email address is not a friend. A friend is a friend. That's why I was talking about having privacy controls in place is important. But I personally would like to be found by somebody searching for me. So why not give me the possibility to do so?
by Christian Scholz on 13.2.2008 at 23:50. #
"That’s why I was talking about having privacy controls in place is important. But I personally would like to be found by somebody searching for me. So why not give me the possibility to do so?"
Fair enough. But can't you already do that without all these intricacies already? That is really my point. If you have a website, for example, you can do that. Your first life in your profile within SL also works. Email signatures. There are many, many ways to do this. Adding another way that can have negative results and creates more work for everyone doesn't seem like something I would want.
Frankly, I have an email address book with thousands of names. Do I really want to have to sift through these email addresses and decide who I want to know in a certain environment?
There is a lot to be said for human interaction. Automating human interaction is what is on the table here, from what I can tell. I'm sorry. If I want to know you, I will find you – or I'll email you directly and ask you.
And serendipity is also a nice thing too.
by Taran Rampersad on 14.2.2008 at 00:09. #
You would only need to look through those who already are in Second Life and opted in for that service.
Of course you can do it any other way but the goal here was to make it easier for new people in SL to find somebody they already know. Because of retention, because you usually only stay on social networks/whatevers of you know somebody.
Social Networks usually give you means to look for people you might already know because of retention, because it makes less sense otherwise.
And it has to be easy. Very easy.. Thus telling somebody to please email everybody if they are in SL and want to be their friend is not an easy solution.
So in fact it creates less work because those the possibly matching people are filtered out automatically without you having to do that.
by Christian Scholz on 14.2.2008 at 00:19. #
[...] to show that I’m not making this crap up, check this out, [...]
by LL Wants To Violate Your Privacy | Second Life Sucks on 14.2.2008 at 00:20. #
Well, this is where anonymity parts ways from other things. You can discuss 'social network retention', I suppose, but then there is another aspect that is dismissed out of hand when that is done: People meeting each other within world, with their anonymity, and finding things that they do enjoy.
I believe that the two can coexist. If there is an option to coexist, the anonymity issue must be spoken to or protected. A default of 'opt out' makes sense to me.
Whether this will actually help with retention is something open to speculation. I do not believe that it will help with Second Life retention. Where most social networks tend to fail are by trying to be everything to everyone. Sure, you can study the successes – but you learn a lot more by studying the failures.
The failures actually have a lot in common with the successes.
This is all preemptive for the open sourcing of the server code, anyway. Is it in my interest to help people make money off of my friends? Hmm. :-)
by Taran Rampersad on 14.2.2008 at 00:39. #
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