Finding the Right People and Places

[Nalates Urriah]

As users, especially new users, and as merchants we often want to find people, places, or events with similar interests. The current Profile Interest Tags are a starting place. But, they have some problems. Penny Patton explains those problems and what can be done about them in: A Critical Look At Second Life - Part 2 - "Bringing Content to People". I expand on why I think expanded use of Interest Tags is likely to improve player retention in: Improving Second Life Player Retention, where I refer to that Chun-Yuen Teng’s and Lada A. Adamic’s published academic paper: Longevity in Second Life.

The basic idea is to use Interest Tags in additional places in SL. Penny suggests in-world groups have a set of 3 to 5 Interest Tags. I like the idea of limiting it to 3. Whatever, the idea is get the group owners to keep it pertinent to their real interests and not spam on popular interests.

When we ask for recommendation in our Profile rather than getting a list of strangers we would get a list of groups that match our interests.

Events could have Interest Tags. If an event announcement matched a group’s tags the announcement could appear in the group chat and/or as an announcement. Perhaps group owners could specify how many tags it must match before an announcement appears. May be negative tags could be used to block announcements.

Searching events could display results by order of relevance to your Interest Tags that match the event. Five matches would place it at the top and 1 hatch at the bottom.

Locations could have Interest Tags too. When searching for places, clubs, etc., they could sort in Interest order like suggested for events. When asking for Recommendations in your Profile’s interest section places/location that match your interests could be listed.

Penny suggests this will allow one to avoid dealing with friend requests from total strangers as it is now. Instead one could travel to a location and hang out meeting people with similar interests. In that environment one could decide if they wanted to be friends.

Events that match our interests would be events at which we could meet people.

The Teng & Adamic paper found that the more chat conversations and friends a person has and makes, the longer they stay in Second Life. I think Penny’s ideas would foster more use of Interests matching and improve person-to-person interactions.

If you think this is a good idea, post here. Or if you have a better idea based on solid information like the Teng & Adamic paper, post it here.

I will be putting in a feature request and adding the JIRA BUG-ID when I have it.