Social Networks & SL

[Kobuk Farshore]

Apologies if I'm re-posting a thread that's been hashed into the ground. I've read back a few pages and didn't see one like this, but that doesn't mean my forum-n00bness isn't gleaming through. :smileyvery-happy:

 

Okay, so until recently I'd been too preoccupied in-world to really notice SLers using social media sites like Facebook and Plurk. Now that it's caught my attention, though, I'm sort of happy and lost at the same time. :smileyindifferent: I've always kept a smallish group of friends in SL-- probably 50% art/building contacts, 30% friends and 20% very close friends-- and honestly, anyone I lose touch with I delete without feeling too horrible about. That said, if I were following someone's hilarious Meeroo-breeding-explosion-escapades on Twitter, so something, I'd likely keep said person friended in SL and feel as though I knew what was going on/why they'd been busy. :smileywink:

 

Since some brief quizzing of my friends has shown that hardly any of them use or are interested in using social networking sites for their avatars, if you do use one and are interested in keeping me entertained with whatever SL shenannigans you get up to, or your opinions on fashion or art etc, I'd love to hear. :smileytongue:

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

Are you aware of the SL profile feeds? https://my.secondlife.com

...Dres

[Kobuk Farshore]

 I am, but it doesn't seem like many people (at least, that I know) use them?

 

 

[JeanneAnne]

---

Kobuk Farshore wrote:

Apologies if I'm re-posting a thread that's been hashed into the ground. I've read back a few pages and didn't see one like this, but that doesn't mean my forum-n00bness isn't gleaming through. :smileyvery-happy:

 

Okay, so until recently I'd been too preoccupied in-world to really notice SLers using social media sites like Facebook and Plurk. Now that it's caught my attention, though, I'm sort of happy and lost at the same time. :smileyindifferent: I've always kept a smallish group of friends in SL-- probably 50% art/building contacts, 30% friends and 20% very close friends-- and honestly, anyone I lose touch with I delete without feeling too horrible about. That said, if I were following someone's hilarious Meeroo-breeding-explosion-escapades on Twitter, so something, I'd likely keep said person friended in SL and feel as though I knew what was going on/why they'd been busy. :smileywink:

 

Since some brief quizzing of my friends has shown that hardly any of them use or are interested in using social networking sites for their avatars, if you do use one and are interested in keeping me entertained with whatever SL shenannigans you get up to, or your opinions on fashion or art etc, I'd love to hear. :smileytongue:

 

---

My avatar has her own FB page and so do many other avatars. These pages may or may not be linked to the persons' own FB pages. I'm FB friends w/ certain avvies, SL profile friends with others, and have some I'm friends with on both. I think this is pretty common. There's one club I know where all the regs have FB pages & use FB to communicate as much or more than they use SL chat. In fact, you have to be FB friends w/ the club owner to see pics & receive certain announcements. I'm sure there must be many other SL places or groups like this. Since a FB profile can be bigger & more elaborate than a SL profile, I think that many ppl are moving towards using social media more than what LL provides.

Jeanne

[Syo Emerald]

Isn't FB closing the pages if they get behind the fact that there only for avatars and not linked to a real persons page?

[JeanneAnne]

---

Syo Emerald wrote:

Isn't FB closing the pages if they get behind the fact that there only for avatars and not linked to a real persons page?

---

I dunno Syo.

Thing is tho, there's a real person behind the avatar.

Jeanne

[Persephone Emerald]

Facebook (& some other social network) sites have a policy of deleting accounts that they find out are not in the person's legal name. Since the old avatar naming system for SL prevented people from using their legal name for their avatar, it's pretty easy for Facebook to tell if someone is using an SL pseudonym for their FB account. If someone decides to report you, FB will contact you & tell you that you have to use your legal name on their site. This has even happened to bloggers who were using a pseudonym because of political repression within their country.

If you want to use a different name in SL than you use on Facebook, you can list your SL name as a "nickname" on Facebook, by which others can search for you there, but that will destroy any anonymity or separation from RL you might wish to have in SL.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

My Xmas present from Facebook was a login notice requiring me to change my account name because the accounts' name, Alazarin Mobius, was deemed by the powers-that-be at Facebook to be a fake name. Needless to say that I have been using the name Alazarin Mobius as my professional name for over 30 years, but I digress. Strangely they haven't insisted on Alice Cooper renaming his FB page to Vincent Furnier.

So the upshot is that I have a pretty FB page , timelined with lots of pix & videos from shows I've done in SL and well over 3,000 FB 'friends' but I can't access it to update it. I do have a backup FB page and a 'Band' page but there's no telling how long they'll last :-(((

Don't count on Google+ being friendlier. It isn't. As an experiment I set up Google+ pages for myself and six of my alts all in their SL names. All my SL accounts have Gmail email accounts so it was pretty easy to set up. My alts all added each other to their circles and posted pretty pix of their lives and times in SL. Lo and behold Google killed off one of my alts' accounts for the 'crime' of not having a 'real' name. Bleh. No doubt the rest are all living on borrowed time. We all had our own pages on Microsoft Spaces until they pulled the plug on that service. MS, for all their sins, never bothered us once.

The main problem with FB & G+ is that behind the glittery surface of their social network service lies the ugly truth: datascraping. FB & G+ pay their way by gathering up data about their service users and selling that data on the open market. From their POV pseudonymous accounts are worthless, thus their efforts to weed out such accounts. Which explains why FB has regular pogroms against SL avatar FB accounts.

[Miyo Darcy]

---

Syo Emerald wrote:

Isn't FB closing the pages if they get behind the fact that there only for avatars and not linked to a real persons page?

---

Yes they do.. but not closing. I used FB and more then 500 SL people added me.. and well I added some too for sure.

Lately I logged in and I get random questions "who of your friends is this on the picture?" and I have to answer otherwise I cant login. I dont have much time to do this and also no clue about all the names of the virtual pictures fb is showing me. If i log off i and try again, i get new random pictures. So well... you can say FB closed the doors for my account.

[Jessika Rang]

As Alarzarin said, FB and many other social networking sites are really data mining companies (haven't you ever wondered why the ads you see on your FB page are weirdly apropos, or not?) - since they haven't figured out how to market to avatars they find those accounts a useless waste of space... Perhaps they should talk to LL about marketplace ads to avatars but until they do you will find it a potentially hostile and temporary place to network with friends.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

Here's what Facebook does to accounts made by SL avatars:

 

 

The account in question:

 

[JeanneAnne]

I talked to the club owner who communicates with group members via Facebook about this inworld yesterday evening. He said that, yeah, FB may take down our avvie accounts. He didn't seem too worried about it tho. He said that he knew of two group members who had lost their FB accounts. This out of several hundred members.

What is FB going to do, hire people to look thru millions of accounts trying to weed out avatars? What are they going to do about people like me, whose avvie & real life names are the same? Most people who have avatar accounts also have a separate rl FB page. What if these people start cancelling their rl accounts when they loose their avvie account? Not only will FB loose business but it will be bad publicity for them. A competitor who welcomes avvie accounts will pick up the lost market share.

I guess that we'll keep on using FB until they boot us out, then find a FB competitor who will get our business. This is just another example of how a corporation mistreats its customers, a lot like LL does.

Jeanne

 

[Kobuk Farshore]

---

JeanneAnne wrote:

What is FB going to do, hire people to look thru millions of accounts trying to weed out avatars?

 

No kidding, Jeanne. I actually had no idea FB had a policy against people making avatar accounts, and since I've seen a number of prominent SL creators/bloggers with Facebooks I'm guessing FB itself doesn't care or police it too well.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

---

Kobuk Farshore wrote:

... I'm guessing FB itself doesn't care or police it too well.

---

---

From the rumours I've heard FB generally relies on snitches but it can't be proven.

[Kobuk Farshore]

Re: snitches-- I can only imagine what FB might reward users with to turn each other in, Alazarin. No ads on their pages? Switching completely back to the old FB look ONLY for people who snitch? :smileyvery-happy: :smileylol: