Larry Lefevre

Yeah I been wondering about that as well. What happened to those numbers? Also, with the weekly rolling restarts now, I bet the "AVERAGE MONTHLY REPEAT LOGINS" will increase quite a bit.

Just In case my point wasn't clear enough some more food for thought here. Display Names are not the problem here. The main problem is what is going to happen to user names. New users will NOT have to choose a Last name. It's a fundamental change to a million user society. We live in a virtual world right now where everybody has a first and a last name. That will be gone. Think about it. If you are concerned about somebody using your name and impersonate you, ask yourself this: Why? Your name will have no value anymore. You are concerned because you see it as your unique Identifier you are attached to it. But no matter how much LL is going to tweak this Display Name change to your liking, that whole thinking you have there will be a thing of the past. Well, except for Linden Lab employees. And trying to protect it is totally the opposite of what this whole display name change thing was all about when they came up with it. With LL adjusting the feature to what Jack said up there is basically ruin the whole basic idea of it and changing it to a patched up multi-name-display-bonanza. Everybody gets stripped of their last name. I will be just "larrylefevre" with a dot somewhere in there. It doesn't matter what you set as a display name. There can be thousands of just "Larry". As I said. This change is altering the SL civilization as we know it. Again: A full name as a Unique Identifier will be no more. You can sign up as "ldkfhskjdfh" and just leave it at that. No more "ldkfhskjdfh Jinx" where people in conversations polity could refer to as "Mr. Jinx" there. I'm just not sure if this change has been thought trough to that extend. As others pointed out LL is trying to make SL more like facebook or twitter or whatever social networking website. But it's not a static website. It's an already established civilization in a virtual 3D world. People in SL don't just login to quickly update what they are doing right now. It's a "Second Life" and some even use twitter or facebook to update on what their virtual SL identity is doing.

Jack, all those "adjustments" to the display names are good and welcome, but I think Linden Lab is missing the big picture here. Tweaking a fundamental change to Second Life like this to soothe over the loudest up cries doesn't make this whole thing a good decision to start with. Here is why. I understand the need for greater self expression and a more streamlined way for new users to sign up. People coming to Second Life wanting to sneak a peek at it get thrown off by having to choose a last name. It's true. I get it. You don't want to choose a last name that you have to write down to remember so you can log in the next time. Giving the new user the freedom to choose their own unique User Name is the obvious choice. But at what cost? You are denying every existing resident that choice. And the ones that made a name of themselves using the name they selected from that list you deny the exclusivity of it. .. all, but Linden employees. But lets get back to the big picture for now. Philip was talking in a recent interview about that Second Life needs to be more like an iPhone. Easier to use. Less complicated. more streamlined etc. Now how does the new Display Names fit into this agenda? especially after the "adjustments" that now User Names and Display Names are shown both by default? Older Residents, like me, that wanted to express themselves better shelled out the money to create a group so they can change the group tag above their heads to their liking. So you already have now people using two lines of hover text. Example: Group Tag: Linden Lab Employee User name: Torley Linden Now with Display Names you can have even more! THREE Lines of awesome: Group Tag: Linden Lab Employee Disp. name: Amplifier of Awesome User name: Torley Linden So where is that simplifying things? I only see much more confusion going to happen besides a whole lot of angry current residents. Zorin Frobozz is right up there. You are throwing away our culture. As a content creator I spend many hours every day in Second Life. I can often tell a residents age by their last name. There was the age of the Magic's, the Jinx period, and who doesn't remember all those GossipGirl's. But how to solve this dilemma? Since many users already using Group Tags as a way to express themselves, why not have a feature that you can set this text without having a group? People log in to Second Life not remembering their user name could be solved by having everybody use their email address to log in (As many other websites do as well) Take away the pressure to have to choose a last name. Provide choices for the picky ones or have a "I'm feeling lucky" button for others that want to go past that decision quickly. Simplify user sign up. Why not have every new user NOT sign up first, but go straight to download the viewer. Install. Open and press a "Have a look" button. You get signed in as John or Jane Doe or whatever other smart temporary user name Linden Lab can come up with. You have no powers. You can't buy anything, can't join groups, use scrips or whatnot but just walk, fly and TP around on PG land and get a taste. After a while, or when trying to do something you can't do, a pop up could prompt the user about the features they can have if they sign up. Having their own name, change their appearance, be able to buy things, to build, to do all the things everybody else is doing. But that way you wont loose potential users on sign up and if they decide after having had a look around that they like to stay, they probably don't mind choosing a last name. Having every new user coming to Second Llife having the hacked on last name "Resident" and denying every current user the choice of a user name they would have choosen isn't going to mix well for the future of Second Life. It's going to be a patched up Frankenstein Monster that will be even more confusing than it is right now and with that vastly missing the point of simplifying things. Don't go mutilate Second Life with a not thought through fundamental change like this. Where people have to fear impersonation. Where too many confusing names will be hovering over everybody's head. Where legacy user names don't mean anything and don't have any value anymore. And where new users wonder why so many people wanted to be a GossipGirl in the past. Things can only get worse if you go that way. Have a meeting. Think about it. And don't treat the current population with ignorance by only keeping ONE last name with a meaning. You choose to protect "Linden". Why is that? If Last names are going to be a thing of the past where our culture is changing into a one-word user name why are you so protective about that one?