Just now I stumbled upon ‘Linden Lab thinks about RL/SL friends matching‘ over on the mrtopf.de blog, discussing an interesting proposal by Linden Labs (Second Life) VP Marketing & Community Developer Robin Linden:
“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.”
I’ve been talking about this idea as well some months ago, and according to mrtopf.de, it is a matter of ‘opt-in or opt-out’ (meaning whether you should have to enable the function to be found, or disable the function not to be found) and the issue of allowing these applications access to your Google account. The 4 commenters on the blog are largely opposed to this idea, fearing for their privacy (and quite rightfully so if executed poorly).
How it should work
First of all, I am a big supporter of SL getting the option to ask for permission to read your email address book, then check them with sign up addresses they have already registered. Of course you’d be able to check or uncheck the specific addresses you’d be interested in meeting in SL.
Now SL should send messages to the accounts it has found matching your lists without notifying the newly registered user. All accounts checked receive a message with the new registrants email and avatar name as a friendship offer and are free to accept or decline. On a decline, the person declining the friendship offer remains completely anonymous (no X has declined your friendship offer), and on accept the new user receives a message with X (SL name + email address) has accepted your friendship offer.
This way, SL CAN function as a real life social network the way some will want it to work, and those who don’t want their RL involved in SL can easily choose not to. There is tremendous value in finding someone you know to guide you trough Second Life as the software facilitates this very very poorly, and many people I know use SL as a RL network and really miss this functionality. On the other hand the privacy of those who want to live their Second Life completely separate from their real lives should be respected and handled with care, and never have to compromise in this matter.
So Opt-in or Opt-out?
The problem of ‘opt-in’ with the system as suggested is with the newly registered user. When he logs on, his identity is immediately compromised if he chooses to send out the friendship requests. However, he is able to control who would potentially receive such a message within Second Life and thus free to make his own decision on whether to comprise privacy in return for finding real life connections in Second Life.
People on the invited list who are not registered in the SL system (with that email address) don’t receive any message at all, unlike the Facebook invites who send actual emails or ’sign up requests’ to anyone not in their system. It should be handled in Instant Messages within Second Life itself so whoever is invited and not in Second Life is completely unaware of the invitation. This way the ‘privacy damage’ is controlled entirely by the user. Simply not importing your email list is an obvious ‘opt-out’, not notifying anyone of your presence.
Posted on: February 18, 2008 | Share on:
Abhishek Saxena on 
Sophie on 
Rheta Shan
said on February 18th
Eeek… there we go. How unsurprising it would be Robin to come up with something like this.
Honestly, I can understand how this idea would come up, but besides thinking it misses the point entirely (beyond some snowball accretion type marketing effect) I have no hopes for this working. Seeing how these things usually go with the Lindens, and keeping other social network experiments in mind (e.g. Beacon), I’d guess it has an equal chance of being cut down so badly after resident protests it never works (à la Age Verification), or to spectacularly destroy the privacy of half of the regular residents, proving to be the 9/11 of todays’s SL culture.
Umh.
Taran Rampersad (Nobody Fugazi)
said on February 18th
I think that the whole thing is a tempest in a teacup- people do find each other without anything on the part of Linden Lab. There are wonderful technologies like email that actually work wonders. As someone who has *survived* a lot of ’social networking endeavors’, nothing irritates me more than a form email to join some ‘new and improved’ whizzbang - and I don’t really feel the need for everyone in my social network to know everything that I do.
People giving up their privacy as you say, so early, is really just going to cause the need for multiple accounts for some people. And that sucks. ;-)
Rick van der Wal
said on February 18th
@both - Thanks for responding, I knew this would make me loved and popular! xD
@Rheta - Yes, this is pretty much under the condition they manage to execute it properly as described above or better and put privacy first. I also realize LL has a bad track record I think your reluctancy to believe they will is very justifiable, as described in the article.
@Taran - I think its fairly common practice for anyone with any RL ties to their account and wish to explore the more ‘extravagant’ side of Second Life to have a second avatar anyways. Also, there should be no email involved except the address already tied to your account at this point.
I definitely think there is something to be said for having a network on sign up however, and has the potential to cut down on the huge number of people leaving after their first two weeks (over 80% last I heard) which is a good thing. Also it has the potential to tap more into the ’social network millions’ who are reluctant of ‘SL’s world of make belief’ because of the way its not real to them in any way.
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Eloise
said on February 25th
Um, it may surprise you to learn that the email I use to sign comments to this blog, and for all my SL transactions, is not the same as the email I use for, for example, RL work emails.
It is, however, a legal, usable email address, and I will reply via it AND it is the email of record for this account at Linden Lab. How is this process supposed to let my RL friends find me? Silly idea. I’ve found RL people or not regardless. They won’t find me via this system if it is implemented, even if I choose to opt in, unless I choose to confuse LL and give them two email addresses as well.
Rick van der Wal
said on February 25th
Well by choosing a different email you obviously chose not to be found this way, which is perfectly fine. A lot of people even make different email accounts to make as few connections betwee RL and SL as possible - again, perfectly fine.
This obviously only works for the people who want to use it and see value in finding their RL connections in this Virtual World, which is exactly why it should work like this, non obtrusive way of integrating a RL social network in VW’s.