Sociable Second Life
Posted by Burgess
Orchid and I are building Myg’s exhibit space for the Second Life 4th Birthday (SL4B) celebration. Above we’re hard at work brainstorming. She’s cute, isn’t she? She’s like my annoying kid sister copping my look like that. No matter what she says, I saw those boots first. I admit, she did help me find the camo cut-offs, but then went and bought her own just to wind me up. Notice the way she adores me. Who could stay bugged?
It’s a Wednesday and the grid is going to be down for six hours, at least, so I’m going to get meta on you.
One of Second Life’s great strengths is the rich social networking the 3D virtual space enables–well beyond that of any chatroom or MUD. The vibrancy of the relationships is startling. Sue Stonebender wrote a thoughtful post about virtual networking recently. Sue is one of the first people Myg met through blogging way back when she only had a Vox blog four months ago. Besides being a great blogger, Sue–along with her incredibly talented partner, Baron Grayson–is responsible for some of SL’s most beautiful builds. More society pages and interpersonal dirt after the jump.
The hookup for the Second Life 4th Birthday celebration came from the tireless Vint Falken, who Myg and I and hundreds of others have met through blogging and Flickr. It turns out that one of the organizers for the event is Shoshana Epsilon, another Flickrite who we had already noticed because of her photos and the fact that she is the administrator for about a half-billion SL Flickr groups.
There’s a ton of crossover between the blogging community and the Flickr community–which makes sense because Flickr provides a great platform for hosting blog photos–and there are a variety of plugins and widgets available to integrate it into the different platforms. (We blog with Wordpress, and use Flickr Photo Album plugin and Flickr Widget.)
The interaction with the bloggers spills over inworld, of course, because it’s all about the metaverse. And the interactions here and in Second Life–people like Wrath, Tiana, Zoe, Codie, Timothy, Vanny and Lisa and a whole ton more look at the blog list–are inspiration, motivation and assistance for the Met A Stranger series and sometimes wind up in the story. Talk about a hall of mirrors. Who wants to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes?
This morning I added the Sociable plugin to the blog. See those slightly-faded little icons at the bottom of the post? Those set up easy links to social bookmarking sites and other blog networking tools. We’ve only got co.mments, de.licio.us, technorati, digg, and StumbleUpon activated right now to see how it goes (those are the only ones we’re actually familiar with, but the Sociable will allow you to enable a whopping 64 different networking agents).
I added Sociable because I was lead there by a link at co.mments. I’m digging the co.mments service because it allows me to track conversations and comments on other blogs even if there is no comments rss to subscribe to. I comment frequently, but then often forget where and can’t remember where to look or take the time to search. co.mments keeps track and allows you to subscribe to your own feed of all your conversations.
The interesting thing is that while writing this, I noticed Vint has a co.mments link at the bottom of her posts. I hadn’t spotted it before, and I’m wondering now if it’s because I gloss over certain kinds of text links in blog posts. On the other hand, I find too many chicklet icons can really muck up a design (one of the reasons I like sociable is that it darkens the chicklets so they don’t pop out too much until you hover over them). This got me thinking about how much design plays into usability and building traffic and I wonder what you all think.
Maybe we can discuss this during the blogmeet at Veyron’s on Saturday. (I have no idea what I’m going to wear. Aren’t I sci-fi already by default? I can has cheezburger?) Though I’m sure we’ll all be buzzing about the exciting Bloggers’ Island project. That idea sounds really cool. (Myg and I are a little down that we don’t have the extra funds and time to participate. We’ve got so much invested in Topgol and still so much building to do it just doesn’t make sense to us at the moment, as heavenly as a peaceful private class 5 server would be…) So:
What are your favorite blog tools?
Do you favor one platform over another?
Have you tried blogHUD? Other kinds of cross-platform tools? Dalien’s DeliHUD?
Do you think the networking or bookmark tools increase your traffic?
How do you promote your blog?
Do you care?
With any luck, the grid will be up on schedule at Noon SL time, and we can all get on with our second lives. And if you made it this far and are still waiting for the dirt, here it is: A certain campaign manager for Wei ‘08 was reportedly spotted, um, fraternizing with one of the other candidates. Rumors of a film are circulating.
I wish I could use Sociable with my blogger acct. I am using co.mments now though, due to you!
And also…where are those camo cutoffs from? I *need* =)
What are your favorite blog tools?
- - Whatever is most user friendly. I only use Blogger, though, and no add-ons or feeds, etc. to track other blogs.
Do you favor one platform over another?
- - I am guessing not.
Have you tried blogHUD? Other kinds of cross-platform tools? Dalien’s DeliHUD?
- - Ugh. If it has HUD in the name, my eyes glaze over and I zone out.
Do you think the networking or bookmark tools increase your traffic?
- - Networking probably.
How do you promote your blog?
- - I don’t try to promote, but I will link back to it if I comment on other blogs, just so they know who’s leaving comments and can make an informed decision as they ban me.
Do you care?
- - Nope. I’d be fine with one or two friends reading my blog - any more traffic and I would feel pressure to keep it updated and entertaining - the two criteria I already fail to meet.
What are your favorite blog tools?
i dont really have any favorite ones but i do use sltopsites and site meter, which both help me know how much traffic i have.
Do you favor one platform over another?
not really, i like blogger and since i started with it and dont have any problems with it, i keep it.
Have you tried blogHUD? Other kinds of cross-platform tools? Dalien’s DeliHUD?
nope havent tried it. i like blogging when my sl is closed so i really dont need any kind of HUD anyway.
Do you think the networking or bookmark tools increase your traffic?
i do think networking helps a lot and bookmark too, thats how i found most of the blogs i read.
How do you promote your blog?
i dont really, i just post comments on blogs i like or articles i have an opinion on. i think thats how much of the attention to my blog happened.
Do you care?
i do care, more then i care to admit but i do.
@Tober - the camo cut-offs are the camouflage pants from Homicide designs (maybe at the Baji store, but definitely at the main one). Why am I telling you this? There is going to be an army of hotties dressing like me. Yeah, that *is* why I’m telling you.
@Wrath and Tiana: Re-reading this post in the evening, I feel like I didn’t actually answer the questions I posed, so here goes:
My fave blog tool of the moment is co.mments (I guess that was obvious).
I favor WordPress. I used Blogger early on and liked it but jumped to WordPress when I started seeing customizable options that appealed to me. And I want to host-if there are ads, I want them to be mine. I like tinkering, but not too much. I can’t remember why I picked WP over Typepad, but there *was* a reason.
Dalien’s DeliHUD is a tool that brings slURLs from your del.icio.us bookmarks into SL so you can TP to them–great for organizing those places you read about so you don’t have to jump back and forth between your web browser and SL. It kicks ass and the man can code.
I’m not sure if Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon etc. are increasing traffic. It’s too soon to tell. Networking by commenting on other blogs and at Flickr has a noticeable impact. Some days traffic is really high, other days not as much. It’s not clear where the spikes come from.
I promote it by talking about it, and commenting mostly.
And I do care. I admit it–I like attention. I’m a fairly social person with a solitary vocation, so I really enjoy the conversations and people I interact with in virtual space. I like big parties.
Thanks Alex! =)
I guess I should fill out the survey in return…
[…] post long time ago, for my first not-a-meme, but Dolmere thought nobody would care. But now that Myg & Alex talk about the ‘Sociable Second Life’ and Dolmere has given into ‘my whining’ about how he should at least attempt to […]
-What are your favorite blog tools?
I guess it would just be mybloglog.com and co.mments.com, though I only check in on stats on mybloglog every few days, when I remember. It’s more out of curiosity than anything else.
-Do you favor one platform over another?
Well, I might have gone with wordpress if I had known about it sooner, but I’m on Blogger, and I don’t really plan on moving at this time.
-Have you tried blogHUD? Other kinds of cross-platform tools? Dalien’s DeliHUD?
No, I’m not like a journalist or anything. I don’t need to blog things on a second’s notice.
-Do you think the networking or bookmark tools increase your traffic?
I have no idea.
-How do you promote your blog?
Well, there’s a link to it in my SL profile and my Flickr profile. There’s also a link to it in my signature for the Midian City Forums and in the Midian City Flickr group. But that’s about it.
-Do you care?
Do I care about what? I mean, I care if people read my blog, sure. I hope that people find my Midian City Diary entertaining at least.
I was wearing them on the pose stand when you bought them.
Details, details. You expect me to be looking at you all the time? I was looking at the boots on the wall.
we are blogging geeks now, truly.
Speak for yourself, Myg!