This is how your profile appears to people who just surf the SL website. Note that they can retweet and post your profile on their Facebook pages. Even blog sites give you the choice of allowing the buttons to be visible and used by surfers.
The Q Linden announcement of the new web-based profile system can be found here. Be aware there isn’t much useful information there. We’ll just have to wait for Torley to find a positive spin on it.
Here are my first impressions:
If under “Privacy Settings” you uncheck I want my profile to be available on the web people using V2 will not be able to see your profile at all. Those using V1 and TPV’s based on it will see the old viewer-based profile.
Checking a person’s profile used to be a way to get to know them. Anyone here ever profile pick surf to find new destinations? A bit more difficult now.
I don’t like that anyone can tweet or FB my profile, thus putting me out there for everyone in the world. This really bothers me a lot. This may be the reason I deselect the web-based profile. I would like it to be my choice. Perhaps under Privacy settings could be an “Allow retweet, etc.” option. Maybe just a “Show this button” option.
I know that this was also available on the old viewer-based website profile, but it is more evident on the web-based profile. By the way, you still get the viewer-based profile if you type in the resident name in SEARCH on the Second Life website.
Old-style website profile.
Also keep in mind that Facebook doesn’t currently legally allow non-real identities. So you either make up a false identity using your Second Life name for Facebook and risk losing that account at the whim of whoever happens to review your account that day or you “out” your real identity, thus allowing your mom, your high school best friend, your co-workers and your kids to know about your Second Life identity. If I were the kind of person who would make up an identity for fun for, say, gaming or virtual worlds, and then make a Facebook page for that identity so that I could keep my real life and my hobby life separate, then that might not be a problem. Of course, none of us would do something contractually illegal like that and I’m sure that Linden Labs doesn’t mean to encourage contractually illegal activity by offering the service. I’m sure Linden Labs knows that all of us are just panting to reveal our real life information to anyone in Second Life and across the world-wide web.
Not all the REAL LIFE, PICK and CLASSIFIED pictures seem to have made it to the web-based profile site. Not sure I like having to copy my inworld pictures to my hard drive and then reload them to my profile.
MY NOTES has disappeared from your personal profile tab in SLV2. In the new web-based profile it appears as “PRIVATE NOTES” on other people’s profile. If you’ve used that area for notes about or for yourself, time to back it up to a notecard.
There may be information about the new web-based profiles somewhere. However, if you go to the Second Life Wiki and in the Search field type “Profile” you will get information about the viewer-based profile tab as it appears in Second Life 1.23.5 and Third-Party Viewers based on SLV1.
Q Linden did say “try it out, and keep the feedback coming!” Maybe they will listen.
