Is Second Life too little?

In one of those fun crotchety-old-timer posts, the renowned Prad asks Is Second Life too big?, and I reply, in my usual Polyanna way, that it isn’t.

And then I decide to make a whole weblog post out of it! :)

Yeah, I would definitely suggest doing more grid-hopping and exploration, and saying Hi to more random people! I do alot of both, and it’s great fun.

I don’t think Second Life’s too big. I do expect that there’s some slight effect where early on the people coming into SL were very heavily weighted toward early adopters, the curious, the confident, the creative. We’re still pretty heavily weighted that way compared to RL, but probably not quite as much, so there are maybe a few percent more “normal” people than there used to be, and a few percent more people who are *different* enough from you that you maybe will have to work a little harder to get on with them.

But on the whole I think those are good things. :) It might take a bit (just a bit, I think) more effort to meet new people, but imho the increased diversity is well worth it.

One tip: if you want to hit it off with a new person, you don’t have to just say “Hi” out of the blue. You can read their profile, see what they’ve chosen to present to the world about themself, and then you can say “That’s a great profile pic, where did you take it?” or “Hey wow, I’m a huge Allman Brothers fan too!” or “what kind of art do you do?” or whatever. Not only does this give them an easy and natural way to enter into a conversation if they’re so inclined, it also shows that you’ve gone to the trouble of finding out a little about them, and are a bit less likely to be a random beggar.

And for the last new person that I struck up a conversation with, who had nothing much in her profile, one of the things that I said (not instantly, but early on) was that she should put something interesting into her profile, ’cause it would make it easier to meet new people.

When you did that search for “British”, did you really find *no* places that looked like they’d be good prospects for socializing? Even with “show mature” turned off? I’m sure there were alot of malls and clothing stores and iffy-looking venues in the list, but I’ll bet there are one or two that, if you were a newborn today and found them on the list and went there, would offer some very nice first-week experiences meeting new people.

And in terms of, say, being able to find a group of Italian-speakers, or Allman Brothers fans, or train enthusiasts, the Grid is probably *more* inviting to a newborn now, exactly because it is bigger, and has groups and communities and venues for an even larger set of interests and styles than it did N years ago.

“Rarely will we just go around “grid -hopping” to explore and see new places… we avoid most people, fearing them to be psycho sex-seeking, lolcat-English emblazoned stalkerish noobies…”

The power is in your hands! :)

(These thoughts may or may not be related interestingly to my recent other thoughts about styles of “Hi”.)