Meet People and Make Friends in Second Life

This chapter is from the book

Designing Your Second Life

Learn More Buy

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book 

Designing Your Second Life

Learn More Buy

Finding Your Niche: Using Search

Now that you've created numerous ways for other residents to learn about you, you might want to start learning more about other residents. The easiest, fastest, and most exponentially educational way to do this is to use Search (see Figure 4.12 on the next page).

Figure 4.12 The top tab, or All page, of the Search dialog box.

As already mentioned, the basic functionality of Second Life's Search feature is very similar to any search engine on the Web at large. The All tab page is especially like this—use the blank Find text box near the upper-left corner of this page to type in any keyword. Then click the blue Search button beside it on the right, and anything matching your request will scroll into the results window on the left below.

If you're doing a Search for something popular, like a casino, or if you're using very general words like cars or shoes, you'll be flooded by a tidal wave of results. Also, it's quite likely that the top 25 results (the maximum number you can see in the Search window at once) will not relate to your chosen keyword. So how do you refine the process and zero in on what you really want to find?

At this writing, there's no advanced Search capability within Second Life. Also, Linden does not police Search listings to prevent keyword incursion—adding popular keywords like sex to a totally unrelated ad, just so your listing will come up more frequently. Furthermore, you can't refine an SL Search using Boolean logic, the functionality that lets you use and, or, not, and the like to exclude keywords elsewhere on the Internet. You can use more than one word together, such as racing cars or women's shoes, and have some success. Still, your best bet is to use the other tab pages in Search as a means of narrowing down results.

Using Search: The Classifieds Page

Every time you write a Classified, this is the first place somebody else will go looking for it (see Figure 4.13).

Figure 4.13 The Classifieds tab page in the Search dialog box.

This is the other side of the Classified listings you create using your Profile—where everybody goes to search for things you just might want them to find. As you might assume, the categories listed in the drop-down menu are the same: Any Category, Shopping, Land Rental, Property Rental, Special Attraction, New Products, Employment, Wanted, Service, and Personal.

What actually ends up in these categories? Good question.

• Any Category: The catch-all Classified page, very similar to the All tab page in Search as a whole. Keyword searches in this tab page will bring you results culled from all the other categories, for better and for worse.
• Shopping: Just what it says—the place to keyword-window-shop for anything you can put into Inventory. This does mean everything—shapes, skins, delicate tiny piercings, entire houses, scripts, HUD attachments...anything that the grid perceives to be an object.
• Land Rental: Not quite what it says. Here you'll find listings for (primarily) empty land to buy, rent, lease, or sublet by the week or month. All types of land are listed here, from Linden-owned mainland lots to lots on privately owned island SIMs. All sizes of lots are listed here, too, from 512 sq/meters on up to whole islands and (theoretically) beyond.
• Property Rental: Not quite what it says, either. Property usually means land plus something already constructed on it, like a house, a store, a display-type parking spot for your car, or a marina-type slip for your boat. Again, property can be for sale, rent, lease, or sublet, either by the week or by the month.
• Special Attraction: A totally subjective category. It's anybody's guess what belongs in here, or what can be found here, either. A quick survey of listings in this category included ads for surfing beaches, blues clubs, and gaming destinations.
• New Products: Another totally subjective category, filled with miscellaneous and random listings. This seems to be a place where SL merchants list new styles of existing products, rather than brand-new, never-before-seen creations.
• Employment: All sorts of activities relating to making Lindens and occasionally real life money. Jobs can be found here, both short- and long-term, but also ads by job banks and talent agencies, and places with camping chairs that want you to come boost their stats for them. Read these listings carefully for the fine print, and remember to scroll all the way down.
• Wanted: Also just what it says: if somebody wants something, they'll put a listing here. Real example: wanted listings include yard sale owners seeking used furniture; role-playing communities looking for players; residents looking for specific products that have been discontinued by particular designers; singles looking for dates, one-night stands, or partners.
• Service: Not just for prostitutes anymore! Real example Service listings include banks and stock exchange firms looking for investors; DJs and real life musicians looking for gigs; gardens and rental halls offering space for weddings; and real estate firms offering to find or sell land as brokers. (Okay, this is still the place to find escorts, too.)
• Personal: Also not just for... well, yes, you can find escorts here as well. But also people advertising support groups, book clubs, film societies, and listing traditional newspaper-type personal ads.

Using Search: The Events Page

It would seem logical that this page in Search is the place to look for something to do. To a certain extent, this is correct. But the Events page has also become the place where businesses, designers, casinos, land developers, and other not-quite-social groups will make announcements (see Figure 4.14).

Figure 4.14 The Events tab page in the Search dialog box.

The categories listed in this page's pull-down menu are All, Discussion, Sports, Live Music, Commercial, Nightlife/Entertainment, Games/Contests, Pageants, Education, Arts and Culture, Charity/Support Groups, and Miscellaneous. The All tab page in Events is a good place to get a hearty sampling of what's available, and a good place to look for examples of how to write your own Events listing. But if you're interested in finding things to do, especially if you have a few days or a few weeks to plan ahead, use the more specific category settings to fill in your social calendar.

Here's the lowdown:

• All: Everything ongoing and soon to get going. Events on this page are listed chronologically, albeit with a twist. The default search-for-everything setting is toggled with Ongoing and Starting Soon enabled (as opposed to searching by RL date). This results in Events at the top of the list, i.e., everything showing on the first results page, to be about an hour and a half old. If you want to find an Event starting anytime close to the actual time you're searching, skip right to the next page.
• Discussion: Just what it sounds like, no holds barred in terms of topic. Real example discussions scheduled here included politics, religion, marriage, BDSM, current events, and progressive causes as the subjects du jour.
• Sports: An intriguing mix of in-world, golden-oldie type competitions (sword fights, boxing matches, pirate battles, etc.) with hybrid offerings, like guided spinning classes for people with PCs next to their real-world exercise bikes. Also the place to bet on real-world sports events.
• Live Music: Also a mix category. Approximately half in half, with live DJs spinning recorded tracks on the one hand, and live bands or solo artists performing in real time. Very diverse offerings.
• Commercial: Themed sales, grand opening sales, liquidation sales, seasonal sales. Did we mention the stuff for sale? (Take your time if you want to spot anything like a real bargain.)
• Nightlife/Entertainment: Just about every possible way to advertise topless and wet T-shirt contests. (Again, take your time if you want to find anything else aside from "gee-your-pixels-look-good" type Events.)
• Games/Contests: Variations on the wet T-shirt theme, with ads for casinos and other perpetual SL games like Slingo, plus the occasional trivia night competition.
• Pageants: Where "Best Arrangement of Pixels" type contests should be listed, but aren't. An underused and mostly empty category listing.
• Education: A bounty of opportunities, with classes for every possible in-world building and scripting project, plus all sorts of real-world seminars on meaty topics such as quantum physics, financial investment, tarot and astrology, and even English as a Second Language (ESL).
• Arts and Culture: Everything creative, quirky, and ambitious. In-world gallery showings of works by real-world painters and photographers. Tours of whole-environment builds, designed to be as close to performance art as possible. Even group bedtime stories, poetry readings, and psychic consultations.
• Charity/Support Groups: Also a place to find support for life challenges, such as addiction, chronic pain, and depression. But, in addition, there are announcements for in-world Events raising real money for real nonprofit and charitable causes.
• Miscellaneous: Browsing this category is a fun Event in and of itself.

To list your own event, click the blue Create Event button near the lower-right corner of the Events tab page. You'll be directed to the Second Life Web site's Events area and the Add Event forms page (see Figure 4.15). (Read the rules and requirements and check "I Agree" to get to the form.)

Figure 4.15 The Add Event form page on the Second Life Web site.

There are two bits of information you should figure out first before you try to create an Event listing. One, be sure you know what time your Event will begin and end in LST, or Linden Standard Time. This is not the same as GMT—it is the same as Pacific Standard Time, in California, where Linden Lab is located.

Also, scout out your Event location first. If you have land, and a house or event space of your own, no problem. But if you're new, if you still have a freebie account, or if you don't have enough space or the proper kind of venue, you'll need to host someplace else.

Using Search: The Popular Places Page

What's hot in Second Life at this very moment? What's listed on this page are the top 20 most popular places in-world, as measured by traffic stats (see Figure 4.16).

Figure 4.16 The Popular Places tab page in the Search dialog box (search results for something PG-rated).

Here's the irony with reaching Popularity: many would-be visitors will be put off by that thumbs-up icon. Why? First, the default maximum occupancy for any location is 40 avatars (and, many land- or location-owners don't know how to change that setting). Therefore, Popular destinations are often too crowded to visit; the server won't let you teleport there.

Also, even if the "host" of a Popular destination is savvy enough to up that max occupancy setting, crowds are notorious for creating lag. Lag, if you remember, happens when the grid is overworked and cannot render objects fast enough to allow for "natural" movement. And frankly, there are few more frustrating experiences in Second Life than finally getting to a door, but literally not being able to get through it.

If you are bound and determined to visit a Popular Place yourself, here's a time-tested tip to help you out. Once you get to the location, step to the side, just a few paces away from the entry point, and use Mouselook and the Camera Controls to poke around (see Figure 4.17).

Figure 4.17 The Camera Controls palette.

You can quickly move between first and third person with the Mouselook setting (press Escape and then M to "jump" into your avatar's body and look through his or her eyes; press Escape again to go back). This is not always the best choice, though. You really do get a better sense of your surroundings if you stay in third person and use the Camera Controls. And, in crowded or laggy areas—like Popular Places—the Camera can move even if your avatar gets stuck.

Using Search: The Land Sales Page

The Land Sales tab page is where land for sale should be listed (see Figure 4.18). However, the usefulness of this page for both buyers and sellers is diminished—believe it or not—because the Classified tab "comes first." That is to say, most people have been conditioned to read tabs from left to right. Also, we tend to click on the first tab that's labeled even vaguely like the thing we want to find. Hence, the land for sale listings in the Classifieds, even though the category name is actually Land (or Property) for Rent.

Figure 4.18 The Land Sales tab page in the Search dialog box.

There are two very important considerations involved in buying land, and price isn't either of them. These potential boondoggles are prims and zoning—information that doesn't always appear in the Classifieds, and rarely comes up in the big list of Search results. So how do you read a Land Sales listing? Set aside the matter of price at first. Gaze at the pretty pictures, choose a location to visit based on looks (just for now), and click the blue Teleport button.

The Agony and Ecstasy of Prims

While you can wear and attach an infinite number of prims to your avatar's body, the number of prims you can set down on land is severely restricted. The smallest size lot that's relatively inhabitable—512 sq/m—only gives you 117 prims to work with. That's sounds like a lot, right? It's not: there are probably that many prims in your avatar's hairstyle alone. So it's easy to understand why residents will pay a lot of real-world money for large chunks of virtual land. Quite simply, you have to have a lot of land to be able to build something cool, because you need a lot of land to get a lot of prims. (We will go into prims, land, and building in greater detail later on, in Chapters 6, 7, and 8.)

Some Second Life landlords have designed their rentable land in such a way as to give you more than the minimum number of allowable prims. But generally speaking, you should never assume that you'll get more than the minimum. So how do you calculate that minimum number? Take the size of a piece of land in square meters and plug it into this formula (in this example, we're using 4,096 sq/m):

1. Multiply the land size number (4,096) by 15,000. In this example, you get 61,440,000.
2. Divide this number by 65,536. In this example, you get 937.5 for an answer.
3. This means land that measures 4,096 sq/m should come with a minimum of 937 prims. (Unfortunately, you can't round up and get 938.)

Zoning and Land Use in Second Life

Just like in real life, there are different types of land usage zones in Second Life: residential, commercial, and mixed use. These distinctions will affect your quest for land, regardless of the type you choose for yourself. Why? Sometimes in SL, landlords are not careful about zoning or discriminating about their tenants. So you need to know who your neighbors are, and what they are doing right alongside your land.

Residential land has been specifically restricted, by the owner, for houses and other living space only. Tenants on residential land may still build things for sale on this land, but they can't construct stores or other spaces for doing business. Other residents in residential zones take this restriction very seriously, as businesses draw lots of foot traffic and create lag for everybody.

Commercial land is specifically restricted, often developed, and terraformed by the owner to accommodate business builds only. Tenants and visitors to these spaces expect to encounter increased lag and accept more of it as a matter of course—although wise landlords will work hard to keep lag low, as too much of it will eventually drive customers and tenants away.

Mixed zone land may be used for any purpose—residential or commercial or even both. In reality, most mixed zones are occupied by commercial tenants (see the discussion regarding lag previously). But if you do create a store in a mixed zone and you have residential neighbors, they are less likely to complain about lag. They decided to take their chances when they moved in.

There's another thought to keep in mind when considering zones. Remember you have eight neighbors, not four. There might be four lots directly to the north, south, east, and west of the land you're considering. But you should also look at the four lots near the corners. The reason for this has to do with audible privacy. Once you get within 20 meters of anyone else in SL, whether you can see them or not, you will "overhear" them. You will be able to hear the key-clicking sound effects of another resident typing, and you'll be able to see their words in open chat. Also, of course, they will be able to overhear you. So choose land carefully, and if you can afford it, cost should not be your first consideration.

Using Search: The Places and People Pages

The Places and the People tab pages are by far the most often-used parts of Search. However, you have to use distinctly different strategies to come up with optimal results. Let's start with a look at the Places tab page (see Figure 4.19).

Figure 4.19 The Places tab page in the Search dialog box.

The Places page breaks down into 12 distinct categories, not including the Any Category tab. All of them have one thing in common: you can't just browse. The Search button will only "turn on" and become clickable if you type a keyword in the text box first. For all practical purposes, this means you really have to know—already—what you are looking for.

The People tab page, on the other hand, is designed for finding other residents when you can't remember their entire, exact names (see Figure 4.20). You can type in the first name, the last name, or part of either of these names, and get "smart" results. In other words, if you remember meeting somebody who called himself Sam, you can type in "sam" and get all possible first and last names with "sam" in them. Once you find the name of the avatar you are looking for, click it once and that resident's Profile will appear on the right side of the dialog box.

Figure 4.20 The People tab page in the Search dialog box.

Name amnesia will happen far more often than you think. Second Life has an elegant solution to help you remember: the calling card. Calling cards are incredibly useful as reminders, but most residents don't seem inclined to exchange them. This might be a user interface problem; the Add Card functionality is on the second "page" of the pie menu and therefore not necessarily easy to grab or remember. So you are very likely to meet someone interesting, and only remember part of his or her name later on unless you "friend" each other. (There's a lot more information about calling cards, friendship, and other social considerations in Chapter 5, "Designing Your Social Life," if you want more details.)

Using Search: The Groups Page

So now you know how to find a place, an event, a type of event, a specific business, and even the Profile of a particular resident. But how do you increase the chance of meeting many residents who share your interest in spelunking, or your need to discuss economics? You look for Groups by searching the Groups page (see Figure 4.21).

Figure 4.21 The Groups tab page in the Search dialog box. (results for "vampire")

There is a catch or two involved in finding success, and therefore Groups, using this area of Search. First, think broadly. Maybe you're a fan of a specific vampire culture, something written about in a series of novels or explored in a popular game. However, the Groups Search function only matches keywords to Group titles. You'd be better off searching with "vampire" and wading through all the various choices. Or, alternatively, try searching with the proper name of your favorite vampire clan, or its sire or leader.

Also, some Groups might have hundreds of members. (The number to the right of a Group name tells you how many residents currently belong.) This stat might seem akin to traffic numbers, and lead you to believe the Group is active as well as popular. This is not necessarily the case; you need to read the description of the Group and figure out its purpose. Some Groups are only formed to exchange information, or to serve a short-term function. These Groups are less likely to provide the kind of entrée into Second Life society you might be seeking.

After you find a Group that seems interesting, dig down a little and learn what you can from the Search results. The most friendly and welcoming Groups do not charge a fee to join, and they list the names and titles of their members. You will learn the most about a Group as a nonmember by scrolling down the member list and double-clicking the bolded names. These residents are the Group's owners, and therefore the people who created or manage the group. Send one of them a polite, friendly IM asking for more information, even if you can (and do) join the group for free.

Joining a Group will enable you to get even more information. It will subscribe you to the Group chat, so you can listen in on real-time conversations or announcements. Joining also enables you to receive notices—announcement messages that get saved for you and sent as email if you've set up that preference. Group members can also click the blue Detailed View button to read archives of previous notices and see which other Group members are currently online. All this information will enable you to make contact, get involved, and stay involved with other residents who share your interests.