Lauren Lamonica

The Founder and former CEO of Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale, recently posted a blog entry in which he expressed his intentions to revisit and improve the interactive map of Second Life, a virtual world with millions of users. Since the development of a new homepage with an interactive map was the first project I’d ever managed, I thought I’d recall how we arrived at its conception.

The main goal of the site at the time was to get visitors to download a free 30-day trial of Second Life, and the main objective of the project was to “move the needle” by increasing our trial/visit rate on the site, which hovered at around 4%, I believe. Our strategy for attracting the early adopters who would grow the community was to explain that Second Life had limitless possibilities and that “yes you, Site Visitor, can shape this world into anything you want.”

But the homepage had a few problems: First, hardly anyone knew what “virtual reality” was in 2004. Images on Secondlife.com often depicted games like Tringo, people dancing in a club, and the occasional furry. So, the average site visitor immediately assumed Second Life was a 3D game or something like the Sims. Second, most site visitors didn’t understand that the images they were seeing depicted 3D models that were “user-created” with SL’s tools, and were not made by Linden Lab. Third, we wanted to show exponential growth in content within Second Life without requiring that our one and only designer constantly snap and upload pictures in-world. Finally, it seemed that if we could convey that Second Life was a place and not a game, we would have a much easier time explaining the rest

So, in designing a new site, there were a few parameters to set:

1. Show different scenarios (dancing, a game) simultaneously so that a visitor to the site doesn’t bounce because they’re not interested in the first scenario they see.
2. Show that Second Life is user-created.
3. Show constant growth and activity in Second Life.
4. Show Second Life as a place and not a game.

At the time, there were two trends that were taking over, on the web and in SL, respectively: Google’s new slick AJAX map and Snapzilla, a website created by Second Life users to share photos; a Flickr for Second Life. Leveraging these trends, we formed an idea that seemed within our solution space: a contextual screenshot gallery that would be automatically updated by residents of Second Life via posting Snapshots from in-world to the web—in the form of a map.

The first roll out of the map did not see an increase in the trial/visit rate, but it did provide a clearer vision of Second Life as a place, and represented Second Life via the web. This was essential in improving the user experience and mass adoption of Second Life.

Over the course of a year, the homepage and the map changed several times, becoming connected and disconnected at times. But the map evolved regardless. The first phase was the creation of the map and its use on the homepage. The second phase involved a adding check box on the Snapshot feature which allowed users to “publish image to the web,” and the third was the invention of the SLURL, or Second Life URL, which gave those without Second Life installed the ability to visit a location in Second Life on a web-based map, and then the opportunity to join and start their journey at that location

Philip’s new map is much smoother and has more detail, but as Philip points out “the practical challenge of rendering things far away [within Second Life] combined with the weaknesses of the existing web and in-world maps have made this more an aspiration than a reality.” How valuable is the vision of “space” in Second Life if point-to-point teleporting is more efficient than flying from one place to another as the world slowly renders around you?

I hope to see improvements both in the web-based an in-world maps. In the meantime I noticed that two of the features which we had created to make the map more relevant are now missing, as far as I can tell:

1. How I can automatically post a photo from within Second Life to the web, and have it show up like it does on an Earth map in Flickr? The checkbox I pushed that said “publish to web” is no longer there.
2. How can I input an image of my house in place of the default “Welcome to Second Life” graphic upon visiting a SLURL? For example, I’d like to send someone a SLURL of my home location, with an image of my house in place.

Now that the map actually functions in the way we’d always hoped—I won’t be satisfied until I can also search it for items, businesses, and residents, as I search web-based maps in my real life.