So you have a problem: You’ve got your real life friends on Facebook and virtual friends on Second Life. How do you keep track of who is doing what in both worlds? Fire Centaur (pictured here), a Second Life resident who resides in real world Korea, thought about this conundrum and wondered if it would be possible to create an application that merged your Second Life friends network with your Facebook account. Six weeks of non-stop PHP coding followed, which resulted in the launch of the "Second Life Link" Facebook app this week.
Since I already have an account on Facebook, installing the app was dead simple. I just went to http://apps.facebook.com/second-life/, put in the name of my avatar "Rik Riel", TPed in-world to Fire Centaur’s home called the "English Village," clicked a sign there, and I was good to go. Took about five minutes.
I happened to run into Fire Centaur while I was there. He told me that more than 1,000 people have already installed his app, most of those verifying their accounts in Second Life. Sure enough, when I installed the application, eleven of my Second Life friends were already verified. I could see the utility of this application for setting up meetings and check-ins with people in-world, and giving my real life friends a taste of my virtual life.
Now all I need to do is add the in-world Twitterbox capability, and I’ve got my social and virtual networks nicely meshed and integrated.
After the jump is Fire Centaur’s description of "Second Life Link". Nicely done, sir!
Hi there, this is Fire Centaur, owner of English Village. I have just released a beta version a Social Networking Application for Facebook and Second Life. It’s called Second Life Link – for facebook!
By clicking on our Second Life Link terminal at this SLURL or by going to http://apps.facebook.com/second-life/ you can connect your avatar with Facebook!
What does the Second Life Link Application let me do?
This
application integrates the worlds most popular social networking
applications, Facebook, with the worlds most popular Virtual World –
Second Life™! With our Facebook application you can:
- Display your SL Avatar to your Real life friends! If
your friend uses the Second Life™, and they use our application, you
will be able to see their Second Life™ name and Avatar – so you can
meet virtually! - View Online Status of your Friends! Our application will show your friend’s Second Life™ online/offline. This will help you to synchronize virtual meeting times!
- Share your Virtual Home / Favorite Locations with your Friends. We
give you the option to specify your favorite or Home SL Destination
with your friends. That way, they can easily teleport to you when you
are online, or visit your virtual home when you are offline. - Excellent Privacy Settings Privacy
is our number one concern. Therefore, we have several privacy settings
so you can choose whether or not your friends can see you online or
offline in SL.
Second Life Link is currently in our beta stage -meaning, it may have bugs in it. I hope you can help us find them, and make the application better! Please IM in-world Fire Centaur or email fire@b3d.co.kr if you have any questions!
Created by Fire Preibisch and Jared Mitchell.
Hey Rik, thanks for the post! really appreciate it!