Second Life Integrating with Facebook?

Daniel Voyager came up with information about Second Life™ adding more integration with Facebook. Daniel has apparently found some of the leaks I use to learn about what is coming to SL. From what he has found the Facebook Floater is apparently due out in viewer 3.6.6 next week. I’m not so sure it will be next week or in 3.6.6.

Second Life's Facebook Page

Second Life’s Facebook Page

I just don’t think it will happen that fast, but it might. Viewer 3.6.6 is already in the viewer pipeline and you can download a copy from the Beta/Alternate Viewers page*. I’ve been using the Ribbon Viewer 3.6.6 (280938). As best I can tell this feature is not in it. 

So, where is this info coming from? The SL Wiki. See a page that was created yesterday: Viewerhelp:Post to Facebook and Viewerhelp:Map File/Second Life/3.6.6, which links to a forum Knowledge Base page that is NOT FOUND …

Dead Links 404 - Not Found

Dead Links 404 – Not Found

Searching the KB the only reference to Facebook that I can find is here: Second Life Quickstart. You will need to search the page with your browser’s search to find the one occurrence of the word. There is nothing interesting there.

The link to the description of Second Life Share that Daniel found and shared is now dead. Also, following the links in the various Wiki pages leads to a number of 404 – Page Not Found errors.

It is hard to start updating the SL Wiki, Forum, and other support sites without tipping off close watchers. So, I do believe this feature is coming and soon. But, there is a lot of stuff coming through the viewer pipeline. So, I doubt we will see it next week.

Such features go through a QA testing phase we don’t see. Well, sme geeks and third party viewer developers are following the more hidden development repositories. Whatever, when the Lindens think they have it right, they put a new feature in a RC Viewer. The RC Viewers are allowed to bake for a time and then promoted to the main stable viewer release. When there is more than one RC Viewer, only one will be promoted. Other RC Viewers will continue in testing.

So, since I don’t see the Second Life Share feature in any RC Viewer, that puts it down the road a bit.

This may be one of the surprise features that Oz Linden was hinting at.

On the current state of SL and Facebook

As late as March 2013 resident helpers in the Answers section were telling people you cannot connect your SL account to Facebook. Back in 2009 people were asking:  Are we being outed on Facebook? Then there are Facebook stories: Facebook deleting Secondlife Avatars ???? and Deletion Of Hundreds Of Second Life Facebook Accounts Being Reported Today. But, there has not been much new information this past year.

I have had my Facebook account for some time and now a Google+ account, which I haven’t used much. But, I am playing with it.

Second Life has a Facebook page, which currently has a nice picture up that Strawberry Singh made. But, there is no comment there about viewer 3.6.6 or improved Facebook-SL integration.

 

*Be warned. Installing more than one Linden made viewer and enabling Auto-Update on any of them is problematic. RC Viewers install over the top of the main viewer. The new pipeline is for those that want to help test viewers but only run one copy of the viewer.

4 thoughts on “Second Life Integrating with Facebook?

  1. As long as they keep this privacy-threatening feature as strictly opt-in, I’ll not care (and you can be certain of one thing: the Cool VL Viewer will *never* implement such a feature !!! Privacy is of uttermost importance for me, and facebook, google & Co are just data mining tools for spying and privacy violating programs such as PRISM).

  2. Yes, I reported this on SLU first (as I did with the Steam and Experiences Viewer leaks). You can tell all you really need to know about it from the description of floater_social, except whether it will be an xml panel or another awful web team production – I will write up on SLU when I know. Knowledge Base entries are usually only released when it hits release, and LL usually add new stuff to Viewer Help before they write the Knowledge Base entry.

    Other things coming very soon include a new try at muting avatars with excessive render costs, including switching them to imposters automatically (a rather neat trick), managing your estate silently, and the facility to revoke animation permissions when stopping animations – a useful anti-griefing trick that I believe I saw mentioned in a User Group meeting on your blog (thanks for all those meeting write-ups btw). And a personal bug bear of mine, remembering your orientation when you tp is also in the next maintenance release.

    There also seems to be quite a bit of tweaking of the way the world is rendered in the viewer going on separately to the Materials project, but I don’t understand it so will just hope it makes stuff look nicer :).

    Also I usually have to post comments in your blog twice before they appear on the ‘for moderation’ list. I don’t know if this means you are getting them twice or if there is a problem with it.

    • Thanks for the information.

      I only see one post. I’ll add you as a user/subscriber. I think that will eliminate your having to use Solve It.

  3. Pingback: Facebook ‘likes’ Second Life, High Fidelity and buys both | Gwyn's Home

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