Linden Lab Announces Contest For New Last Names

Last month, Linden Lab announced they would soon be making last names, or changing one's existing last name, an option for Premium residents (provided they pay a fee). On Monday, the Lab announced a contest for suggestions for new surnames.

Sharpen your quill! Get your wits about you! We are happy to declare the Last Names contest is officially open.  What contest, you say? What name changes?

We will make Name Changes available to Premium account holders in early 2020.  It will be possible to change First Name, Last Name, or both. There will be a one-time fee per Name Change. Just like in the olden times, First Name will be freeform, Last Name will be from a list - and here is where this contest comes in: we want your help coming up with the first batch of Last Names! 

To take part in the contest, fill out the contest form (here).  Residents are allowed to make three suggestions for new last names (existing ones cannot be reused). Those who think they have a clever idea should check the list of existing last names, as there are a LOT of them. The five residents coming up with what the Lab sees as the most original and clever names will be allowed to change their account names for free, or choose another account for the change. It wasn't specified on whether or not this could be someone else's account if the winner wanted to give the name change to a friend.

Taking a look at the page for the contest in the Second Life Wiki, there was an estimated price of what the upcoming price would be to change one's surname.

estimated value at US$39.99 plus $11.99 to represent the value of a month of Premium Membership

So it appears the price to change one's name in Second Life will be $52 dollars USD, or $40 for those who already have Premium accounts.

So if you think you have a particularly clever idea for a surname, go ahead and enter the contest.

To read the blog entry in full, Click Here.

Petition to Facebook to Allow Avatar Names

If you're a user of Facebook in addition to being a user of Second Life, you're most likely aware of it's policy telling users to use real-life names only for their accounts. Those who don't face the threat of having their accounts deleted. It's been stated by some that sometimes including a real-life picture of oneself on the page may be enough to get the staff to look the other way, and often people get a warning to change the name before the account is taken down. But still, for those whom are known online only by pen names and other pseudonyms, this rule is downright irritating.

Recently on the petition website change.org, someone calling herself Frijolita Avalira started a petition to Facebook's owner Mark Zuckerburg to allow Second Life users to use their account names without worry of deletions, "As you well know Mark Zuckerberg, your team continuously shuts down our Facebook pages, because we don't put our real life information. As far as that goes, it's a virtual world and these people don't need to know our real life names & addresses & phone numbers etc."

Frijolita brought up two reasons as to why Zuckerberg should change his policy. One was that there was already an exception to the "real names only" policy as drag queens could now make account pages under their stage names. Also, a Second Life designer was now making real life designs for live models in fashion shows. "There is a whole world of designers who use Second life as their tool of business, and Facebook to advertise to the Second life consumers. If Linden Labs can recognize linden currency with a world currency value , then we should be recognized as using our Second Life names as our 'Stage names.' "

As of the writing of this article, over 730 people had signed the petition. A thousand are needed before it's send to Zuckerberg. What happens next, time will tell.

To read the petition in full: (click here).

Sources: change.org, The Guardian, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Update on Last Names

New World Notes recently had some new information about Linden Labs' plans to reintroduce last names to Second Life accounts. Rodvik Linden/Rod Humble made a post on his profile page about the issue.

Quick update on last names. Just fyi the team here has been working on solutions for this and it is taking longer than we thought. identity is important so we want the ability to have that wonderful shared experience the old last name system had but also not lose sight of the fact that many people really do not want a name given to them, they want freedom to define their identity, finally we want to consider adding meaningful things like titles etc that can be awarded by the community or some other methods. Anyway bit more complicated than initially thought but progress is being made. Will have a baked plan sometime in February we think.

Hours later, there were close to a hundred comments. Many had praise Rodvik for keeping up on the issue, "Thank you for the update." But others were wondering about what might go wrong, "Just to be clear: Whatever you do, it does NOT mean that old residents with last names will loose them, correct?"

Hamlet couldn't think of another recent peep from Rodvik, saying he had "a month long absence from social media." He also noted that the Linden blogs were quiet in the month of January. He did get the impression from "insiders" that there should be some important news soon.

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Responds to "Bring Back Last Name Options!" JIRA

For some time, there's been a JIRA aimed at amending Linden Labs' decision to change the way new accounts are created from first and last names to a name that on Viewer 1-based viewers appears to have the surname "Resident," with an option for a display name. The new system is disliked by many, and some see it as creating a division between newer and older denziens on the Grid.

Although there were stories of individual Lindens talking about this behind the scenes, there has been no official response, until now, when ProductTeam Linden finally made a post in the JIRA.

It's clear there is a lot of interest in SVC-7125. The intent was for users to specify their last name using the Display Names feature found inusers' profiles, which most Viewers now support. For those that haven't used Display Names yet, you can also set them on the web: https://my.secondlife.com/settings/profile.

Know that we hear you and value your passion and that we are currently reviewing some of the decisions that were made with the username /Display Names implementation.

While a canned response that was quickly answered, "We know that was the idea, but it DOESN'T WORK for the things about which we're complaining ... ," this shows it's finally gotten through to the Lab that they, or rather the "Resident"s, have a problem. Hamlet Au predicted Linden Lab would soon give those under the new naming system the option for a surname. No doubt they're hoping for this or something close to it.

Other articles: New World Notes, Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan.