Linden Lab Announces Its Community Gateway Program Is Back

In August 2010, Linden Lab announced it was ending it's Community Gateways program as part of it's "new approach to welcoming residents" at the time. This move, along with the end of the SL Volunteer program in December 2009, was panned by critics as a sign of either cluelessness and/or a lack of interest in helping new residents. At the time, the Lab stated it had doubts about it being an effective use of their resources. In September 2015, Inara Pey stated that community gateways were set for a comeback. And a number were set up, such as the one by Firestorm, which can be seen at Firestorm Social Island.

On Wednesday May 31, Linden Lab officially announced the Community Gateway program had returned.

We are thrilled to re-introduce the Community Gateway Program!  Previously, the Community Gateway program helped bring new users to Second Life, by enabling Second Life communities to attract, register, an on-board new Residents. The program was shelved in 2010 as resources were reprioritized, and now we're excited to reintroduce the Community Gateway program along with some improvements that will make it even more valuable to Second Life.  We recognize the benefit of having Resident supported tutorial areas and have been working with several communities while fine tuning the new program over the last year.  

This powerful new tool will allow you to register new users right from your own community website and add them automatically to your group, thus helping your community to grow!

The blog post described the program as allowing communities to "create a new user experience and attract residents" to the community, help new residents into beginning their Second Life experience, guide new residents in the "creation of their new avatar personas," and help with new user retention.

Of the last detail, Second Life is described as having a very low new user retention. Increasing it would be a step in halting and reversing it's overall long slow decline in numbers.

Details about the program, including how to apply, are here in the official Second Life Wiki.


For the Blog post in full: Click here. 

Source: Daniel Voyager  , Inara Pey 

Bixyl Shuftan

Facebook "Bitstrips" No More

Users of Facebook may be familiar with "Bitstrips," cartoons that some used posted on their pages, and would appear on their friends' public feed like other posts. Unfortunately, it seems the Bitsrip fun is over. Someone who was a regular user posted this on her page on April 25.

Yesterday, there were questions out of surprised confusion about the BitStrips situation.. the BitStrips app on Facebook has been stopped and it's over.. to dispel any doubt, and to provide a promised update, here is the picture that greeted me when i tried to access new BitStrips yesterday. sorry, folks.. and thanks for following with me. I hope you got as much enjoyment out of seeing them as i had making them.

But the bitstrip pictures she had already done and saved as pictures were still in her pictures section, as were those done by SL Enquirer editor Lanai Jarrico. The one she did of me as a joke was still on my page.

Bitstrips were created by Jacob Blackstock, whom described himself as having a "lifelong passion" for comics. He came up with the idea for Bitstrips in 2007, and launched it as a mobile app in 2008. With it, people can create "avatars" of themselves, then put them in customized comic-strip scenes on the Bitstrip site to create their own cartoons, with no drawing skill needed, "We kind of saw it as a Youtube for comics." Originally for mobile devices, when the Facebook application was made available in October 2013, the number of users jumped from 2 million to 30 million in a month. Bitsrtips user were at first able to create avatars of their friends, but after Facebook changed it's Terms of Service in regards to privacy, after April 2015 they were no longer able to do so.

Last month, Snapchat bought up Bitmoji, the company that owns Bitstrips, for $100,000. It's possible that the company is integrating the technology in it's own products rather than let it continue as a separate app on Facebook.

No doubt Facebook's bitstrip fans will miss doing the comics. Perhaps They could continue to do so using Second Life and MORPG screenshots using graphics programs.

Sources: Facebook, The Guardian, Techcrunch

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Video: "The Show Must Go On! 2007 - Part 1 "

(Click Here if the video fails to load)

In honor of Osprey Therian, whom passed away last week, we are showing the first episode of her Second Life program, "The Show Must Go On."

Remembering Neil Armstrong

Last weekend came some sad news for space fans. Neil Armstrong, the first man who walked on the Moon, passed away. He was 82 years old.

The news certainly got many, including myself, pondering. It was a reminder of how long ago what some consider our high-water mark in manned space exploration was reached. It also got some wondering "What happened to him?" Unlike some astronauts whom stayed in the spotlight, such as Senator John Glenn, he instead went back to Ohio for a job in teaching and bought some farmland.

When his family was asked how should the rest of us remember him, one answered that the next time we see the moon, think of Neil Armstrong, his fellow astronauts, and the journey they went through.

A few years ago on the forty-year anniversary, there was an exhibit in the Second Life Sci-Lands that allowed residents to do just that. Built by a Wicked Quasimodo, it was never quite finished, and went up once an hour, along with any space fan whom was waiting for a ride. As the sim it was on, Space Frontier, is now gone, what happened to it is still unknown. But in Spaceport Bravo, west of Spaceport Alpha, one can still find this Saturn V Apollo rocket. One can just barely see my five-foot avatar at the bottom near the launch platform treads, showing just how big these massive rockets, and their launch pads, were.

Bixyl Shuftan