How will virtual worlds grow as social media? How do we use social media tools to build community? Do we risk losing our sense of ‘place’ when we communicate through other media, or does it make us stronger?

Join us at the Metanomics Main Stage on Thursday September 3rd at 12:00 p.m. PST/SLT as Dusan Writer (Doug Thompson) hosts a discussion of Second Life and its connection to social media. You can also participate live via the Web. (And apologies for last week’s forum – technical issues prevented simulcast but we should be up-and-running Thursday!)

Linden Lab’s Web-side Push
At last week’s community forum one of the discussion points included the question of whether Second Life is a social media – and the community’s answer was a resounding yes.

But this week’s announcement of a new appointment by Linden Lab sheds further light on their strategy to extend the current Second Life platform. In their announcement that Robin Ducot will join the company in the position of VP of Web Development, they explained that her role will include:

- Expanding the company’s Web infrastructure and architecture

- Offering complementary lightweight Web experiences that extend the value of Second Life beyond the virtual world, and

- Helping Residents to more closely integrate Second Life with their daily lives.

Said Robin Ducot: “We have a tremendous opportunity to further leverage the Web to enhance the Resident experience with new ways to connect with the virtual world, and to grow Second Life’s global user base, while also providing new revenue streams for the company. Mark and his team have built a tremendous foundation and I’m excited to continue to push the boundaries and refine our Web offerings.”

Mark Kingdon has previously commented, on Metanomics and elsewhere, that one of the goals of Linden Lab is to extend the Second Life experience into social media and other Web-based offerings.

Integrating with Social Media
Other virtual world platforms integrate social media or identity in how they operate. Metaplace, for example, allows you to log-in using your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo or other proxies for identity. Initiatives on OpenSim allow you to send instant messages via Facebook. Within Second Life, users are able to blog or Tweet in-world.

But if we imagine the Second Life experience as including more Web-side components, what can we expect?

At the community forum we’ll discuss:

- Current ways in which companies and individuals are integrating other social media platforms into their virtual world communities and experiences

- Brainstorm how virtual world platforms could build better tools and approaches to integrating ‘social media’ applications

- Discuss the policy implications of connecting in-world information with external applications

Join us this Thursday for another provocative discussion!