Moving on up

May 31, 2007 by Leave a comment

I’m evidently going up in the WWW – SL Shrink now has an authority rating of 1 on Technorati, resulting in an impressive 1176061 place jump in its ranking, and making me officially the 2121799th most influential person on the internet.

I followed the link to find out who my new friend was, and it turns out to be Metaverse.jp, a Japanese blog offering “virtual world information”, mostly in japanese of course, so I can’t see why they’ve linked here. I’d like to think it’s because they admire my elegant prose, but I suspect that there’s some sort of automated data aggregation going on. I’m not complaining though; a few more links like that and I’ll be in the top one million

Filed under Blogging Tagged with ,

Research resources

May 29, 2007 by Leave a comment

Before starting this project I did review the relevant research to some extent…

I have noticed that when bloggers use the term “research” they tend to mean “looking up stuff on the internet” rather than “uncovering new information”. A lot of the time what is presented as original insight is simply a rehash of old opinions. Ideas gain credence by being repeated, and the perceived authority of a source counts for far more than any concept of objective truth. I could illustrate this by linking to the numerous articles by trusted internet opinion-formers wherein exactly the same point is made, but that would be just too ironic.

I was thinking about this after posting yesterday about the Technorati ranking system. Blogs gain authority by being cited by other bloggers – and bloggers tend to cite the blogs that have authority. Opinions become self-reinforcing, and morph into accepted fact. (For an illustration of this look at the comment section following George Monbiot’s Guardian article debunking the 9/11 conspiracy movie Loose Change).

So when I say I reviewed the “research”, what I mean is that I typed “Second Life” into Google, and read the Wikipedia article that popped up. Most interesting fact? (Of course everything in Wikipedia is fact). That more than 90% of SL user accounts are inactive. It really cheered me up to read that, since it suggests that the vast majority of people prefer to interact with other real humans rather than computer screens. And that means that the 10% who do get really into SL are likely to be quite interesting, from a psychological point of view at least.

If you’re interested in real academic research on online issues, I would recommend the journal Cyberpsychology & Behavior, which is an excellent resource for the latest thinking on online interaction and its impact on real and virtual societies. Read more of this post

Filed under Blogging, Psychology, Second Life Tagged with , , ,

The Competition

May 28, 2007 by Leave a comment

Since it looks like it could be some time before I actually make it on to Second Life (I need a new graphics card, some more RAM, probably a distro update – you can see that I had really thought this project through), I took a trip over to Technorati to see what else the blogosphere had to offer on SL.

Technorati must be a depressing site for the average blogger, since it sets out in harsh figures exactly how little attention the world is paying to your ramblings. This blog is currently ranked number 3297860, alongside all the other losers who have “no authority”. (Though the site does kindly append “yet” to that killer phrase, like the “Author NYP” that creative writing graduates put on their business cards).

Ranked a mere 3294251 places above SL Shrink is Second Life Insider, which seems at first glance to be mainly about scripting and commerce, with nothing about psychology.

Ranked 4294 is the Second Life Herald, which has more of a gossipy tone. A quick search did turn up a few posts relating to analysis of online interaction, though nothing particularly deep.

On the face of it more closely related to SL Shrink is Gwyn’s Home (rated 48661), which promises commentary on “socio-political issues on Second Life, the virtual world platform of Linden Lab.” There are a few posts in the “psychology” category, but again nothing particularly profound. And the animated avatar on the home page is frankly creepy.

Technorati lists a total 3184 blogs on the topic of Second Life, and I can’t really be bothered to look at any more tonight. No-one seems to be doing exactly what I’m planning though, which is encouraging.

I’ve also discovered ninjafoo Ng, an SL linux blog, which will hopefully get me on the grid sooner rather than later.

Filed under Blogging, Second Life Tagged with , ,

Newer posts →