SecondView: Initial Review

After reading about Secondview over at SecondLife Insider, I figured I would give it a whirl. After all, I made the RSS feeds for Your2ndPlace.com, and the text on prim version weighs in at 7 prims (the Floating text version uses one. I headed over to SecondView inworld headquarters and saw... stuff. I saw the viewer. I saw a prim which accepted payments. I walked around and puzzled on how to connect the two, then the prim on the wall rezzed enough so that I could read it. It touched me and gave me a notecard which said 'you configure it at the website' and had 'SecondVita.com' within the notecard.

Nope. I scooped up a viewer anyway and went back to the store to play with it. It gave me another notecard after I hit the 'Help' button, and I got sent to the SecondLife Viewer website. My balance was 0 Lindens.

OK.

So I go back, and didn't know how many Linden dollars to feed the prim. I figured on 1000 Lindens. I go back to the store. Then I 'bid' to add Your2ndPlace.com there - it scanned the site, deducted 30 Linden from the account, and showed me the two entries I was paying for. That was kind of cool. So then I edited the RSS feeds, and I deselected everything but Your2ndPlace.com so I could compare the two feeds.

It wouldn't stop showing the other feeds. Seriously. It was just... spitting out exactly the same feeds that I had placed out there before. Huh? I click refresh a few times. I chat with a new woman who wants to 'play a game with me for money' (!!), but I tell her I'm working - I had no idea what she was talking about, and I wasn't sure I wanted to.

So I'm standing there, staring at all these feeds next to mine. The key difference, which is sort of obvious, is an image rendered of the post on theirs, and using the texture key their inworld RSS server probably chugs a texture out on demand. Rotating the SecondView object is funky because of the way it is all linked, but it is workable (Hint: Don't use the Z coordinate for rotation). It's working quite well, showing all sorts of feeds that... I had said shouldn't be shown.

The Y2P feeds show headlines, or large parts of the headlines (about 60 characters using text on a prim) with no images. Kind of apples and oranges (or bananas - that color combo on that feed is really something I need to work on) - but I can control what is shown on my feed, and if I wanted to I could easily funnel other feeds to it. Does the picture make that much of a difference? Yes, and no. Pictures are nice, but often the most popular stories don't have pictures (I've been writing/editing for about 7 years now, and pictures help some stories). So their feed doesn't show text only.

Apples and bananas. I got rid of my SecondView for now, maybe I'll play with it again when my patience levels have time to recuperate. It is a good idea, but I see the dependency on images as a serious flaw for inworld RSS. On my feeds, I don't have to worry about other sites that are listed for free - but on SecondView, I pay to compete with others who didn't have to pay to compete. And let's face it - media competes.

And in the end - is it really worth it? Are RSS feeds inworld used so much? My experience has been 'no', most people just use the web for what it is good for - and use their RSS feed readers much the same.

I'm really undecided. There is no doubt that the ability to show images with part of a post is better than just a headline, but being unable to show a post without an image is also a flaw. I see definite uses for what they are doing, especially for blogs that are used for displaying new items in Second Life stores - but I don't see why I should pay 15L per post for a return I have no metrics on.

No easy answer. There are pros, there are cons, there are unknowns. So here is what I will do. I will let that 1,000 L ride, and I'll see what results I get - which also means if no one subscribes to the Your2ndPlace.com feed, I won't see any results anyway, but the site is doing well enough on hits.

My thoughts: A good review of this will need time, at least a month. I'm not against it (other than paying to compete with websites that don't have to!), but then I'm at about 45% for it... and no real way to compare. Time to wait.

What do you think of it? Most people don't have sites and may not see the unfair competition, so I accept that. But how many people out there actually use inworld RSS feeds?