Thursday, October 16, 2008

Back to Weblin

Not been near Weblin for a while so thought I'd pop back over, download the software again, and see if it's grown.

Weblin is a kinda AV driven chat ap that lets you have a 'physical representation' on each page you visit in your browser and allows you to take your AV with you on your surfing day.

It's now not uncommon, as a user, to come across a site where there are other Weblins, sat chilling in your browser window with your own, that you can choose to engage with (not that you do most of the time) and strike up a conversation. On this page alone there's probably 5 or 6 you can't see right now, hanging around on the blogger domain so all showing on each others pages. What's nice here is that often chat is related to the common ground of the topic of webpage your visiting (I met 2 Who geek weblin frothing on about RTD's latest insult to the fan base on the BBC site). There's potential here, and Weblin Easter eggs for sites would be a great way to attract little swarms of community visitors, I'd love to get my hands on dev tools for this ("come to BBC Who and pick up your free Rassilon patch", etc.). The sports branding an AV's is starting to creep in, which means investment, which means money.

While seemingly very basic, Weblin also has it's own visual AV creation system and small virtual economy. This is one of those things worth checking on from time to time, and a great way of involuntarily promoting community by 'almost accidental' shared interest. I like it, but I'm not sure why.

Try it, it's kinda interesting, and tag/friend me as "Lactose" if you get the chance. It's possible to have more than one AV on the same account too, switching over as required.

I'll try importing a pic of an SL AV later, which looks easy enough, and I need to revamp my bloated Messanger contact list as it is, and this might be a better way to collect my virtual buddies together while still maintain some anonimity and character. In a kinda way, at very basic level, this is sorts like taking AVs from other worlds and letting them come with you as you go about the Internet, plus might be a nice way of supporting your virtual worlds identities :-)