Weblin Takes Avatars from Second Life to Web

Weblin announced today the launch of Weblin Gate, a portal in Linden Lab's Second Life that lets users take their avatars from the client-based virtual world to the Web. This isn't true interoperability--the service takes a picture of the avatar in Second Life and maps it on to a Weblin avatar, and users don't carry their assets or identity with them--but it is an interesting form of portability and a step towards larger goals.

"Ultimately, there's another plan, another vision. What we try to do is to give everyone a Web avatar from every virtual world," said Weblin co-founder Heiner Wofl. "While we're doing this, we don't want to steal users. We want to offer a platform based on open protocols. Anyone can run a Weblin server or write a client and anyone can host the avatar for the users.  All the virtual worlds could do the same thing."

Currently Weblin hosts the data for its users. In the future Wolf describes, it would instead be held by the virtual world platforms. Assets could be synched across platforms, and any time a user updated their outfit or profile in Second Life, for example, it would be updated on the Web.

The project began with an interested Second Life user adapting the open-source client to take avatars out of the virtual world. Weblin got involved and now the process is simpler. Users simply walk into a virtual photo booth, stand still for a few moments, and then receive a link to their new avatar.

Wolf sees it as an added value for Second Life users who spend hours and hours developing their avatars. Now they can show them off, albeit in smaller form, elsewhere on the Web. While he admits that many casual users may not be interested, it could be a service for power users.

 In the other direction, he says, it's a new tool for Weblin users.

"With Weblin we don't try to make a perfect avatar creation tool. We give our users means to create their own avatars on the Web. There are other systems which are much better than our own, like Second Life," he explained.  "Linden produced a really great avatar creation tool and we can regard Second Life as a very sophisticated avatar creator for Weblin. We'd be happy to cooperate with virtual worlds like this. We get more traffic and users. On the other hand, people create and customize their avatars in Second Life. They participate in the Second Life economy. And they participate on the Web with weblin. We don't steal users from Second Life, and we give them new tools."

A white label product is in Weblin's strategy, said Wolf, and he'd like to see other worlds adopt the technology and brand it on their own. It seems there's demand, at least from the Weblin side. Weblin users have also exported avatars from BarbieGirls as screenshots and uploaded them as Weblin avatars, an independent project is looking at similar things with World of Warcraft, and a Weblin intern has implemented an exporter for Spore characters.

Wolf noted that Linden Lab liked the tool, though it doesn't seem like plans are in the works for formal adoption. If that changes, he says the process should be relatively simple for most virtual worlds.

"The next step could be that Linden Lab hosts their Web avatars for their users and create them on demand when they're accessed," he said. "It would take coding on their side and of course there's always much to do in startups, but the way we're integrating avatars on the Web, it's so simple that in just two weeks a good programmer could provide it. Compared to the coding they do in the server platform and networking, it's only 2-4 weeks of a good programmer, but it's management."

The Weblin House is in New Berlin in Second Life. [SLURL]

Comments

[Kwame Oh]

One more mashup tool all's good,I wonder when a persons avatar will be recognised by the look, we will then talk of synchronising, our wardrobes in all worlds.

[Dale Irata]

Are we pushing copyright issues here? That original avatar probably wasn't designed by the SL Resident; it was purchased for use in SL. Taking a snapshot and copying it into another form sounds like infringement to me.

[T. Gordon]

"With Weblin we don't try to make a perfect avatar creation tool. We give our users means to create their own avatars on the Web. There are other systems which are much better than our own, like Second Life," he explained. "Linden produced a really great avatar creation tool and we can regard Second Life as a very sophisticated avatar creator for Weblin. We'd be happy to cooperate with virtual worlds like this. We get more traffic and users. On the other hand, people create and customize their avatars in Second Life. They participate in the Second Life economy. And they participate on the Web with weblin. We don't steal users from Second Life, and we give them new tools."

Umm.... *blink*

You need way more practice at corporate hype to sell that bit o fluff. Whew. I think you actually need to have something you can call non amateur before you start acting like Second Life and virtual worlds are peons that you graciously acknowledge.