Possibilites of Second Life - Virtual Romance

We know main definition of Second Life. Marina and me wrote down next lines (as a part of our assignment) -

Second Life broke out with other contemporary technologies. It provides a possibility to experience an alternative life in a specially created virtual world – in times, when globalization blurred geographical borders, Second Life was faced with an enormous success. People started to change their behaviour in a social matter and are transferring their lives to a virtual environment, which became physical in one way. Some are using virtual worlds to search for their partners, others are there for entertainment and business – everyone is motivated differently, but main goal of Second Life remains one: to be used as a communication tool and not as a true second life.

Let us put educational aspects of Second Life beside us for a second and focus on other possibilities in Second Life - the possibilities of everday's, real life. If you could have a chance to start your life over, would you? What if you could live all your dreams to the fullest without limitation? There is a virtual chat reality that can allow you to experience much of what you are too afraid to experience in “real” life.

Some of the things that work best in SL are music, both live and recorded, dancing (any style you can imagine), relationships (both voice chat and typed), sexual encounters(as real as your imagination), education, lectures, and even movies. A brief comment on Second Life sex, you are meeting actual people and interacting with them in ways you probably would not do in first life, so just be careful and courteous. Most behavior in Second Life is mature, but like real life sometimes it gets out of hand. Unlike real life nothing can harm you here, it is like practice. Use Second Life as a way of extending the possibilities in your life and experiencing things you have been curious about but could not do in real life.

In Second Life you can have relationships you never thought possible and experience feelings you did not know you even had! Another word of caution here, it may appear that your 1L and SL are separate but I can assure you that they are not. Everything is connected in some way which can be both good and bad. If you do something in Second Life to hurt another person(emotionally) then the ramifications are both in real life and Second Life. It works the other way too, if you meet someone special and you get to know this person well, romance in Second Life will affect your real life. You can be partnered in Second Life to one person and married to someone else in real life, or it can be the same person or no one. The intentions you go in with will determine your experience - the possibilities are endless!

But here is the question - would you prefer something that is not real or would you prefer something real in you real life? Yes, of course, the possibilities in real life are limnited, but they are still real - feelings and connections between two persons are something that can't be replaced.

Educational Uses of Second Life

When Marina and me were making our research paper entitled "Second life as learning environment" we found many interesting material, including educational (amature) video clips on YouTube. Down you can find one example:

How did the European Parliament encourage online the European Citizens to participate to the 2009 European Elections?

The turnout of the European Parliament Elections has been falling steadily since the first elections in 1979 indicating increased apathy about the Parliament despite its increase in power over that period. Something needed to be done.

In order to reverse this tendency, the European Parliament is increasingly using the Internet to reach out the European citizens online. The year 2009 was particularly interesting for the use of social media like social-networking and content-sharing web platforms. Below, you can see a scheme of European Parliament online communication strategy.

To be honest, I wouldn’t have expected that just six months ago, as the EP didn’t even have a Facebook page back then. But these are the days for experimentation and quick changes, and the June 2009 election was the European Parliament’s first experience with social networks. But how does an impersonal institution use social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, tools that profile persons, individuals?
Differing from Barack Obama or any other political candidate’s use of social media, EP didn’t have a political cause, other than “use your vote”. How everything started? Well, European Parliament used America's presidental elections (and especially marketing strategies behined it) as a good example how to draw people attention.

European Parlimanet estabilshed a team of experts - the EP web team started their social network effort late. Comparing to Obama, who started his campaign two year before the election, the EP web team had little extra resources, and could only start full time campaign work when the heavy parliamentary work ended in May 2009. They had the Facebook page ready in May, and had also to do some design work for the MySpace site, which launched in April. EP team also started their own YouTube channel and released several YouTube videos during the campaign - they also made some videos, from which especially one stood up and drew people's attention.

And the effects of the EP's online campagine, you ask? Well, we can say that the numbers are interesting. All the social media efforts of the EP were interlinked in the end, and content got cross-promoted on different platforms, everything except from the blog. About 55 000 people are fans of EP on Facebook. Most fans from Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, and Belgium, 2500 followers on Twitter totally, 3000 friends on MySpace, 3000 views a day on Flickr. And the final, most important number - EP’s web site had about 500 000 visitors on election night to check the results.

Where you also a part of it?