SPOTLIGHT ON WIPLY- A Social Network for Avatars- Lanai Jarrico reporting…

 Social media is a must-have for smartphone users and computer geeks with an appetite for socializing on a global scale with family, friends, and friends of friends. Others rely heavily on social media for increasing business exposure.  Without social media, many businesses and social lives would be reduced to phone calls, party lines, snail mail, old school chat rooms, emails, texts, and virtual worlds, especially during a pandemic. There isn’t a social network geared towards avatars in a virtual world.  Unfortunately, many accounts were suspended from Facebook that had Avatar profiles. The good news is Wiply is a social media network created just for avatars! 

Create by Ramses Meredith, It is an all-in-one platform with numerous options, like an Instant Chat system (with the possibility to create your channels), a messaging system, and a high-resolution photo album. Facebook does not allow high-resolution photos, and Flickr needs a paid account to add SLURL or URL to the photo. All these options are linked to the page/group/events, so everything is merged to create one unique and comfortable place where you can work and increase or create your Second Life business.

Interview with Ramses Meredith

SLE: Hi Ramses, it is a great honor to sit down with you for an Interview. You’ve been busy in Second Life since 2008 from creating clothing with Egoisme and then and Exchinima avatar shapes to getting into the techy stuff. Can you tell me how you discovered Second Life and a little bit about your background and what you’ve done in Second Life?

Ramses: Hello and thank you for hosting me today. I have been interested in Second Life since somebody at University told me about a virtual world created (back in 2004). 

I was interested, but my focus was on artificial intelligence, so I have not cared a lot. Later I went back to focus on Second Life since was remarkably interesting for me, my focus was on building and a design studio. 

So, I have begun to create outfits and tattoos at the early beginning, just to create something for me, but people were keeping asking me to sell to them, so I have turned in a little store. Then I wanted to create skins and clothes and so I have expanded the business, meanwhile, I was doing research to improve marketing strategies to apply on Real Life. 

I used Second Life as an incubator to create a fast way solution to apply for long-term plans in RL. 

And then I have begun to create a social network, my old project which was called at the time (we talk around 1998) Community Plaza. And now this is going to become a place for virtual word players and not only.

SLE: A lot of avatars with Facebook accounts were disabled due to fake identities and names being that platform’s issue. I’m glad to see a new social media network just for avatars. Can you tell our readers about the various features they can expect with Wiply?

Ramses: Well on Wiply I added many “modules” which are usually needed by virtual players like Second Life avatars: 

• Contest module, where finally you can have a fair contest, no doubts about the source of votes: single votes by users or by a jury, both with rules. 

• Crowdfunding module, since Second Life users have a strong sense of willingness to help those less fortunate than themselves.

• Business directory: now they can create an own “business page” where to link album photos, video channel, offers page, even a discount ticket option;

• Jobs module: now you can post the offers and research of jobs on the same platform where you do other things;

• Courses: How many times we have thought to find a course for fashion design or 3d modeling or fashion modeling, but each time we need to browse the search in world like no tomorrow! Now you can find it easily.

• News: we have a system to include news from the most important websites, related to second life for example, and trustable since the source will be monitored, so no fake news is accepted.

• Mobile apps: you can be sure to receive the news with push notices directly on your smartphone, or even on your pc, way better than wait for inworld notices only.

And less or more these are some of the news we have, but most important is I have created an all-in-one place where you can have all you need with few clicks.

SLE: Privacy and security or important to many avatars in Second Life, that is why many do not share their real names, How can you ensure the information they share on Wiply is secure. Is there monitoring in place to ensure avatars are not being trolled or harassed by other members and their information can be kept private?

Ramses: we have strong security, and privacy is one of our main goals. There is a verification system, in case of doubts, we will require to validate their account sending us, in complete privacy, their documents to verify. 

Plus, once we have enough members, I will let people choose their representative to monitor and help to find out who acts like a troll or who harasses.

Of course, at Wiply works the principle of “is innocent until proven guilty” and only in heavy situations, we will collaborate with authorities, until that, I will spank personally the guilty hehe.

BUT everything will be done with big care about privacy and will not tolerate any break of that main rule.

SLE: There are two main ways to use social media, for business, or personal profiles. Can you explain how Wipley will benefit each group?

Ramses: Of course, I am extremely glad to explain: the user can create its avatar, “VIPs” can create their page, and also can create the own page for the business, as a separate entity, but both under his/her control. 

So for example, you have a business called XYZ, and you are also an influencer, you can have separate pages/groups for each situation, and only you, if you want, can know about it.

It is important because it helps to keep your privacy safe if you do not want to be involved directly in a business page, and on the other side, it allows you to bring also your team in the group/page and showcase them, as given them roles to be used to manage the group or the posts or the images/video submissions, as an example.

SLE: Can you upload videos and photos to Wiply? If so, how much space can a member use? 

Ramses: You can upload videos and photos and do live videos too, without restrictions. We trust to find sponsors and sell advertising to keep this social network active. At moment, our main Sponsor, and have to say with a bit of pride, is the first to have to trust us, is Amazon AWS, the informatics department of amazon, well known for its strong infrastructure, which was used also to host Second Life, and with their program, they have given us some prizes for the Wiply project, so we can count on strong servers with SSD hard disk, faster response, and big data space.

SLE: Every platform has a term of service t protect both the platform and the user. What is your TOS? (Do you have a link to it?)

Ramses: Of course, we have our TOS, which is created by Real Life lawyers to make it easy for everybody to understand it. Our TOS follows the main guidelines of every State, with some special remarks for the EU, California, UK, and so on. We also care about intellectual privacy, and we have also a strong Privacy statement. 

You can find them at https://wiply.net/help/terms and https://wiply.net/help/privacy

Opposite than other social networks, we have integrated 2 options:

One is about adult content visibility; it is a switch on the top menu bar to allow you to hide those contents that can hurt your sensibility or are prohibited for those under 18.

 

The other is a fingerprint icon, if you click it, the social go in safety mode, and nobody can use it or see what you are doing.

SLE: Feedback is so important in business and created a platform avatars want to be part of. Do you take suggestions for improving the platform? If so what new features have you implemented?

Ramses: For us it is vital, at this stage, to know the feedbacks from our users, so we have integrated two side options: one is to leave feedbacks directly from the website or write us.

Also, for Second Life Residents, it is possible to contact me directly inworld. We are a human-size social for now, so will be easy to talk freely about issues or suggestions because I am even open to them.

For me, knowing which errors are, to fix or how I can improve the social is particularly important, because all of them will help me to make a better place for the users. And it is my goal.

SLE: I wish the all the best with Wiply. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

Ramses: Join and be part of our family you will not regret it! It is not a common social, plus we have an option you can share your posts directly with other socials, so you can use Wiply as a base for your adventures! Just a tip for events and store owners: we have mobile apps; we can send more information to users via push notices and via newsletter. All this with respect for user privacy, so if I were you, I would give it a try!

Additional Information

URL: https://wiply.net 

Group: secondlife:///app/group/b88be1b1-fef3-8015-0d34-a3b8e4147356/about

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wiply.net 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/WiplySocial 

Preferred Contact: Ramses Meredith inworld