Second Life Gender Studies: Official Second Life Blog: Community Gateway Program

About a year ago, we began to experiment with alternatives to the usual Second Life registration pathway, which we call the Community Gateway program. The program is designed to provide a customized initial entry experience for new Residents based on their choice of preferred language or particular interests.

Official Second Life Blog

An important objective of the Community Gateway program is to give Residents a choice of registration options and initial locations, with the goal of enabling program members to attract new Residents and grow their communities. Members are committed to supporting and engaging new Residents, and their efforts are evaluated based on their success in attracting new registrations and the length of time those registrants engage in Second Life.

Today, we have 22 members of the Community Gateway program–14 non-English language specific Community Gateways including Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. The remaining members simply offer a unique experience, some created by businesses as a portal for a web community and others created by passionate individuals or groups bringing in like-minded people who share their interests.

Overall, we are pleased with how well this program is working. On average, Residents arriving inworld through a Community Gateway become actively engaged in Second Life. So, as we redesign the Second Life registration and initial user experience, we’re planning to add additional program members to expand the range of initial community experiences for new users. If starting a Community Gateway is of interest to you, watch for an upcoming blog post with more information on how to get involved.

If you’re a Second Life Resident, you may have already discovered some of these locations for the chance to practice a language, visit a foreign city, or just engage with a friendly community and participate in interesting events.

Here is the current list of Community Gateway members and where to find them (sorted by language then alphabetically):

English:
Anshe’s Dreamland - Welcome Passage/63/63/27
Avatar Island - Avatar Island/92/130/23
Azure Islands - Azure Islands Welcome/118/182/59
Big Pond - Pondessa/125/164/31
Dublin in SL - Dublin/234/146/25
Orientation Station - Scholar/112/87/26