Starting a Group in Second Life

The following is a transcript of "Traveling Avatar's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Richer Life," a podcast from QuickAndDirtyTips.com. The audio program is available via RSS feed here and at TheStreet.com's podcast home page.

Will Ross here, welcome to The Traveling Avatar's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life. On this show we discuss tips and tricks for the game Second Life, created by Linden Labs.

This week's episode: "Groupthink: Making Your Own Groups in Second Life."

One of the benefits of a computer-based virtual world is organization. Everything you own can be accessed and searched with a few keystrokes, all of your friends are on one convenient list to visit or spurn at your whim, and virtue or vice are just a landmark or teleport away. So it makes sense that organizations, cliques, clans, families and businesses would be organized the same way, and in Second Life this is done through "Groups."

Groups are used for everything from families, relationships, land trusts, businesses and any number of other things, and they're a great way to find and keep tabs on people of similar interests. If you're looking for a group to join, you just open up your search menu, click the "groups" tab and search for keywords. You can even create your own if no one yet caters to your own particular interests.

Creating your very own group is fairly easy, and it will only cost you 100 Lindens. Right click on your avatar to open up the radial menu and choose "Groups." From this menu you can change your current group tag and organize the groups you belong to. From here click "Create" and you'll bring up the new groups menu. It's important that you choose your name wisely, because apart from a forced change for a "terms of service" violation, you won't be able to change it once you create the group.