LL announced they are going to have a new homepage for Second Life, done by Big Spaceship. I saw the announcement in my feed and immediately wanted to know if it was going to be Flash, so I ran over to read the post.

"The design is optimized for the new user coming to secondlife.com for the first time and not logged in. The logged in homepage (which is what most Residents, as opposed to potential Residents see) will not be changing.

Here are the goals for the design:

• Express the richness and breadth of Second Life

• Allow us to address a wide range of potential Residents

• Set context for what a potential Resident might do in Second Life

The team produced a gorgeous design that uses Flash..."

I don't have anything against Flash, really - it's seductive but holds the viewer at armslength, which is not my fave, but I was actually curious because when Big Spaceship was introduced to us (so to speak) everyone flew over to their site, which is all Flash, then came back and screamed bloody murder. I haven't yet seen the new homepage, but the good thing is that the logged-in website will remain unchanged. The addition is to entice new people into taking the plunge and signing up by showing them choice bits of SL - it might be good. Flash is only interactive in the way being given a piece of chalk so you can draw on a shuttered door is interactive, whatever anyone says, but it's attractive and that in itself might be useful. After all, a potential customer might prefer a shuttered door and with it the formality of standing outside and deciding whether or not to knock, to being thrown into the middle of a busy and foreign environment.

Realistically we are never going to go back to having a responsive and human LL (although if they don't do something to better their customer service I am not sure what will happen), but we are like a nestful of hungry baby birds with upturned faces, needy and peeping loudly.

Update: This is one proposed homepage (hope there are more).