Twinity Blog

The leaves have changed color and the frost is on the pumpkins, which means it’s almost time for Halloween.  As a special treat, we’re rolling out 2 contests for Halloween:   Spookiest room design and spookiest costume.  In addition, so there is no unfair advantage to those with special content creation skills, each contest will have 2 categories – one for any items and one for only purchased items.

• All entries must be received before midnight October 28
• No nudity or sexual content is allowed
• 1st place wins 250 globals, 2nd place wins 100 globals and 3rd place wins 50 globals
• Entries for purchased item categories must include details on where the items used can be purchased, and the items must be available to purchase now.  Failure to include information on where the items were purchased will cause your entry to go into the “any items” category.

Spookiest Room Design is 1 room’s design – there is no size limit to the room you can design, but choose your room carefully!  If it’s too large your entire effort may not all be seen by the judges, but if it’s too small you might not have enough room to pack a spooky enough punch.

To enter this contest, just send a feedback or email to support[at]twinity.com stating that you want to enter the contest, the exact name of the place, and which category you are entering.  Remember, if you’re entering the purchased items category you must also include details on where the items used were purchased.

Spookiest Costume Design is an outfit worn by your avatar in a setting that shows it to full advantage.  For example, if you create a corpse costume a great setting to use would be the gravestones shown below.

To enter this contest just put your outfit on and send a spooky postcard image showing it off to support[at]twinity.com.  State that it is an entry for the Halloween Contest and which category you are entering.  Remember, if you’re entering the purchased items category you must also include details on where the items used were purchased.   To ensure that the images are not edited in any way, only postcard images will be accepted for this contest.

As noted above, all entries must be received no later than midnight October 28.  Judging will be done by Twinity and ExitReality staffmembers and the winners will be announced on November 1.   We have also added some great new Halloween themed items  for decorating your room or to set the scene for your spooky costume, you can find them in the 2d shop or currently displayed at Dungeon of Goths.  You’ve got 2 weeks, and we can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

We are often asked why, since Twinity is an application for adults only, people cannot behave any way they want any place they want. This is intended to answer that question, and remind everyone about the differences that exist.

We are a global community made up of members from many different countries, ages, religions and ethnic groups. What is perfectly normal to someone else might be highly offensive to you, or vice versa. As a global community, we strive to provide an environment that everyone can enjoy. We accomplish this with the concept of real estate.

This Place Information screen shows how public Twinity run places appear inworld

There are 2 types of places in Twinity – public Twinity run locations, and private Twinizen real estate. You can tell which type a place is by looking at the place information screen. Public locations can be recognized by being owned by Real Estate Agent and having no tenant, and private locations are owned or rented by individual Twinizens.

This shows a private location that is rented by a Twinizen

In most cases, Twinizen property holders decide what is and is not acceptable to them in their places and are able to enforce those decisions using the kick, lock and block functions. The most notable exception to this is the flagging/locking requirements for places with adult content, but in general we try to give Twinizens the freedom to run their places as they see fit as much as possible.

This example shows how private places owned by Twinizens can be recognized

Twinity run public places need to be kept free of objectionable behavior as much as possible to allow for the differences between us and offer places where everyone can feel comfortable. To give you a better idea of the kinds of things the community objects to, we have compiled a list of behavior that is most often reported by our members: Swearing, insults/name calling, occupying space another avatar is already in, hate speech, sexually related comments/actions, confrontations/arguments in the public chat, and behavior specifically intended to be disruptive or offensive. The community has made it clear that they do not like these things, so they need to be avoided in public areas.

Having both types of places available for people to enjoy allows everyone to visit the places that suit their needs at any given time, which results in more enjoyment for everyone regardless of their background and personal behavior standards.

Dear Twinizens,

I heard that some of you are nervous about the future of Twinity because of a number of different rumors. So I thought it might be helpful to explain a bit what has been going on in the last year.

Indeed our main investors did leave Metaversum (the company behind Twinity) end of 2010. I was CTO at that time and aquired the majority of shares in a so called management buyout from our ex-investors and became CEO of Metaversum.

My main goal in the last year was to put Twinity on stable financial grounds to make it possible to run it without loosing money. To achieve this I reduced our costs to a minimum and also did some steps to increase our revenues (e.g. the new VIP pass and adult pass).

I am happy to tell you that these measures allowed me to run Metaversum without losses in 2011. Also Twinity is now break-even. This means that the revenues we make allow us to cover all running costs.

To show city exteriors in Twinity we had to pay high license fees to our map data provider in the past. As my main goal was to make Twinity pay for its running costs, I decided to stop paying these license fees from the beginning of 2012. As a result we are not able to show the city exteriors any more at this time. It was a difficult decision, but now Twinity is free of costly ongoing licenses.

We can bring back the cities in the future if we re-license the map data or if we move our city-generation-technology to free data sources like open street map.

I hope this information helps to understand a bit better what was going on behind the scenes recently. If you have more questions, you can always talk to me or Carolyn in world or contact us via mail and feedback.

Best wishes

Christian

CEO Metaversum

Gentlemen, are you ready to suit up?  Ladies, do you want to have the best dressed man in Twinity?   Shop Manager is highlighting the perfect shop for both goals this week at her Shop of the Week Spotlight event!

Shop Manager's weekly event highlighting the different Twinity Shops

Join her at the Carnaby Gentlemen’s club and relax in the private club atmosphere, or browse the great selection of classic suit designs for men.  Be sure to find the special 5gl sale item of the week while you’re there – it’s a limited time price so hurry!

Have you been following Shop Manager’s weekly series of events, the Twinity Shop of the Week Spotlight?  In case you have missed it, every week Shop Manager selects a different Twinity Shop to highlight and offers at least one item per shop for only 5 globals for the entire week!

Whether you’re looking for fantastic bargains, or just want to meet Shop Manager, this event is one you don’t want to miss!  Just check the event calendar every Sunday to find out which shop the spotlight is shining on!