This is a stub for the article on Infohubs.

Current Infohubs

(North to South, West to East):

1. Iris
2. Calleta
3. Hyles
4. Mauve
5. Help Island Public2
6. Help Island Public
7. Orientation Island Public
8. Pooley
9. Waterhead
10. Ambat
11. Miramare
12. Ahern
13. Clementina
14. Warmouth
15. Ross
16. Isabel
17. Voss
18. Anzere
19. Hanson
20. Bear
21. Braunworth

This list does not include the specialized Korean and Japanese Infohubs.

Supporting information

I guess things move fast. While trying to track down the introduction of the Infohub I came across this forum post about the return of p2p (point-to-point teleporting) which degenerated into an argument about the impact on Telehubs, the Mainland precursor to the Infohub. What makes this post interesting is its timeliness: posted November 17, 2005, it appeared mere weeks prior to the Linden Lab announcement of p2p’s return and the conversion from Telehub to Infohub. What were the circumstances, I wonder? Were residents aware and stoking the fires, how far in advance were the Lindens planning this? Read the post and discuss amongst yourselves:

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=7221

This Town Hall meeting announcement comes from Prokofy’s blog:

Meeting: The Morphing of Telehubs

As part of implementing pinpoint teleporting, we have an opportunity to take a new look at telehubs and the role these areas play as regional gathering places and commercial centers.

We’d like to get together with interested residents to talk about the new face of telehubs. Ideally, each telehub will be morphed into a public space which will be at the center of the existing telehub region. The land will remain Linden owned, and there will be some Linden content placed in each area including news, a place for community ads and messages, and free content. Residents in each region served by the telehub will then be able to design and build out the rest of the space. If you prefer, there will be a default plaza you can use.

If you’re interested in talking with us about ideas for these public areas, please let me or Jeska Linden know. We’ll invite you to join a group to attend the meeting.

The meeting will be held Thursday, Dec. 1, at 3PM SLT at the corner of Borrowdale, Pooley, Seascale and Brampton (Borrowdale 1,1). If you can’t attend, but have ideas to share please email me at robin@lindenlab.com. We’ll also make a transcript available after the meeting.

Reprinted from http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2005/12/why_i_am_boycot.html

This article appears to be the first blog entry to mention the term “infohub”. Unfortunately the forum archive is not browsable making the retrieval of the thinking and discussion surrounding the telehub conversion difficult.

Formerly Known as Telehubs

Sunday, November 27th, 2005 at 8:03 PM by: Robin Linden

We love to talk about Second Life as a place that’s always changing and evolving. However, change can be very upsetting. It disrupts the current way of things, and by challenging the status quo forces an uncomfortable need to rethink plans and processes.

In Second Life we need to be forward looking, balancing the desire to support what’s in place with making decisions about new features as we prepare for the coming growth.

In a world that’s getting ever larger and where it’s impossible to know everyone even slightly, the next phase is to enable better navigation to both people and places. This change is especially important for new residents, as Ben describes in his new blog.

One way to make things easier is to eliminate the confusing telehub system so people can get to places more directly and find things with less confusion. Many people see this decision as detrimental to the structure of Second Life. I see it as an opportunity to move away from an organizational system based on forcing people to stop somewhere other than their planned destination, and instead to create a new one, in the same places, where we really think about why someone might want to be there.

I do wish we had better tools for zoning and especially for search in place before implementing point to point. On the other hand, those tools are critical and will be implemented as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we’ll convert the telehub land to “infohubs”, and look for other ways - art fairs, group recruiting events, local ads, news and community message boards - to retain the sense of locality and neighborhood in the places formerly known as telehubs.

And hopefully the businesses around these telehubs will also look at ways to become real destinations and encourage the growth of vital neighborhoods.

Reprinted from http://blog.secondlife.com/2005/11/27/formerly-known-as-telehubs/