Update, January 2nd: As promised, I contacted Peter Gray (Pete Linden) at the Lab, and he confirmed profile feed direct messaging has been turned off.

Ciaran Laval brought this to my attention: it appears that direct messaging (DM) on my.secondlife.com may have been discontinued.

The capability was slipped out by the Lab back in October 2011. Like many things about the profile feeds (and elsewhere in Second Life) there was no announcement about its introduction, and people were left to trip over it for themselves. At the time I noticed it, I offered a short tutorial on using it. The removal of the feature – if that is indeed what has happened – has similarly occurred sans any announcement.

I’m using caution here, as things on the profile feeds have been a little higgledy-piggledy* of late, what with snapshot uploads having been badly broken for many for the past week or more (and still broken for some – I confess, I’ve not tried in the last few days). Therefore, the capability might have been suspended due to problems with the hamsters servers.

However, a comment on a forum thread started on the matter would appear to suggest the option has indeed been removed. Responding to the question “…No more private messages?“, Bondboy Dagger states:

I too noticed this feature being gone. I created a ticket to inquire and have been told this feature has been discontinued.

Certainly, the options to send private messages have now gone. There is no longer a New Message button in the Messages tab of the Inbox, and the option to privately message a friend by clicking the message button on their profile feed has also gone – the only option left is to IM them via the viewer (i.e. in-world).

Similarly, sending a message in an existing DM conversation no longer works. While the text input box is still there, together with the Send button, and while you can still enter a message, clicking on the Send button does nothing; your text remains displayed in the test input box.

I’ve dropped a line to Pete Linden to enquire on the matter – but it is Christmas Eve (actually very early Christmas morning where I am!), and I know Pete is out of the office until January 2nd – so please don’t hold your breath over the holidays waiting to find out!

If the option has been removed, it’s liable to meet with mixed reactions. Many have probably never used it, even if they use the feeds, or may have used it occasionally. On the other hand, those of us who have used it, have found it to be extremely useful. For my part, I can say it has been of major assistance in communicating rapid-fire messages as a part of various collaborative projects. Obviously, whether it will be replaced by something else (assuming it has gone the way of the Dodo), is also up in the air at this point.

More news if / when I hear anything back in the New Year!

*for an explanation of “higgledy-piggledy, a technical term, please refer to the bottom of this page (in the hope it raises a smile or two)