Things I like about vSide

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time in vSide lately, and I have to say we're liking it! Here are some of the things I (we) like, in no particular order:

1. Music venues of all styles.
2. It's free! And by earning vPoints through rating music, adding friends, completing tasks, or simply being inworld, you can purchase clothing or furniture for your apartment to make your experience more customized.
3. Speaking of your apartment, it's easy to set up YouTube videos (or playlists, as I learned how to do recently) which would be great for a class get-together and chat.
4. There's a lot of space to explore and hidden secrets to find. For some photo guides to some of the secrets, check out kaprik0rn's Photobucket pages.
5. By setting up tags to describe your interests on your profile (here's mine), you can easily find other people who share the same tags. As you walk around, they have little smiley faces radiating out of their names. It's a great way to start a conversation!

OK, now a few grips/suggestions for improving the experience:
1. Avatars need to be a bit more customizable. You should at least be able to alter their weight; the world shouldn't be full of only skinny people!
2. Sometimes a particular song playing is annoying. It would be nice to have a "mute this song option" that would turn the sound back on at the beginning of the next song.
3. Why is so much of the experience on the web instead of better integrated into the user interface? Profiles, at least, should be editable and viewable from inworld.
4. I would like to use vPoints (but maybe not vBux which are tied to real-world currency) in more of a user economy. For example, by allowing users to submit designs for clothing or posters that could then be approved and sold through the usual means. This would also keep the product offerings fresh.
5. It seems the program isn't very friendly for non-English character sets in chat.
6. I get that this is mostly for teens and young twenty-somethings, but it would be nice to specify your status (a la Facebook) to clarify if you're there looking for friendships, romance, or whatever.

It seems like it won't be long before advocacy or education organizations find ways to create spaces within vSide...it has a lot of the advantages of other virtual worlds with fewer of the drawbacks.