now and 4 years ago

[greek Wingtips]

what a stark contrast between now and four years ago when I joined SL, am unhappy to say that either the resession or bad manament has taken its toll on SL, it's not what it use to be I personally belive, before there was an ubdent of shops,malls clubs ect, today I see so much land for sale , shops and clubs and entertainment has drop, one very fundenmetal thing I feel to the demise was LL pushing market place to the expence of large sim owners who would rent vast amounts of land then section off for rent, but due to poor sales because most buy from market place, shops and mall are far and few between and thereforesim owner cannot recoup some of thier hight rents. LL need to make a pust and rejuvnate SL or I do belive it will be a nail in its own coffin, I am no expert but I think, lowering tiers is a must, also incentives for large sim renters to be able to create malls and other sourcing of income  to generate growth, its like the real world with

massive shopping malls, they eventually kill the hight street shop, same as SL. SL might tell you more people are joining but these are people that are not spending, as a dj I recall when tipping was abundent now its very low, and I am not talking about the greed here , talking how money is not being spent as it was.  I like SL my partner and I use this to aslo be with each due to differnet countrys, but to be honest if it was not for my partner I would have quit SL long time ago, $25.00 per month is lots of money for the little enjoyment I have as to what I did have.  be interesting to hear your views on SL and ways it can rejovnate

[Lucinda Bulloch]

Sl is addictive for two reasons.

1. Before there was TV, people gathered together in places like pubs, humans are a herd animal and need other humans near them to feel content, just like cattle, when TV was introduced people found two needs, they developed the need to be entertained, this had been a preserve of the rich and they to became addicted to the theater and such, the TV had no interaction, theaters did have a limited amount, when the internet came along, it gave for the first time choice, people got the chance to chose who they were near like the old days in pubs, in fact the same kind of personal issues that did arise in pubs arise even more on the internet, as it is easy to be brave behind a screen, so the internet has become the preferred place to hang out, you choice as mine is SL, ok the pub is under new management and a new group of bullies are king pins, but it is still a pub.

2. Something you can't see, the screen, it scans at a frequency close to our own brain cycles, this has the affect of making us stare at it(goggle box), like head lights for a rabbit or a flame for a moth, lol, I am known for saying things that are controversial, so ill just say this, " how odd that a frequency should be chosen that alters the wiring of our brain, almost as if we are being grown in a test tube", does this imply we are being farmed?

 

Moo

[Phil Deakins]

---

Lucinda Bulloch wrote:

1. Before there was TV, people gathered together in places like pubs

---

No no no no no. We gathered round the radio and listed to things like "Have A Go Joe" with Wilfred Pickles.

Aaah... the goold old days

[Qie Niangao]

Yeah, the current big mistake is Marketplace. Easy to solve, too: just raise commission to 30% and remove the rule that in-world sales can't be cheaper than Marketplace.  They may have to leverage their advantages to keep Marketplace-like competitors from stepping in, but they have a nearly impenetrable monopoly, with the ability to fully integrate Marketplace and in-world sales.  

The Lab will have to feel some pain, however, before they'll do anything about this self-inflicted wound. Looking back those four years, at that time they were in the midst of an even sillier, more expensive mistake: an exclusive emphasis on "enterprise" that consumed all marketing budget and a lot of development effort... and eventually cost the jobs of a CEO and a lot of other Lindens.

[Syo Emerald]

Marketplace is great. I know it keeps people away from running around inworld, but lets face it: Shopping inworld is just pain for the customer. Yesterday I traveled around some shops. At some of them it took ages until I could continue, because they were grey and blurry for ages. And then, when you are in some shop and its loaded....you discover they have moonprices and absolutly nothing you want or can afford. So you leave and continue to search....

Until the search isn't getting easier and prices drop, nothing can beat the marketplace where I also got reviews from other customers.

[Clarissa Lowell]

If I were queen for a day? LOL

Lower tier or put more land in each tier bracket.

Put a minimum and maximum cap on land prices. 

Stop competing with residents in selling land. If Linden Lab sells land at 1L/meter residents have to sell it at .5 or less.

Let people offer a discount on their stuff in world vs. Marketplace like Qie said.

One way Linden Lab could make money is by offering online real time video guided classes in making stuff. 

[Dilbert Dilweg]

---

Syo Emerald wrote:

Marketplace is great. I know it keeps people away from running around inworld, but lets face it: Shopping inworld is just pain for the customer. Yesterday I traveled around some shops. At some of them it took ages until I could continue, because they were grey and blurry for ages. And then, when you are in some shop and its loaded...

---

Yea since shopping is so bad in world I would imagine everything else, "even playing in world is a pain". so why log in and shop for stuff you cant use lol. Lets go 2D! lol

[Syo Emerald]

No thats not the case.....I can wait for a specific place to rez. Like if I am going to join a party, go to a beach, play somewhere or just making a tour to different beautiful and impressiv places and so on. I'm paitent with those places. They live due to their look and normaly need a lot of prims to function. But shopping is different.

When I go shopping, I usualy start with an idea in my head and even more often I have a need for something, because of a party I want to fit in or because I'm creating a new avatar and need some parts to complete a certain look. I open the search type in some words and hope I get some results. Then I teleport to the different stores. And now, here starts the problem.

- Some stores a extremly huge. I run around, up and down....just to finally realize they don't have what I'm looking for.

- Inworld stores seem to be just for the rich. NO I will not pay 500L for a single outfit!

- Lies. Yes, a lot of search results are absolutly misleading. Especially if you are looking for freebies, promotion items, lucky chairs/MM boards or just type in a generel word like "Hair". How often did I end up in a shop that doesn't have those things, but has it written in the description. (Again I usually end up in some expensive store....)

 

I don't say inworld shopping is bad as a whole thing, but it must get more comfortable for the customer. One side would be LL job, by making the search better for specific shopsresults. The other side is in the hands of the shopowners. No walls big as a mountain...I don't want to fly just to see what you sell. Don't bury your store under decoration that needs hours to rezz and don't advertise with things you don't have.

Also I see the marketplace as a great tool for newcomers, people who just started building and creating something and now want to test if they can sell it. It may provide their step into inworld business which has a much higher risk.

 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

@ All, not just Syo

The idea of the marketplace is great.  I hate the current one because it is broken in so many ways, causing endless trouble for merchants and customers alike.  Nevertheless, we all loved previous ones like XStreet SL and OnRez so it's not online shopping that's the problem.

Similarly LL have added a lot of functionality like windlight, voice, sculpties, mesh, web profiles, web feeds, etc.  They tend not to work reliably, if at all, and it's hard to even get started with SL but that's always been the case so it's not lack of functionality that's the problem.

The trouble is LL just hates its customers.

SL was complicated and unreliable when it started so it only got enthusiasts.  LL hates us so targeted business.

Business came, tried it, couldn't sell to us so left.  LL hates us so targeted education.

Education came, tried it, mostly left except to give us endless 'surveys'.  LL hates us so targeted facebook.

Facebook wouldn't come because they looked bad as homeless newbs.  LL hates us so it gave them starter homes and avatars.

Facebook wouldn't stay because a virtual world was too hard.  LL hates us so it gave them 'basic mode'.

Facebook nearly left because basic mode wouldn't let them dress-up.  LL hates us so it gave them feeds and hid our profiles.

Facebook turnover (here) is really high.  They pay for premium membership because they don't know any better.  They never find out how anything is meant to work so don't complain that it doesn't work properly.  LL hates us so it twitters to them instead of blogging to us.

LL likes the mass-market facebook crowd.  Facebook don't like the complicated 3d world of SL.  They do like having a 3d home which they can decorate by shopping online and a 3d avatar which they can dress-up by shopping online.  And they like talking about decorating and dressing-up in their feeds.  So, guess what, after all these years SL has started to find its "millions of potential residents".  It's just that they don't want to go to your shop, club, game sims in-world.

LL hates us and has some new friends, so there.

[greek Wingtips]

The point is what market place has done, all you have to look is what  massive wallmarts, or my case the Tesco's in the UK have done, once you amassive all shopping under one roof you kill the local shops, same as SL once the local shops go ,clubs it has a domino effect so please lets get real, if you just to come into sl and shop from maket place at the expence of everthing else that will be shortlived, look at the whole picture rather than one small area,

 

LL gets a cut from from market place, in world shops they do not, it was a way fo generating more money, but at the cost of less large sim owners, same land holders ect, I belive it been a costly mistake by LL's

[Orca Flotta]

Yes yes yes! LL hates us and has therefore figured out new ways for us to do our SL business offline so we'll never need to log into "our" world. LL succeeds in making their own product an unnecesary burden but fortunately gives us many tools that allow us to avoid actually logging into SL.

Why am I so sad about this?

 

 

[Jo Yardley]

I have no tv, I still gather around the wireless.

I spend 99% of my time in SL in the same sim, I still love that place and think it is only getting better.

Great community, lots of fun, plenty to do.

So I guess that your opinion of SL being bad, good, getting better or worse, does depend a lot on what you do in SL.

[Penny Patton]

The Marketplace/Walmart comparison is silly.

The Marketplace isn't driving content creators out of  business, it's simply providing them a more intuitive, easier to navigatge alternative to in-world shops and malls.

 From both a content creator and a content consumer standpoint, this is a good thing.

 The only people hurt are those who rent out shop space for stores and malls. But that simply wasn't a sustainable business model so long as LL's goal is to draw in more users. The domino effect described only applies to those whose business model can only be described as "building on sand".

 Also, contrary to that argument, there is still a market for in-world exposure. Content creators are best served by putting their content in front of large numbers of people. You can't do that with either the Marketplace, or a dingy shop tucked away in some forgotten sim, you do that by renting shop space in popular clubs, role-play sims, etcetera.

 

 What the marketplace does is make it easier for people to spend their money in Second Life. That's great for content creators and for LL themselves.

 

 The problem is, LL has done very little else to make SL more intuitive or otherwise draw people in. SL has a lot of issues and has seen very, very, very little improvement over the years, so when the hype bubble broke then user retention, whic hwas already poor, plummeted.

 That's why SL seems to empty these days.  It started well before the Marketplace became any sort of issue. It will continue even if LL abandons the Marketplace right now. (Would probably get worse, actually.)

[Kenbro Utu]

Someone want to run over and catch that pop-up to left field?  

[Phil Deakins]

---

Penny Patton wrote:

The only people hurt are those who rent out shop space for stores and malls. But that simply wasn't a sustainable business model so long as LL's goal is to draw in more users. The domino effect described only applies to those whose business model can only be described as "building on sand".

---

Your "building on sand" comment is nonsense. The stores that have folded because of the marketplace didn't build on sand. They built on bedrock. Some time later, LL turned the bedrock into sand.

[Penny Patton]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

---

Penny Patton wrote:

The only people hurt are those who rent out shop space for stores and malls. But that simply wasn't a sustainable business model so long as LL's goal is to draw in more users. The domino effect described only applies to those whose business model can only be described as "building on sand".

---

Your "building on sand" comment is nonsense. The stores that have folded because of the marketplace didn't build on sand. They built on bedrock. Some time later, LL turned the bedrock into sand.

---

 

Care to back that statement up?

 First off, what shops have folded due to the marketplace? Why did they fold?

 Again, the marketplace isn't driving content creators out of business. The marketplace is a venue from which content creators sell.

 Second of all, I've pointed out why an online shopping site makes more sense (It's provides indisputable benefits to both the seller and the consumer above and beyond in-world shops), from an end user standpoint, than in-world stores.  You've yet to back up why you believe the opposite is true.

 

 When your rebuttlel consists entirely of "nuh-uh":, maybe you should reevaluate your position.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Penny Patton wrote:

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

---

Penny Patton wrote:

The only people hurt are those who rent out shop space for stores and malls. But that simply wasn't a sustainable business model so long as LL's goal is to draw in more users. The domino effect described only applies to those whose business model can only be described as "building on sand".

---

Your "building on sand" comment is nonsense. The stores that have folded because of the marketplace didn't build on sand. They built on bedrock. Some time later, LL turned the bedrock into sand.

---

 

Care to back that statement up?

 First off, what shops have folded due to the marketplace? Why did they fold?

 Again, the marketplace isn't driving content creators out of business. The marketplace is a venue from which content creators sell.

 Second of all, I've pointed out why an online shopping site makes more sense (It's provides indisputable benefits to both the seller and the consumer above and beyond in-world shops), from an end user standpoint, than in-world stores.  You've yet to back up why you believe the opposite is true.

 

 When your rebuttlel consists entirely of "nuh-uh":, maybe you should reevaluate your position.

---

I didn't say that businesses have folded due to the marketplace. If you care read again what you quoted, you'll see that I said "stores", which makes the rest of your post redundant. Pre-marketplace stores did build on bedrock, as I said. Later, LL changed the bedrock to sand when they started the marketplace and plugged it for all was worth. They did not build on sand as you suggested.

However, judging by the many many threads on the subject, it has to be assumed that the marketplace has been the cause of many stores closing, simply because the marketplace has become the 'standard' place to buy things, and stores manage to pay for less and less of the required tier to support them.

But you are free to think that the marketplace hasn't had a negative impact on stores if you wish. I was just pointing out that your "sand" was in fact bedrock when the stores were built, and LL turned it into sand later, when they unscrupulously started and pushed the marketplace.

[Penny Patton]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

But you are free to think that the marketplace hasn't had a negative impact on stores if you wish. 

---

 Are you still talking about malls, or are you talking about content creator's stores now? If the former, you've got a memory problem because this statement contradicts even the first paragraph of your post here.

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

I was just pointing out that your "sand" was in fact bedrock when the stores were built, and LL turned it into sand later, when they unscrupulously started and pushed the marketplace.

---

And you've failed to make a pursuasive argument. If that "bedrock" were so solid, the existance of an online shopping venue wouldn't be an issue. The purpose of in-world malls only served to provide content creators with more visibility. That's it. An online store achieves that much more easily. In addition, it makes shopping easier for the consumer. Browsing a content creator's selection of products is much more easily done in the online store format than camming around an in-world shop (or multiple in-world shops spread across multiple sims).

[Penny Patton]

Also, I would suggest using better terminology. "Malls" are not "stores". A mall is a collection of stores. The stores themselves are run by the content creators. The malls are simply landlords renting out space to the stores run by content creators.

[Qie Niangao]

From the creators' parochial interests, they certainly can choose to use Marketplace, in-world stores, their own or other third-party sales and marketing site, or any combination of the above. There are advantages to each, both for creators and for their customers.

The problem is that the Lab has chosen to subsidize Marketplace by the Land product, to an absurd extent. Marketplace commissions are a tiny fraction of the 30% app store industry standard, so there's plenty of headroom there.  But this argument isn't about enriching the Lab's coffers -- it's about maintaining consistent margin across LL's products.  As it stands, tier is way, way too high -- and it has to be, in order to subsidize Marketplace's tiny margin.

Now, this wouldn't matter if it were LL's business plan to shut down the virtual world altogether, layoff the developers and become a barebones web market with just enough staff to keep the Marketplace site up and running.  Except, of course, it would matter because without the virtual world, there'd be no market for all that stuff sold on Marketplace.

The Lab's strategy seems to be to let in-world business wane in favor of Marketplace, on the premise that folks will just keep buying stuff on the web to prettify their in-world avatars and parcels, and continue to pay LL for the land, directly or through landlords, even at the current high prices necessary to subsidize Marketplace margins. This is particularly ill-advised because SL's nascent competition is solely focused on land costs. LL is playing directly into the hands of the competition with this strategy.

Although individual merchants might see huge Marketplace sales and think it's just the most wonderful thing, they have to be willing themselves blind to something fairly obvious: If it's such a good deal -- if they're selling lots of stuff for less total commission than the tier for an in-world shop -- that's not a good thing. Not at all. The merchants may not need an in-world shop, but they only have customers at all because somebody is paying for in-world land, whether those customers are buying in order to decorate the land or the avatar they'll strut around on that land.

TL;DR: Every Marketplace sale at the current low commission rate contributes to the current high tier cost that prevents SL from growing.

[Penny Patton]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

From the creators' parochial interests, they certainly can choose to use Marketplace, in-world stores, their own or other third-party sales and marketing site, or any combination of the above. There are advantages to each, both for creators and for their customers.

The problem is that the Lab has chosen to subsidize Marketplace by the Land product, to an absurd extent. Marketplace commissions are a tiny fraction of the 30% app store industry standard, so there's plenty of headroom there.  But this argument isn't about enriching the Lab's coffers -- it's about maintaining consistent margin across LL's products.  As it stands, tier is way, way too high -- and it has to be, in order to subsidize Marketplace's tiny margin.

Now, this wouldn't matter if it were LL's business plan to shut down the virtual world altogether, layoff the developers and become a barebones web market with just enough staff to keep the Marketplace site up and running.  Except, of course, it

would

matter because without the virtual world, there'd be no market for all that stuff sold on Marketplace.

The Lab's strategy seems to be to let in-world business wane in favor of Marketplace, on the premise that folks will just keep buying stuff on the web to prettify their in-world avatars and parcels, and continue to pay LL for the land, directly or through landlords, even at the current high prices necessary to subsidize Marketplace margins. This is particularly ill-advised because

SL's nascent competition is solely focused on land costs

. LL is playing directly into the hands of the competition with this strategy.

Although individual merchants might see huge Marketplace sales and think it's just the most wonderful thing, they have to be willing themselves blind to something fairly obvious: If it's such a good deal -- if they're selling lots of stuff for less total commission than the tier for an in-world shop -- that's

not

a good thing. Not at all. The merchants may not need an in-world shop, but they only have customers at all because somebody is paying for in-world land, whether those customers are buying in order to decorate the land or the avatar they'll strut around on that land.

TL;DR: Every Marketplace sale at the current low commission rate contributes to the current high tier cost that prevents SL from growing.

---

 It's important to remember a couple points to keep this discussion focused, first that tier has not gone up in response to the marketplace. 

I see what you're saying, but then the argument should be framed as one about high tier costs, not villifying the marketplace for those tier costs when we know, without a doubt, tier costs have not been affected by the marketplace.

 You could argue that in GOMing the marketplace, LL should have upped commission costs and reduced tier, subsidizing tier with the Marketplace, and that it's a poor decision on their part that they failed to do this. That's an interesting thought, worth discussing. As are points that LL may be overcharging on land altogether, trying to squeeze more money out of the users but in the end losing potential income because while squeezing the handful who continue to buy land, they drive away the majority who decide to pass on the absurdly high prices. (Also worth noting, whenver land cost debate comes up, that SL's prominent scale issues bite LL and the SL userbase HARD in this area. Those super sized avatars with their cameras floating 2m over their heads? They need a LOT more land to get the identical experience an avatar with a smaller avatar and more sensible camera placement gets at a fraction of the cost. We're talking land price is effectively inflated by a factor of four.)

 This thread and the arguments I've been addressing, on the other hand, are about the complaint that the marketplace has driven out mall owners. Something that would have eventually happened, and is even desireable as it is one step towards making it easier for consumers to shop, easier for content creators to make themselves and their products more visible, easier to get money into the economy. (However, it is just one step, LL has been woefully poor at taking other, more critical steps.)

 

 

[Qie Niangao]

---

This thread and the arguments I've been addressing, on the other hand, are about the complaint that the marketplace has driven out mall owners. 

---

In my recollection, the "mall" model was pretty much dead in SL before LL took over the web markets. If this thread is really about malls -- as opposed to in-world stores in general -- then it's beating a dead horse and I'm surprised it's gone on this long.

In-world stores, however, are very distinct from malls, and will still exist as long as there are goods being used in-world. For what I buy, the Marketplace is pretty much irrelevant; I find the vast majority of my purchases by inspecting stuff I see in-world, tracking down creator profiles, and teleporting to the location in their Picks. Only extreme exceptions send me to search, whether in-world or on Marketplace. Of course a lot of merchandise is traded on Marketplace, otherwise there'd be no discussion here at all, but I am not following why the choice is Marketplace or "malls."

My larger view on this, which I've stated many times (but is a bit tangential to this thread), is that the Lab is squandering its opportunity by maintaining such a stark distinction between in-world and web shopping. It's not as if there were real bricks and mortar, nor real world transportation, parking, security, and all the other costs associated with in-world shopping but not on the web. It's the same pixel products, navigated by different UIs. It's just silly that they're also represented in different databases. Direct delivery could be the tiniest first baby-step towards integrating these, but I have no reason to believe they have the vision to make the obvious next steps.

[ROB34466IIIa]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

 databases

---

That' s a keyword to everything SL / LL, isn' t it ?  That' s their specialty. Keeping it filled. Keeping it running. More space. More hardware. That stretch has gone, perhaps even imploded. It defenitely has grown beyond demand.

Eventhough I would not choose the word 'squandering' ( perhaps there' s more revenue to get from marketplace now than from inworld affairs ; can' t be done with landsales afaics ; the spice must flow, yaddiyaddah), I agree with Qie : the inworld shopping experience is essential to SL.

[Penny Patton]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

In my recollection, the "mall" model was pretty much dead in SL before LL took over the web markets. If this thread is really about malls -- as opposed to in-world stores in general -- then it's beating a dead horse and I'm surprised it's gone on this long.

---

That's all I'm saying. I agree completely.

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

My larger view on this, which I've stated many times (but is a bit tangential to this thread), is that the Lab is squandering its opportunity by maintaining such a stark distinction between in-world and web shopping. It's not as if there were real bricks and mortar, nor real world transportation, parking, security, and all the other costs associated with in-world shopping but not on the web. It's the same pixel products, navigated by different UIs. It's just silly that they're also represented in different databases. Direct delivery could be the tiniest first baby-step towards integrating these, but I have no reason to believe they have the vision to make the obvious next steps.

---

I also agree with this. Remember the On-Rez vendors? Where you had a single store setup that was integrated between in-world shops and the web store?

 I miss that so much.

LL running it directly could have taken that and made it work so much better than it already did. Are they moving in that direction, or still meandering aimlessly? I like to think Rodvik has a clearer vision regarding these issues, but he can't micromanage every aspect of SL directly.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Penny Patton wrote:

I also agree with this. Remember the On-Rez vendors? Where you had a single store setup that was integrated between in-world shops and the web store?

 I miss that so much.

LL running it directly could have taken that and made it work so much better than it already did. Are they moving in that direction, or still meandering aimlessly? I like to think Rodvik has a clearer vision regarding these issues, but he can't micromanage every aspect of SL directly.

---

From everything that I have been reading and hearing, it seems no one knows what the clear vision is.  As far as shopping goes, everything seems focused on the Market Place and nothing is being devoted by LL to In World shopping.  Of course maintaining and running an On Line market takes a lot less server space and should be a lot less expensive for LL to do sans the current data base and programming night mares that have reared their ugly heads with the conversion to Direct Delivery.

But we have to consider who pays for the SIM's we 'play' on and how they get paid for.  In World stores and Malls anchored many of the wonderful places we have enjoyed over the years.  But why should a Merchant invest in this if they can make all their money off of the Market Place.

Initiatives like Pathfinding our awesome but worthless if their are no SIM's for it to be implemented on.  This is the big worry I have in the bigger picture I see.  It is (or may be) creating a Catch 22 for the Merchants.