Iwould have to say that among all the concerns the merchants on this forum have is the complete lack of Merchants input, feedback, suggestions to improve the MP and an unhealthy closed communications block between the Commerce Team and the Merchants.
Rodvik, if there is one aspect you could influence is that the Commerce Team provide what all your other LL teams provide.... Weekly User Group meetings with the Merchants.
From these meetings, I think alot of other problems could be resolved and Merchant concerns addressed simply because we can talk to Commerce Team and work together on what they are doing with MP.
Is this possible? and if so, what would the Commerce Team want from us?
Knowl Paine wrote:Several months ago, there was a discussion about creating a sort of better business bureau for SL Merchants. The idea was met with mixed replies, some for ,some against.
It is the fault of Merchants, if they are not organized, and working collectively. There should be Official Merchant Groups, they should have weekly meetings Inworld. Recognize top sellers for their accomplishments, this is business, it's nothing personal.
yeah Knowl, it has been talked about but I know from many rounds of this idea over the years that it wont fly.
I would prefer it stay simple and if the Commerce Team met frequently enoughh and was willing to openly and actively engage with us in the same manner that I have seen the Lindens from other User Groups, just the sheer frequency and openess alone will encourage the active Merchants - big or small - to also participate on a regular basis.
Keep it Simple and the Commerce Team committing to listen and take our ideas serious.
That is my thought
Dear Brooke (not the generic "Commerce Team" group name)
There has been a lot of bad blood that has built your between your team and the Merchant community. Walls have been erected since early 2011 between your team and all of us Merchants that are your #1 userbase / customers. There are countless examples and inceidents that have raised these walls higher and higher between you and us.
But what quickly can break all these walls down and bring our two critical teams together again is two establish a frequent, fully open, and honest two-way communications between you & your team and us in the Merchant community.
- It has to be Frequent - I am suggesting weekly at minimum. Maybe even 2 a week - one early day SLT (like 9am slt) and one late day SLT (like 4pm slt). This would fit your normal business hours windows and allow a wider range of merchants to attend one or the other. It has to be frequent to ensure that no issues that are occuring get pent up. It has to be frequent to begin to establish a business bonding between our two groups. It has to be frequent to allow the backlog of initial ideas to flow. with a large window of communications.
- It has to be Open & Honest - You surely know we are not lacking on being open and honest. But if these meetings will succeed and a relation re-establish between us... you and your team has to be open and honest with us. Remember that LL's MP is a monopoly - you have no business secrets to hide from us. We the Merchants start feeling your team is showing up and engaging and willing to share whats going on INSIDE your team... you will go a long way to establish trust and willingness from us to want to be a partner with your team.
- It has to be Two-Way - Brooke, you team and the Merchants of SL have common interests.... we both want the MP to succed, grow, and be a solid, trusting, effective product distribution and sales tool. AND... as the actual users of your MP, we know what we need from the MP to make it as effective as possible. You and your team needs to listen to our ideas and make priorities from the top needs we have from MP. We know LL puts requirements on MP for you to deliver as well. You tell us what yours are and we will tell you what ours are. But we want to see proof from your team that you will be working on our priorities.
So Brooke, I am suggesting your team go to the SecondLife User Group wiki....
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Officia
And select one (hopefully two) times a week from the calendar and establish the MARKETPLACE User Group.
I would suggest that you and Dakota and even someone else from the MP devlopment team also show up for these meeting. If you have not attended one of the other weekly LL user group meetings, I would recommend you attend one - like tomorrow's at 4pm slt. See how its conducted. See how the flow goes.
AND HERE IS WHAT US MERCHANTS WILL DO OUR DARN BEST TO DO FOR YOUR TEAM AT THESE MEETINGS
We will bring flowers to the meeting and as much has we have a long pent up level of frustration... We will promise to behave. IF you feel that the attending merchants have transitioned to a RUDE BEHAVIOR... you can openly call us out on it and ask us to stop with the emotion. We in turn can in turn openly remind you if we feel you are not abiding by the "open two-way rules".
I would also suggest as an amazing kickup of the first meeting that Rodvik make an appearance. I know it sounds silly but I truly do think it adds credability to the meetings for both sides.
CONCLUSION....
Brooke.... lets be business partners and resolve these issues between our teams.
Respond to this posting as Brooke.
Innula Zenovka wrote:
Pamela Galli wrote:We used to have those, Asha. I am not sure why they stopped. Brooke had a couple of them but then said she would use the forum to post information, and I assume take questions -- it was so long ago I can't remember exactly.
In my opinion poor communication is the problem in this relationship between CT and merchants.
Certainly poor communication is a great part of the problem, to my mind. Inara Pey had an excellent piece on this, I thought, the other week: Marketplace Issues: Not so much eroding trust and completely undermining it. There's clearly problems, and these occasional gnomic utterances by CommerceTeam Linden (who I visualise as some sort of Dalek, for some reason) really don't help.
I really can't but contrast, unfavourably, the frank and helpful discussons we have with Oskar, Maestro, Kelly and all the other technical Lindens with this wall of silence that surrounds the MP.
I completely agree Innula!! Since July I have been attending the Friday 4pm SLT Server Sim user group meetings. These weekly meetings have Andrew, Simon, Baker, and Cheesey Linden show up almost every week. I was pleasently surprised how progressive and informational these meetings have been!
I was very shocked to witness that when I proposed my VLM idea to this team... they openly discussed the idea during the meeting with the attending interested residents. It was so constructive. And more shockingly.... the Lindens from the team ACTUALLY took the idea serious and brought it into the internal Linden staff for review... and they actually decided to move it for development scheduling.
I have had more open and frank discussions face to face with LL during these meetings in a few weeks than my entire 3+ years with the LL Commerce Team.
I look at the amazing positives that these weekly and semi-weekly meeting have generated and then compare it to the state we are in with the Commerce Team and MP.
So I completely agree.... the #1 issue to address between merchants and the Commerce Team is to address communications.
I really do hope Brooke take my offer and her team starts these meetings.
Well well... Rodvik actually dropped by. I guess it is premature to classify SL as abandonware today.
Since Lindens are at least pretending to read our requests & I am bored with not much to do having just completed a big year-long non-SL creative project, I will supply them a little feedback just in case this is really getting read.
The concept of L$ erodes trust.
Call me a heretic but I'd like to see the L$ scrapped. Make it simple. Use only real money & have all the item sellers follow tiered pricing like the App Store. So you either give your item away or you sell it for 99¢, $1.99, $2.99, $3.99 etc. No price increments between allowed. There is a reason Apple does this smart move. It stops price erosion dead. If you aren't confident to sell an item for 99¢, work on it more to make it good. Good for customers too so they aren't looking at page after page of hastily built trash. A marketplace where everyone continually races to the bottom to charge 0.4¢ (1 L$) is a worthless joke of so-called "commerce". The L$ is just an enabler to trick people into working for fractional pennies.
First things first though! LL must buck up & hire some real professionals who can actually build a real commerce site. Cheap out & you get cheap results. This is what is wrong with marketplace primarily. If they can't afford to do this now for whatever reason might as well shutter it now. Cost-cutting kills.
Okay now here is the REALLY IMPORTANT stuff LL must do very soon at all costs, if they do not actually already plan to simply abandon SL.
LL needs to find new ways to bring more people in the door & keep them around. Part of this is they need to go mobile (Rodvik pls hire people to make it happen!). Desktop is getting left behind, and thus SL will be left behind. Concurrency is dropping like a stone month after month, at this rate there will come a time when SL is no more unless LL does the required work (boring I know) to pull off some innovative ideas to really promote SL. Once again, pay the big money & hire real professionals to start properly promoting SL. I've handed LL a few great ideas to do with effective & affordable product placement, so far no progress being made in that regard. The population of SL continues to decline due to these two showstopper issues: not going mobile & the ineffective promotion of product.
