Commerce

Ticious:

I am almost convinced that a good portion of LL employees are their kids who come in on the weekend and muck about. I am half serious here.

A little info on who the Lab have gone to bed with...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/glam-media-to-acquire-adportal-innovative-silicon-valley-media-technology-startup-99117264.html

^L^

hmmmm.... interesting... thanks for the link... will have to do some more digging on this.

I know what you are saying. I block banner ads since I clicked one back in 2007 for an online pharmacy. This mistake has spam from  other online pharmacies and lawyers suing drug makers. this is filling my email inbox, to this day.

Is this company going to send malware to our computers also when we click the banner ads? I wonder if clicking a banner ad for an adult item suddenly begins  filling our inboxes with porn ads and malware sites.

Thank you Wayfinder for the comments. Yours echos those by Lannorra Sion above and I think I can address both with one reply. First, you are right as far as what I have heard second-hand; Linden Lab has messed with many accounts in many ways when residents hit a bad payment status. For the most part it is an automated response such as when a credit card expires and you have to call in to update it. It has always been Linden Lab's standard operation not to do anything for an automated frozen account until the holder calls in, and if a length of time passes a loss of inventory may occure if a system purge deletes inactive data.  For this reason and others, most business owners keep three avatars in use, one for personal fun, one for business, and one for back-up. That way if you do run into the 'bad credit goblin,' loose your business avatar, or there is a data dump it is not a complete loss. With Linden Lab's reduction in staffing and customer service this past year, I recommend this more than ever.

On a simular note, remember that if your avatar does get revoked that any inventory, land, etc. has NO value in real life BUT any pre-paid services such as a yearly membership, advertising as described above, pre-paid tier, etc. can have a claim set against it as a failure to deliver service (you would be due the pre-paid portion that was not used at the time the account was frozen).

I think that covers your comments and I will wrap up with this last thought. Any company may freeze a client account if there is non-payment or a payment dispute. That is just good business practice and one I expect Linden Lab follows. You do have to be prepared for that and there are ways to safeguard yourself as I have described above. Linden Lab, like any other company, can also refuse you as a client at any time. What they can't do, however, is take your money and then refuse the service you pre-paid them for.

I hope that helps and as always I wish everyone love and peace!

Even in beta, the webpage alone is enough to keep me away. Mind you, I don't have an in-world business anymore or any need for advertising, but curiosity got the best of me after reading all of the above comments.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no need for everyone to be going crazy over this. For those concerned about LL wasting time on the advertising platform, have a quick gander at the page. It's pretty obvious, to me at least, that very little time, concern, devotion or thought has gone into the project. For those upset about having ads on the webpages, there are plenty of ad blocking programs/add-ons for your browser - look into them. In regards to prices, and being a webdesigner myself, I can tell you that the prices, discounted or not, are not horrible. For the big names in SL who are making enough to spend on the ads, more power to you. Would I ever use it? No. For starters, not accepting Paypal payments leaves me worried. If the company has not gotten serious enough to partner up and make use of the industry standard among payment processing, they aren't serious enough to have my RL information, let alone credit card information. Next, take into the consideration that the SL website(s) are a pain to navigate. How many times have you wound up on the wrong page or you had to go through four pages to make it to your destination? Do you want your impressions being wasted? Let me rephrase that: Do you want you money being wasted? My last thought on the "beta" advertising system could take pages to discuss, so I'll keep it short. PG, mature and adult ads are in three separate categories - the SL website is not. When I search for a skin on Marketplace (I won't even delve into that monstrosity) and enable mature items so I can find what I'm looking for, that doesn't mean I should be privy to seeing adult ads at the top of each page. Closing up the thought, if I am paying for an ad to be shown and it follows guidlines, no one should be able to deny them without a refund. (And I'm pretty sure, though not positive here, that it's against the law in the USA.)

As for those who are ranting on about the search still being messed up, I do not blame you. That's just like paying for electricity and only having light every once in a while. What slays me about everything is the fact that LL is ignoring its residents. Without each and every person who logs in once a day, week, month, be it a creator, organizer, customer or explorer, Second Life would shut down. LL is not the reason that Second Life is amazing - we all are. When you give tools to a man, the man who carves the statue is the artist, not the one who made the tools available. Coming out of my metaphorical rant, there are things that need to be focused on. Broken search, classifieds, events, viewer problems, registration problems... I could go on for days... My point is, features are those shiny things we are distracted by when we're driving down the road. They're there for a few moments and then they're forgotten about. I'd venture to estimate that over 80% of the places listed in searches and classifieds (as these seem to be the most complained about problems) are for stores. If there is no traffic to the store because they cannot be found, that store makes no money. That store goes without money, they can't afford tier. They lose their land, they pack up and leave. Where does that leave us all at? If every shop suddenly closed down tomorrow because of the previously mentioned scenario, LL would be forced to close Second Life. You can't ignore the core networks that make up SL and expect new features and shiny things to compensate for them.

"But I digress." These are just my thoughts and opinions, so please don't let this be the start of World War 3 in the forums! Just wanted to share my ideas on the new "shiny thing" as everyone else has.

ROFL

I've decided, on balance, this is an initiative that has to be welcomed:

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/12/thank-you-grant-linden-rip-thank-you-nelson-linden-may-you-live-forever.html

It's a breakthrough for the Lindens to share their precious eyeballed ad space with us, even if the first pancake always turns out lumpy, as the Russian proverb says it. (Pervy blin komben).

I can't quite tell the prices here -- are they really saying it would run me $12,000 US to run an ad on their auction page for a month? Well, that wouldn't be something I could do, but a large land owner might find it valuable. So I can only say -- go for it, and improve and expand it.

I view this as the first step to the Lindens eventually parting with ad space to sell in infohubs and welcome areas and roads on a network, and I hope that's how it works. Even if not. ads are what business is about. I love them; they bring me money. My customers love them; they click on them and find something they want.

Time for the technocommunist stranglehold on SL to end.

Is this why I keep getting emails about Beta from various people! grrrrr

http://simexploration.blogspot.com/

Well thats the thing that needs making clear what exactly is a impression are they timed impressions or per page loaded ie viewed. If Tom had 500 ad impressions and 20 others had the same 500 worth on the same page would these cycle intermitent to spread across 21 diffrent add pics in a day? basicly are they flashing between adds on the same loaded page or can a user seem to hog the page for a full day maybe by pushing all 500 in one day.. No info on the beta site just torley talking about simple setup.  Small starting out Tom may find his 500 gets totally swamped as the minuites tick by. need more info this site is lacking info at the moment.

Good post Sylar !

I'm curoius if theres a way to count impressions and how many click-throughs. That part is essential.

I think it is very good that at least we can see clearly they are at least doing something with us in mind and if nothing else leading by example.  I provide a free business ads kiosk network for any avatar that owns a SL business all peeps have to do to get and retain an ad is to keep me up to date and rez at least ONE 3 prim ad rotating kiosk where avatars can access and see it.

I can tell you it is a lot of work at times AND I have to go around and check locations to be dead or live still since peeps are halfway to notify me of changes.  Still...  It is a rewarding thing to assist in the possible chance that one of my clients is prospering and that their business model works.  My networks are split into two networks so that adult theme business aren't sharing ad space time on anyones land or business that does not reflect the locations ideals or purposes.  In other words I have a kiosk network for Mature/PG ads with a separate server and a Adult ads kiosk network with a separate server.  It pays to network and share ad space time especially if the opportunity to accomplish the task has your ad randomly displayed with accessible information and LM/s every 5 minutes or so all over the grid so far at least at 60 locations all at once for FREE and in addition I provide a tour Hud and website with SLurls to same locations.

I only charge a modest L fee for additional pages or graphics usually a fair tip will suffice and accept donations payable to any kiosk out in the field.

I say thank you LL for trying to at least express innovation in network advertisement.

I trust the CC companies a lot more than PayPal. PayPal also has become extremely inconvenient to use. If you have two people in the household sharing a bank account, you're out of luck if you both want to connect that account to your PayPal account.

PayPal is a joke at this point.

I can't quite tell the prices here -- are they really saying it would run me $12,000 US to run an ad on their auction page for a month?

The way I calculate it, it's $0.10 CPM - CPM being "cost per mille" or 1,000 impressions.  If you're looking at a month long advertising campaign with an average of 600,000 impressions per month, then - and someone correct me if I'm wrong - then you're looking at $60 per month.

*snarky comment deleted by the original poster*

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.  Seriously... they can't see that SL Marketplace is directly competing against Second Life?  Then they wonder why sim sales are decreasing.

The point?

Truth be known, I would say that even some of the most popular brands in SL that have had sim-sized stores have never been entirely self-supporting - at least not consistently.  And as the economy continues to flinch along, subsidizing one's labor of love out-of-pocket - or partially, at least - becomes more and more difficult to justify.  Sims get sold off or closed, shops reduce in size.

But I think, with a handful of exceptions, content creators like having an inworld store presence.  I don't think that the Marketplace will ever supplant that.  The Marketplace serves two exceptionally good purposes - and one of those is to give new content creators a place to make their products known and establish a name before investing in land for a shop.  The Marketplace is certainly easier to find than a 512 shop somewhere on the grid - especially when inworld search continues to run poorly.

Oh Pardoes how I agree. I tick the relevant box so my parcels can be found in Search and despite support tickets, none of them ever have. Only my one classified finds anything in Search. What am I paying the L$30 a week then for these parcels which are NOT found in Search.

LL sort out Search first, which was trashed by the new viewer and has never recovered.

i have a cuestion, as Ll say, the magic boxes will be eventualy obsolet, and the item must be move to special folder on the inventary, what must be the name of this folder? and how i can syncronice it whit the store?

why a lot of items, on the store inventory list are arck like delete or unavaliable?

i must use more tham one magic box? i must use a folder?

can some one help?

Sylvar: "What slays me about everything is the fact that LL is ignoring its residents. Without each and every person who logs in once a day, week, month, be it a creator, organizer, customer or explorer, Second Life would shut down. LL is not the reason that Second Life is amazing - we all are. When you give tools to a man, the man who carves the statue is the artist, not the one who made the tools available."

Well said Sylvar... and echoes what others have been saying for years.  Recently I watched a video in which some person (I justifiably forget his name) said, 'What we have to realize is that in the end game, this company belongs to Linden Lab and they can do whatever they want.  It's their company."  Now while that is technically true, what ever happend to "your world"?  And does that mean they are not responsible to their customers... or can't be sued to the floor if they cross the line? (which they do, regularly).

As you state Sylvar, we created this world.  We are the artists.  Bottom line, Linden Lab is an organization of techs and managers who provide us a chunk of bare grass and tools.  This world is ours. Without us, this world fails and dies.  The fact that Linden Lab doesn't seem to recognize that fact-- that they treat us as if we have no say at all in what goes on with this platform-- is just astounding.

This has had severely negative repercussions on their grid.  This grid is floundering.  In the first five years I have operated my group, we have NEVER had difficulty filling land, filling shop space, or attracting people to events.  Since October 2008 we had to cut back from eight sims to one, reduced our market space by 1/3 (because merchants simply aren't renting booths), and can barely get half a dozen people to attend events.  This is still the same group.  We do know how to operate a large group on SL... with 6 years of experience behind us.  I ask other merchants on SL how they're doing and the answer is always the same:  sales sux.  Merchants are closing down booths everywhere.

Why is this?   Because despite repeated failures, Linden Lab is still ignoring their customers and doing flat whatever they want to do.  Because this is a company that does not learn from its mistakes.  Because this company disrespects and abuses its customers on a regular basis.

Abuse your customers... lose your customers.

Nuhai: "On a simular note, remember that if your avatar does get revoked that any inventory, land, etc. has NO value in real life... Any company may freeze a client account if there is non-payment or a payment dispute. That is just good business practice and one I expect Linden Lab follows."

I appreciate your post Nuhai, and well-stated.  Unfortunately however, quite inaccurate.

Inventory and land both DO have RL value-- as evidenced that RL money can be paid for them.  Also as evidenced that RL money has already been paid for them, and would have to be paid againt to replace them.  That is RL value-- value that can be sued over if destroyed (that would be considered in RL law as vandilism, criminal negligence or malice).

I fully agree that people who do not pay their bills should have their avatars put in "hibernation" so to speak. That makes sense.  Then when the bill is paid, that avatar can be made available to them. That is what LL should be doing.

That is not what happened in the two cases I mentioned above.  It's also not just a matter of borked assets.  In my example above I stated two examples (one of them very prominent) in which Linden Lab intentionally (and allegedly with malice) destroyed the assets of users... in one case wiping the entire inventory of a customer (thousands of US$ worth) over a lousy $20 past due bill... and another in which they callously and without any ethics whatsoever destroyed the work of thousands of people when they totally obliterated 5,000+ sims from their database... not even keeping archival copies.

No Nuhai... this is a company lacking professional, ethical policy... and without excuse.  Which is the whole point of what people are saying in this blog:  customers have had enough and are now to the point of open rebellion...  just as we've predicted for some time now.  That is what we are seeing happen on this, and other blogs.

 

Marx: "*snarky comment deleted by the original poster*"

LOL.  Been there, done that, and in response to the same entity.  That gave me a chuckle for the day.

 

Marx: "Truth be known, I would say that even some of the most popular brands in SL that have had sim-sized stores have never been entirely self-supporting - at least not consistently.  And as the economy continues to flinch along, subsidizing one's labor of love out-of-pocket - or partially, at least - becomes more and more difficult to justify.  Sims get sold off or closed, shops reduce in size."

Absolute truth.  Like I said above, just last month Elf Clan closed down 1/3 of our marketplace.  We are not a small group.  We are not an unknown group.  Our traffic is good, our group is active.  But despite the LL propaganda machine... sales simply are not what they once were.  I know this for three reasons:

1. I'm a merchant with 5 businesses, and all 5 businesses have dropped in activity.

2. I'm a market owner with my finger on the pulse of how merchants are doing in that market.  They're not doing well.

3. I have several experienced, professional merchant friends, and every one of them is saying their sales are down the tubes.  Merchants are stating their after-Thanksgiving sales and pre-Christmas sales are abyssmal.

In the past, Seasonal sales have typically created 70% of annual sales.  Merchants rely on those sales to survive the rest of the year.  But those sales aren't there, I don't care what PR Linden Lab puts out about "L$ exchanges".

Why is this?  Because LL has never recognized (intentionally I think) the differce between object-generated sales and user-to-user transfers.   So... somone wins L$ at an event-- that's part of the "economy".  Someone is given an L$ gift by a friend (which goes on all the time), that's part of the "economy".   So someone gives a friend L$1000... that friends spends the L$1000... and Linden Lab counts that as L$2000 worth of transactions.  Someone wins 5,000 at an event, spends that 5,000...  Hoooo! 10,000 in "transactions".  Someone buys L$ from an in-world supplier.  They spend those L$.  Double transaction, every time.  Woohooo!   Healthy economy!  We're doing great!!!!  Not.

Not according to the information available to me.  Like you say Marx... merchants are shutting down.  They're losing money on rentals.  They're paying out-of-pocket.  Linden Lab sim count is decreasing.

IMO, this company is in survival-desparation mode... and they're desperately trying to figure out any way they can to pull in more money from their customers. Including (ahem) banner ads. ;D

 

Deeper: "i have a cuestion, as Ll say, the magic boxes will be eventualy obsolete"

This is actually probably a good idea if not for one thing... LL has a rich history of totally borking just about everything.  So I can see rich possibility in some hacker figuring out how LL is handling that "special folder"... and ripping merchants right and left.  Scenarios of eight legged glowing green goats with fangs. (if anyone catches the reference, kudos. ;D)

And I can not resist to say that, no matter how much we bash the Second Life, in the end, we are still here and that too every day =)

Hi,

Just could not resist commenting on this one. No matter how much we bash Second Life, in the "end", we are "not" here and "seriously" regretting the decision made to stick with SL after thier first mismanagement back in 2008 (Private Land fee decrease= Devalue of thousands of properties at that time)

Glad that you understand karma from a business perspective.

When I signed up it DID finally accept my Paypal CC. However you have to enter your mailing address exactly as it appears uner your paypal CC account.

So, ok. It took me 5 attempts (since I've moved a few months ago and didn't think this address would be such a big deal).BAD NEWS-since the card number, etc. was correct on first 4 attempts I was stuck with 4 $10 (pending) charges on my paypal account for about 30days (since LL or whoever is running this ad program doesn't know to "cancel" the transaction in the event of the user entering the wrong address)

Here is something that I find VERY interesting:

From a total sociological standpoint, what we are seeing here is, imo, a predictable and condemning development:

Linden Lab has been doing things wrong for so long, have been self-focused for so long, have stabbed their customers in the back so many times... that it has gotten to the point that even when what they're doing isn't wrong... their customers still fume (me included).

The simple truth is: there's nothing that is inherently wrong with Linden Lab selling banner ads.  Yet almost every person here (with very few exceptions) is just ranting  at Linden Lab (I think justifiably).  What we are seeing here is just  the opposite of a company that can do no wrong; we are seeing a very  rare instance of a company that can do no right.

People may not like the severe lack of professionlism in their website (and seriously, that website looks like it was put together by a first-semester student), we may not like that they don't accept PayPal (what is that all about?), and we certainly don't like the fact that this company doesn't seem to have the basic coding skills to make SEARCH work, get simple CHAT to function, or deliver a lousy group notice reliably... but despite all that, there's basically nothing wrong with banner ads. Yet people are angry with LL about this matter.

There's an explanation for that:  consequences for actions.   After a while, people simply start distrusting every motive and action.   And LL has nobody to blame for that... but themselves.

B00tsy: "Glad that you understand karma from a business perspective."

Exactly B00tsy.   Whether we call it "karma" or "reaping what you sow" or simply "just desserts"... LL was warned and had it coming.  They've been cautioned about the company driving customers to the point we would see open rebellion.  I believe that's what we're seeing here.

Now, LL may not believe in karma or similar concepts.  But experience indicates that while consequence may be slow in coming... it does come eventually, in one way or another.  LL sure seems to have kicked karma more than once over the years.

I think its odd that Lindens don't communicate about how to use their new ad service & how it works on this thread (or anywhere else).

A few people now have shown they have interest in the service & have also stated that they don't understand the product and need help to begin using it (I agree it is incomprehensible).

At a certain point however, interested customers give up.

Sure a few people will throw money down without knowing what they are purchasing, but most people won't.

Its failure at basic communication tasks like this is where Linden Lab loses a lot of potential new business.

I've emailed asking about the program too, lets see if I get some good answers

An FAQ would be more convenient....