Re: Marketing Opportunity

[Dartagan Shepherd]

In the nicest possible way and as clearly as possible while banging ones head against the wall ...

In the middle of a buggy rollout, in the middle of a migration, while people are still getting used to DD, while merchants are having to support DD questions, while merchants are busy with the time consuming task of catching up on news, Jira's, forum posts, checking their listings ... probably not the best time in the world to run a non seasonal promotion.

Or expect people to rush off to make new unrelated product from their lines ... many people can't, it doesn't fit.

And, why in the world are you trying to influence what sells? Aside from holidays, let the market take care of itself, it doesn't need intervention.

Is this about making up for lost commissions during this rollout by a promotion that'll boost sales for you in the larger spread? Because it probably isn't going to help those who have lost sales and are looking to get their regular daily items back on track.

Some people will spend more during a promotion, others will spend money on the promotion that they might have spent elsewhere.

Please, focus on a marketplace that just works properly.

Consider relocating a non developer/non support person who just thinks these things up to another team, if that's the case. It's really not needed any more than dash deals were some months ago.

What is needed? When you do a holiday promotion? Do them on time (or rather in plenty of time), please.

Thanks for listening.

 -- Trained monkey 204020979802

[Marcus Hancroft]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

In the nicest possible way and as clearly as possible while banging ones head against the wall ...

In the middle of a buggy rollout, in the middle of a migration, while people are still getting used to DD, while merchants are having to support DD questions, while merchants are busy with the time consuming task of catching up on news, Jira's, forum posts, checking their listings ... probably not the best time in the world to run a non seasonal promotion.

Or expect people to rush off to make new unrelated product from their lines ... many people can't, it doesn't fit.

And, why in the world are you trying to influence what sells? Aside from holidays, let the market take care of itself, it doesn't need intervention.

Is this about making up for lost commissions during this rollout by a promotion that'll boost sales for you in the larger spread? Because it probably isn't going to help those who have lost sales and are looking to get their regular daily items back on track.

Some people will spend more during a promotion, others will spend money on the promotion that they might have spent elsewhere.

Please, focus on a marketplace that just works properly.

Consider relocating a non developer/non support person who just thinks these things up to another team, if that's the case. It's really not needed any more than dash deals were some months ago.

What is needed? When you do a holiday promotion? Do them on time (or rather in plenty of time), please.

Thanks for listening.

 -- Trained monkey 204020979802

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My thoughts exactly, Dart.  When I first saw that I thought; "Are they REALLY promoting this new keyword stuff right in the middle of one of the craziest and darkest times in the marketplace's history?"

How about this, commerce team...let's just focus on fixing the cross linked database and all the other things that are critically wrong with the marketplace now instead of these silly keyword promotions...mmmkay?

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Just strange. You feel like a parent. Eat your vegetables and you can have dessert.

This bit was funny though: "A time when a drink and a smoke at work were the norm and the cut of clothes celebrated curves?"

I was there, in the 60's. Cigarette butts on the floor of the grocery store and yes you could smoke at work. Drink? errr ... no.

Not sure how the clothes celebrated curves unless they're honing in on hippie gear. The rest was pretty unflattering and well, loud and ugly.

[Marcus Hancroft]

LOL...loud and ugly.  You got that right!  As far as the drinking at work...maybe somebody just saw an episode of "Bewitched" where Larry offered one of McMann & Tate's clients a cocktail while they went over Darrin's layouts.  Hahahaha!

[Kampu Oyen]

It's easy to understand if you accept that LL is trying to grow a new crop of users to replace the ones lost when they finally "give up" and shut down the Marketplace altogether, on top of those lost through all the previous bad marketing decisions.

The seeds of that new crop are merchants already using the Marketplace who are eager to comply with any instruction from LL, given at any time (such as now, for example).

The fertilizer for that crop will be Social Security money now finally being paid out to the beginnings of a 60 million strong distinct demographic cohort of US people known as the Baby Boomers.

These are people who already sold their unborn great-grandchildren down the river for viagra and hair implants, so if they are offered a chance to feel young a 3rd time just as they find they have too much free time and not much left to do with the retirement money they're drawing out at 4 times the rate they paid in, more than a few of them will jump at it.

But how long will they live to keep paying in?

Probably another 20 years at this point, or more.

How long is the current average length for avatar use?

A lot of people are finding they have better things to do than pour money into SL.

But maybe these people won't.

In fact, as their bodies continue to deteriorate and their kids want less and less to do with them... well... you get the idea.

It's not called "Other Life", it's called "Second Life".

So I guess they figured out to whom that name makes any real sense.

[Madeliefste Oh]

Another issue with this 'opportunity'. You have to add the keyword "madstyle" to your listings. 

But editing your listings has a negative influence on the ranking of your listings. So the question is: will the visibility you gain by taking part in this promotion compensate enough for the visibility you loose by editing your listing?

 

[Spica Inventor]

hehe. I agree, Linden Labs needs to move their entire staff over to the 'pink team' until these DD issues get resolved. (Even if they just stand around not knowing what they're doing). ;-)

 

But yes, I essentially agree. Linden Labs should have less marketing type employees and more software employees instead. ;-)

[Kampu Oyen]

Cross-link

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/And-as-totally-predicted/td-p/1484381

 

[Pamela Galli]

I am speechless.

Talk about rearranging deck chairs.

Or maybe Mickey and Judy:  I know! Let's put on a show!

 

 

 

[Kampu Oyen]

Well they at least accomplished something ahead of schedule, I guess.

SEE UPDATE

Fri, April 13, 2012 - 6:22 PM

http://tribes.tribe.net/secondlifemarketplaceproductsearch/thread/9354a5f2-05b0-4fbe-b898-5a8dea6fd770

[Ela Talaj]

Ranking by relevance doesn't work at this time anyways

[Zanara Zenovka]

All good points - lol@ veges and deck chairs.

One of my favourite items of 60s kitch I got from my mother is a pharmaceutical-company-logo-gift-to-doctors ashtray...

[Kampu Oyen]

It's supposed to be some kind of banner administered by Linden, not a relevance enhancement.

And I believe it.

In fact, I believe it will work perfectly while nothing else does.

[Super String]

Maybe they're trying to create a distraction for merchants and hoping that we can find some other things to do instead of paying attention to unsolved DD problems.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Pretty much.

Maybe that's the problem, we've warped into a TV version of the 60's.

Of course in the 60's if it had "anything" to do with technology, and a product like this was released, or they were drinking on the job at their level of employment, their green cast iron desk would be cleaned out faster than you can adjust your yellow plaid cinch-waisted cardboard consistency dress.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I am speechless.

Talk about rearranging deck chairs.

Or maybe Mickey and Judy:  I know! Let's put on a show!

 

 

 

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What came to my mind was "Give 'em the old razzle dazzle" from Chicago.  Especially the line: "When you're in trouble go into your dance."

[Dartagan Shepherd]

That should be the LL theme song, it's perfect.

The only problem is that they misinterpreted tolerance as ignorance.

If they were as clever as they think, they'd be able to properly hack a shopping cart that was already written for them and handle a migration among other things. In something less than 2 years.

Their tap dancing needs work.

Not to mention Spree was not the best choice to begin with. eBay went with Magento.

 

[Dora Gustafson]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

And, why in the world are you trying to influence what sells? Aside from holidays, let the market take care of itself, it doesn't need intervention.

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Linden Lab is not for free enterprise:(

It proved that clearly when it took over XStreet

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Create a 3D environment originally meant to test hardware, the goal changes every month until it eventually evolves into a plain old virtual world, and then take credit for inventing the concept of a virtual world with user generated content ....check.

Acquire a user invented currency marketplace because you want that money and then take credit for inventing it .... check.

Acquire a user invented marketplace because you want that sink to take more money from purchased L$ and then claim you invented it ... check.

Complete with users on residential rentals ... check.

Moves to recapture the viewer market, after figuring out open source was a bad decision, increasing restrictions and an attempt to throw a wrench into OpenSim (after promoting libSL and then libOpenMetaverseS and then inter-op with OpenSim itself) ... check.

Land fire sale to pull some sales of regions from land barons back to LL ... check.

Linden Realms and the new Wilderness(?) to take thousands of user hours per month away from merchants, shop owners, clubs .... check.

Manipulate marketplace sales and advertising rather than letting customers decide what to purchase .... check.

Only a partial list, but yes must agree. And there's more coming unless they change course dramatically.

[Kampu Oyen]

>The only problem is that they misinterpreted tolerance as ignorance.

They were probably the smartest kids in class.

So they probably haven't learned yet that they and a few dozen similarly bright friends are still no match for the total intellectual weight of thousands of people around the world trying to make sense of their decisions.

As a bit of a nerd, myself, I know that it is often possible to even very shamelessly talk down to normal people without them seeming to notice, and, probably, without them noticing, truly.

But Second Life merchants are not necessarily a normal group, and there are a lot of us.

If the LIndens really aren't smart enough to know that they're not smart enough to keep pulling off the shuck-and-jive, they may have to smarten up the hard way.

 

[Kampu Oyen]

>And, why in the world are you trying to influence what sells? Aside from holidays, let the market take care of itself, it doesn't need intervention.

Well I guess that somewhat helps to clear up what one or more secret Linden alts would have for sale in one or more shops.

Not that Rod will even pretend to care that that may very well be the case.

[Medhue Simoni]

Well, I'll just say that it always seems that LL is out of touch. I mean, why would you encourage people to make any kind of clothing when the mesh deformer is still up in the air. LL says absolutely nothing about the deformer, and gives no information at all on it. If you want creators to make fine cut clothing, then it would only make sense that you'd want them to make it with mesh. Plus, it's like mesh was made to create this kind of clothing too.

So let's describe how things should work. First, you have a working MP. Then, you give info on what the heck you are working on related to mesh clothing. Then, you run a promotion that is strictly about clothing with fancy cuts.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Kampu Oyen wrote:

>And, why in the world are you trying to influence what sells? Aside from holidays, let the market take care of itself, it doesn't need intervention.

---

I  doubt it is the commerce team who runs these campaigns, I think it comes from the general PR department.

I think the aim of the campaign is not so much to influence what sells or to help some mechants generate visibility above others, though this might be the effect of the campaign.The aim is to get more residents in SL. The core product of LL 'virtual land' is not an attractive item to pull people towards SL. The content we produce for SL is more attractive to advertise with.

People need  to come in world and stay for a while before they will be willing to spend money on owning or renting virtual land. The port must be wide open, because only a limited percentage of all users will end up with owning land. So everything LL can do to attrack more people and have them stay around for a while is good for LL, whether it is advertising for christmas, halloween, vampires, breedables, beachwear or stuff from the sixties.When they manage to reach this goal, growth of userbase, it will be good for you as a merchant as well.

But the weak point is...they are losing more people at the backdoor then that are gaining on the frontdoor.

[Kampu Oyen]

>I  doubt it is the commerce team who runs these campaigns, I think it comes from the general PR department

And that's why it was posted by CommerceTeam Linden?

If the PR people are free to use that account, I suppose that would explain it.

But if the real commerce team wasn't even made aware of the posting until we had already responded (assuming they're bothered to look, even now), how can that possibly reflect a good management plan for the account?

And if the real commerce team was aware the posting, how could they possibly have been either oblivious to the high potential to insult most of the people reading it, or unable to prevent it from being posted?

Most of all, why wouldn't the PR team have their own Linden account for these kinds of postings, and, if they do, why did they not use it?

Why does it look either like the commerce team just doesn't know or care what's going on, or like they are subordinate to the PR people?

>But the weak point is...they are losing more people at the backdoor then that are gaining on the frontdoor.

Yes. It's a formula that might really even work pretty well as long as you keep people coming in the front door. But if you eventually break enough things badly enough, word not only starts to get around (bad news travels even faster on the internet; that's actually precisely what it was invented), but people will start to see things not working correctly on Day One, even if they bother to come in the first place.

If things don't work on Day One, they will practically never be a Day Two.

And, at least in terms of people being able to buy stuff, LL has now achieved breakage of Day One for some continuing percentage of new users.

So if they can't keep older users and they increasingly also can't keep new users... what will they have in the long term?

A huge empty grid all to themselves?

Who is going to pay for that?

Let me guess... they've all stopped coding and started scratching Lotto tickets...

[Madeliefste Oh]

I have no proof it is like I think it is, it is just my impression. But I think you have this marketing team that thinks out these campaigns, and then when they have decided what it will be for coming month, they contact the collegues from marketplace so they can set the 'tag' on the marketplace and let the residents know about the campaign.

So I think someone from the marketplace team did post the message, because (s)he was told to do so. But not because MP team is the responsible team behind these campaigns.