Hello from Linden Lab’s New CEO

[CheriColette]

I still feel new....so I have no complaints 

Just want to say welcome....and it looks like you have a big job ahead of you

pleasing all the people in sl all the time

[Sy Beck]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

I'm not sure what metric you use when you say 

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Sy Beck wrote:

Last year SL fell below 50% marketshare for the first time in metaverse history and I think is now hovering around  40%.

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The only measures that particularly interest me are the number of active users and the size of the economy, and -- or so it seems to me -- SL continues to dwarf even its most successful competitors.  Whenever I look at the concurrency figures for the different grids, many of them seem to have about as many people logged on in total as would be pretty healthy for a single mainland sim in SL.    How many competitor grids can claim to have 500 unique log-ins during the course of a day? In SL, that's the sort of number of unique visitors a single popular attraction might expect a day, I think.

To my mind SL's great strengths are the number of people here, the goods we create, and the opportunities for social and commercial interaction we have.   I'm in SL because I enjoy meeting people and playing dress-up, and because I enjoy making scripted items and selling them.   SL is where my friends are.   SL is where I can meet new people, and where I can choose from a huge array of clothes, hairs, skins and so on.   SL is where my customers are, and where my animator business partner is, and where we can buy components like mesh or scultpies that we don't have the time or skill to make for ourselves.

If I wanted huge tracts of land and enormous prim allowances for very little money, in a sparcely-populated virtual world, then SL wouldn't be my first choice.   However, enormous tracts of land in an almost deserted virtual world isn't what I want, and what I (and, I think, most people) do want in a virtual world -- lots of other people and a developed market and economy -- are to be found only in SL.   

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You miss my point or indeed points.  I'm saying that you can have both, a large landholding and prim allocation plus you can take advantage of all that SL's population and economy can offer you too.  The main point being that LL is losing revenue from sim sales and rentals and the SL land mass is becoming smaller by the day as other worlds' land mass and holdings grow by the day.  LL have gone from being the sole provider you could tenuously argue down to only having a market share of around 40% and forecasts show that this decline is not stopping.

Now it can't be the case that the virtual world sim ownership has increased by a 150% and that it all chose anywhere but SL to buy and it can't be that any potential buyer just blindly chooses to buy in another world without comparing the pros and cons with buying a sim in SL.  Which ever way you flip it people are choosing to buy elsewhere, there is less land holding in SL and consequently that has to have some impact on LL's bottom line and one of the reasons for that I believe, as well as many others, is LL's tier and sim pricing.

You argue from your standpoint that it's the economy and population that keeps you here and I believe that you are a successful merchant too so it's understandable that you think that way and there must be many thousands like you and I'll take a guess that SL maybe a self-financing hobby/pleasure for you...?  In which case all those things considered SL is the ideal home for you and it will continue to be for many others not in the same position as you.  I am pointing out a problem in one particular income stream for LL.  There are those who would like to create/build for the sheer enjoyment in a large space whether it's an urban sprawl, a log cabin in a vast landscape or a palatial summer palace without the need to show it off to a population and just enjoy it with friends.  There are educational institutions on tight budgets who simply can't stretch to LL's prices and who also are adverse to having the association with SL's more racier side, artists who seem to be perpetually broke and finally there are those altruists of charities and good causes who would like to set up something, but are financially constrained.  All these large monthly sums of real life dollars are increasingly leaving SL and going into other worlds.  Good for other worlds, good for virtual worlds as a whole, but do you really think that it's good for SL or LL?  That is the point I wanted the new guy to see.

In conclusion it will not be long till there is a feasible and practical hypergrid in operation for all virtual worlds apart from SL when all those little communities are all interlinked and TPing from one world to another with your inventory intact and attached will be no different than TPing around the grid in SL.  LL remains though firmly against if not outright opposed to the hypergrid as it would be the death knell for their present business model.  Mainly because it would terminally accelerate the process I've described above where I could live on the cheapest land in the metaverse and create there with my SL inventory and then TP to a merchant's shop in another world for new clothes, that world having the most favourable terms for cashing out before finally TPing to the hottest nightclub in the metaverse on another world.

 

From June last year when SL dropped below 50%

http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/06/grids-hit-record-high-pass-second-life-in-land-area/

[Innula Zenovka]

Thanks.   I see from your final sentence that the metric you use is the amount of virtual land each grid represents.   In a way, that makes my point for me -- the fact that other grids can print as much land as they want, and virtually give it away, and, in general, people aren't interested in taking up the offer, tells me that cheap virtual land, on its own, isn't much of a selling point as far as many people are concerned.      The fact that grids other than SL now represent more than 50% of all virtual real estate doesn't seem to me anywhere near as important as the fact that SL is still -- after 6 or 7 years, I think -- the only virtual world that has ever seen more than a thousand (if that) people logged on at once.    

To my mind, SL is never going to be able to compete with other virtual worlds from the point of view of land-cost,  so it shouldn't try.   An educator wanting to set up a secure virtual environment for his classes is always going to find it less expensive to install OpenSim on the school's computer system and do it there.    However, that way the educator won't have access to many people who can sell items, or make them to order, that the virtual school might need, and there won't be many places for the class to go on field trips.    That's one of SL's big selling points -- what people have already created here, or what they can be asked to create for -- in general -- a minimal fee that represents well under the minimum wage in most places.    

Similarly with charities -- if they just  want cheap virtual land, then SL probably isn't the place to go.   If, however, they want to have access to people, both for fundraising and in order to educate them about the charity's goals, then SL is the obvious choice, whatever the price of land.   

You mention being able to TP round the hypergrid with your inventory intact.   The reason, to my mind, why LL is opposed to it is that it involves trusting the proprietors of every single hypergrid involved to respect everyone's IP rights.   That is not a decision, obviously, that LL can take on anyone's behalf, since up to now, everyone's uploaded/created stuff on the basis it's stored on LL's equipment and no one outside SL has access to it.     That makes it pretty much impossible for LL to participate in such a scheme even if it wanted to -- it would have to assume that the default position is that inventory items can't leave LL's grid (since that's the basis on which everything's been made/uploaded for the last 10 years), and it would be an administrative nightmare.

You also mention people cutting back on their landholdings.   I've had to do that recently, for various reasons.   But it doesn't mean that the income LL has thus lost has gone to other virtual worlds.   It's gone outside virtual worlds completely, as I've decided my monthly budget means that, at the moment, I can't justify spending money on sims that I could be cashing out and using to pay bills.    It never once occurred to me that I might want to go off to another grid -- what would be the point?   In this sense, LL are at the mercy of wider economic trends that affect how much people feel they can afford to spend on leisure and entertainment.   They aren't, I would argue, particularly affected by the competition's pricing.   

[Qie Niangao]

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Sy Beck wrote:

In conclusion it will not be long till there is a feasible and practical hypergrid in operation for all virtual worlds apart from SL when all those little communities are all interlinked and TPing from one world to another with your inventory intact and attached will be no different than TPing around the grid in SL.  LL remains though firmly against if not outright opposed to the hypergrid as it would be the death knell for their present business model.  Mainly because it would terminally accelerate the process I've described above where I could live on the cheapest land in the metaverse and create there with my SL inventory and then TP to a merchant's shop in another world for new clothes

, that world having the most favourable terms for cashing out before finally TPing to the hottest nightclub in the metaverse on another world.

---

That pretty much summarizes the reasons the hypergrid has no value to Second Life as a business. Until there's some benefit to Linden Lab, it's a dead letter.

There's magical thinking that LL must adapt the SL business model so it can benefit from a hypergrid. Presumably the theory is that the hypergrid is happening and LL better get on-board with it or get left behind. The problem is that the hypergrid isn't leaving anything behind, it's just picking up scraps as the whole virtual world market slowly declines. It's where some Second Lifers go before they die.

If the Holy Hypergrid is ever going to matter, it will do so by bringing new people to virtual worlds, marketing itself and targeting users not already engaged in Second Life. Then there will be a business rationale for Linden Lab to engage. And until then, it's just an annoying parasite.

[Sassy Romano]

Sy, you raise some interesting points and probably the one that is behind all of what you mention is that LL has monumentally failed to understand its customer base.  It doesn't know who to target or why.

Lets look at this over the past few years.  Phllip "your world, your imagination" people came to have a look because it was different, visionary and fun.

Along came M.  Well kind of a big fail there, he felt that adult content should be swept away, "appeal to corporates".  Why?  No corporate wants to use a platform that runs badly on a typical business PC, has the potential to exfiltrate corporpate data, has messages logged by a third party beyond control and lacks even the most basic support for a corporate tool... Powerpoint Presentation.  Corporates don't want SL and his "behind the firewall" plan?  WHY?  Any corp could install Open grid server and not pay anything.  Surprised that a CEO couldn't figure that out.

Rodvik came along and figured SL needed to be more "game like" and gave us an incomplete implementation of pathfinding, that's fine, it goes with the incomplete implementation of mesh and incomplete Marketplace transition to Direct Delivery but I digress.  However, without the right tools, these remain "incomplete" and gamers just don't see SL as the right game for them.  One only has to look at the recent posts in forums "how do I play this game?  what do I do?" 

Teens and Education?  Nope, canned those.  Teen grid kinda merged (read: "shutdown") and educational pricing removed.

LL keep failing to identify its customer base but as for stating that people are leaving, you're comparing apples and oranges.  LL is a business and has to remain viable.  The bulk of Open grid is not, it doesn't have to turn a profit, the cost model is very different.

The article that you cited about SL's 50% drop also contains comments about the nightmare that is Open grid with respect to content, IP rights and permissions so I don't think LL has to worry too much there.

There was also a thread here not long about where it was proposed that LL needed to lower tier "and they would come".  Several of us gave quite comprehensive reasons as to why LL is trapped into their current model.  In simple terms, they have stated that it's a processor core per region.  This doesn't scale, there is no ability to dynamically load balance within that model for when a region is without avatars because there could still be objects within the region that are scripted to respond to requests from outside the region.  In other words, that region has to be pretty much instantly available regardless of whether there's just one script running or 10,000.

Now, what would be more interesting would be for scripts to execute on a script cluster that wasn't tied to a specific region.  Then when someone wants to tp into a region, it could be rapidly provisioned on a server in a cluster, just as happens in a virtualised datacentre.  The present model doesn't scale and that creates a problem for costing.  Selling land requires hardware, hardware has to be purchased up front and maintained.

From LL's point though, losing "customers" that can't pay the fee, can be considered by LL as non customers so where's the loss from their perspective?

Anyway, bottom line is, LL is a corporate with associated costs, Open grid is a very very different animal, just as people can choose to host a website on their home PC or have it commercially hosted.

 

[Sy Beck]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

Thanks.   I see from your final sentence that the metric you use is the amount of virtual land each grid represents.   In a way, that makes my point for me -- the fact that other grids can print as much land as they want, and virtually give it away, and, in general, people aren't interested in taking up the offer, tells me that cheap virtual land, on its own, isn't much of a selling point as far as many people are concerned.      

The fact that grids other than SL now represent more than 50% of all virtual real estate doesn't seem to me anywhere near as important as the fact that SL is still -- after 6 or 7 years, I think -- the only virtual world that has ever seen more than a thousand (if that) people logged on at once.  

 

Where did I ever say SL had a problem with concurrency, active population or total population or that it wasn't important?  My point was,

once again

, about LL losing income stream from sim sales and rentals to other worlds because of its vastly over-priced tier and sim pricing.  You say yourself that you cutback on your land holding because you couldn't afford it.  Would you have done that if your land wasn't, at minimum, 50% more expensive than elsewhere?  Do you think that somebody in the same financial position as you holding land on another grid had to cutback their holding?  So you have offered another scenario where LL lost income and other worlds retained it.  Everybody would like land and prims to play with.  Do you not think that if land was cheaper then people would buy more and then they would buy more items from creators/merchants to fill that land?

To my mind, SL is never going to be able to compete with other virtual worlds from the point of view of land-cost,  so it shouldn't try.

  An educator wanting to set up a secure virtual environment for his classes is always going to find it less expensive to install OpenSim on the school's computer system and do it there.    However, that way the educator won't have access to many people who can sell items, or make them to order, that the virtual school might need, and there won't be many places for the class to go on field trips.    That's one of SL's big selling points -- what people have already created here, or what they can be asked to create for -- in general -- a minimal fee that represents well under the minimum wage in most places.    

You're probably correct, but it should be a bit more competitive on price than it is now and more inventive in its pricing schemes

Similarly with charities -- if they just  want cheap virtual land, then SL probably isn't the place to go.   If, however, they want to have access to people, both for fundraising and in order to educate them about the charity's goals, then SL is the obvious choice, whatever the price of land.   

You mention being able to TP round the hypergrid with your inventory intact.   The reason, to my mind, why LL is opposed to it is that it involves trusting the proprietors of every single hypergrid involved to respect everyone's IP rights.   That is not a decision, obviously, that LL can take on anyone's behalf, since up to now, everyone's uploaded/created stuff on the basis it's stored on LL's equipment and no one outside SL has access to it.     That makes it pretty much impossible, to my mind, for LL to participate in such a scheme even if it wanted to --

it would have to assume that the default position is that inventory items can't leave LL's grid (since that's the basis on which everything's been made/uploaded for the last 10 years), and it would be an administrative nightmare, to my mind.

My understanding is that the default will be no export or leaving a world with items unless the creator gives export perms on the item or similarly that it could not be rezzed in another world unless the item was checked for export/travel by the creator.  To my admittedly untechy mind this does not seem problematic or to others that I have read discussing it.

You also mention people cutting back on their landholdings.   I've had to do that recently, for various reasons.   But it doesn't mean that the income LL has thus lost has gone to other virtual worlds.   It's gone outside virtual worlds completely, as I've decided my monthly budget means that, at the moment, I can't justify spending money on sims that I could be cashing out and using to pay bills.    It never once occurred to me that I might want to go off to another grid -- what would be the point?   In this sense, LL are at the mercy of wider economic trends that affect how much people feel they can afford to spend on leisure and entertainment.   They aren't, I would argue, particularly affected by the competition's pricing.   

And 

once again

there are people who do like to own large amounts of land and prims to do with as they please.  When I do visit other worlds it is very rare to see a region or regions that isn't owned by just one person and the possibility of seeing a sim carved up into 10 beachfront rentals is even rarer when it's possible to nearly own the whole island for the price of an SL beachfront rental and with your SL browser open and poised you can be back in your favourite SL sim to party or chat with friends in less than 20 secs, the equivalent of an SL sim TP on a laggy day.  This what I mean by people utilising the best of both worlds or all worlds.

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Anyway, I can't keep repeating my point that this is about SL's diminishing land mass and a concomitant increase in land holdings elsewhere and that it's an ongoing and persistent decline for LL and that they are losing revenue month after month because their pricing is much, much higher than I and many people think it should be.  So this will be the last entry that I make within this thread because I can't argue my apples to your pears.

[Sy Beck]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

---

Sy Beck wrote:

In conclusion it will not be long till there is a feasible and practical hypergrid in operation for all virtual worlds apart from SL when all those little communities are all interlinked and TPing from one world to another with your inventory intact and attached will be no different than TPing around the grid in SL.  LL remains though firmly against if not outright opposed to the hypergrid as it would be the death knell for their present business model.  Mainly because it would terminally accelerate the process I've described above where I could live on the cheapest land in the metaverse and create there with my SL inventory and then TP to a merchant's shop in another world for new clothes

, that world having the most favourable terms for cashing out before finally TPing to the hottest nightclub in the metaverse on another world.

---

That pretty much summarizes the reasons the hypergrid has no value to Second Life as a business. Until there's some benefit to Linden Lab, it's a dead letter.

There's magical thinking that LL must adapt the SL business model so it can benefit from a hypergrid. Presumably the theory is that the hypergrid is happening and LL better get on-board with it or get left behind. The problem is that the hypergrid isn't leaving anything behind, it's just picking up scraps as the whole virtual world market slowly declines. It's where some Second Lifers go before they die.

If the Holy Hypergrid is ever going to matter, it will do so by bringing new people to virtual worlds, marketing itself and targeting users not already engaged in Second Life. Then there will be a business rationale for Linden Lab to engage. And until then, it's just an annoying parasite.

---

I tend to agree with you there Qie.  Hypergrid could go on its own pretty way without SL, but it would be a like a sports team firing their best and most influential player except this one doesn't want to be in the team either.  Maybe it will work if LL devise their own hypergrid to their own rules and feel more comfortable going with it.

I liken it sometimes to some land based trading empire of the Middle Ages turning their nose up about ports and ships that can travel to far and mysterious lands; there is nothing in it for them, but you can't help thinking they might be missing an opportunity.

[Sassy Romano]

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Sy Beck wrote:

I liken it sometimes to some land based trading empire of the Middle Ages turning their nose up about ports and ships that can travel to far and mysterious lands; there is nothing in it for them, but you can't help thinking they might be missing an opportunity.

---

Yes, sort of like where one of those ships takes a novel idea, transports it to a far off land, one that has no respect for rights, reverse engineers it, manufactures it and sells it for a fraction of the cost all over the place, including back in the land where it was originally conceived.

Oh wait, that DOES happen already and it is exactly the problem with IP rights that exists within hypergrid.  Every region owner is a god of that region, with all access to all assets, because that's how it works.  It's really quite broken.  Within SL, it's a closed system and thus brings with it a degree of security.  In taking that design and trying to make it into third party grid offering, it takes all the same problems into an open environment.

Basically, the architecture is just wrong and inappropriate for the purpose.  Open grids exist because they leech off existing work and in doing so, can operate on a completely different cost basis.  Answer this, which third party grid has active R&D working on their solution?  Not, hosting or setting up regions but actively employs R&D.  "The community" doesn't count, that's just leeching off LL's IP because without SL, they wouldn't exist.

So what i'd like to see is a new virtual world, that establishes itself from nothing, using wholly new technologies, with R&D staff, that operates on the same cost basis as these third party grids.  Won't happen in a hurry, there's a bone yard of those who have attempted to do so.

[Sy Beck]

You too raise some interesting points there Sassy.  I remember posting a comment to Loki Eliot's blog when the search for a new CEO was on in response to people demanding that SL should appoint a CEO, "Who gets it!"  Well after 7 plus yrs here I wish I could define what "it" is.  I think I could be happier with a complete a newb to SL than one of us who had their own very clear and concrete ideas of what "they" thought SL is and should be.  At least they might see a lot of the problems that we have glossed over or worked around and forgotten.

However, addressing what you said, nowhere have I stated that people are leaving.  In fact I think I may have said that the SL population has remained pretty static.  My point was, that land ownership in SL is decreasing and that land ownership is increasing outside of SL.  Therefore, LL must be losing revenue from at least this aspect of their business while OS and all other worlds are gaining revenue from this income source and that the new guy might want to review LL's pricing and tier structure while he's giving everything the once over.  Not least to mention that if more people are able to afford land or to increase their holding then that will spur the economy too.

On everything else I agree with you (I think).  Still trying to wrap my head around why it wouldn't matter losing paying customers who pay for hardware that allows them to buy sims in the first place, but I have a feeling I may have misinterpreted what you meant.  I mean there's one thing for sure in that LL's sim costs/tier are in no way just covering server and overhead costs.

 

Anyway, I'm outta this thread now.

[Sassy Romano]

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Sy Beck wrote:

I mean there's one thing for sure in that LL's sim costs/tier are in no way just covering server and overhead costs.

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Exactly!  It's also paying for the R&D and salaries of those involved, something which the clone grids do not pay for.

[Treasure Ballinger]

Not only that, but LL is a business.  Last time I checked, businesses are in business to make money.  LL isn't a charity.  As with most things in life, people do what they can afford to do, within their means, and within the scope of what they want to do.  I don't resent LL for anything they choose to charge, or for making a profit, if they are,  because face it somebody can afford to pay it, and they are, that's why it is what it is.  LL has a right to expect and make, a profit, as done any other business.  Otherwise, why be in business?

[Dillon Levenque]

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Treasure Ballinger wrote:

LL has a right to expect and make, a profit, as done any other business.  Otherwise, why be in business?

---

 

Yeah, that really IS the bottom line, isn't it? I mean it's fun making suggestions and all that and there's absolutely no doubt that almost every one of us wants Second Life to continue (meaning it has to be profitable for LL) so the suggestions we've seen for the most part are NOT "I want", they are more "I think this would help".

The end result is that LL has to do whatever works best for their income. They are somewhat unusual in having a customer base that is at once their harshest crtic and their most ardent admirer. Now that I think of it, that might not be all that unusual. Most companies don't provide a public forum for their customers, though. Maddy said something about a Focus Group back there: we are the Focus Group. All we lack is focus :-).

[Medhue Simoni]

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Ebbe Linden wrote:

Nobody knows what may happen in the future. But we have no intent to steal your stuff. I can imagine scary scenarios that are more likely to happen, that none us have control over,  that would concern me more. I don't see how SL as we know it could be successful if we started to steal your stuff. I certainly don't see a business model based on stealing stuff that could last very long...so I don't really see the logic in this conversation. It sounds scary to some of you but how it could really become a real problem I don't really know. 

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Welcome to SL Ebbe! lol

 

Well, I'll just put my 2 lindens in here, just to emphasize some things and to express how I, as a merchant, feel about this TOS issue.

It's not about whether LL is going to steal our stuff. Creating 3D stuff is our living, or maybe our LOVE. Many of us don't just sell our creations in SL, but also many other places. We are doing business across many platforms, and dealing with many clients, all with their own TOS, and contracts. Some conflict with LL's TOS. There are no current TOS that any of us deal with that are as broad as LL's, at least in the 3D market. In 1 instance, LL went from the place for creatives to be, to questioning where we should do more on other platforms. Read over those TOS again, then go read Unity3D's TOS and ask yourself, if your livelyhood depended on it, and you had other options, where would you create? I'm not saying I'm not creating here, but I've definitely changed my focus.

If LL's TOS clearly stated all intents, and expressly limited to those intents, I don't think any creators would be up in arms. To many of us tho, this is a very big deal, and will affect where we spend the most time. Also, let's not be fooled by what LL is. It's a corporate entity. It's not a person, and it doesn't have feelings. It could be bought at whatever price, and we'd have new owners tomorrow.

[Sassy Romano]

Here's an interesting one for Ebbe to assist with the resolution.

A merchant just posted that they'd been banned from Paypal for using it to buy goods in SL that are outside the Paypal Acceptable Use Policy.  https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full

Here's the issue, the Second Life Marketplace does NOT permit the seller to BLOCK the use of Paypal for content that could lead to the suspension of Paypal service for the hapless purchaser!

In offering items for sale via SL Marketplace, customers at risk of being banned from Paypal without realising.  Most people would assume that if there's a PayPal button that it's ok to use it.

It appears that Linden Lab needs to immediately cease offering PayPal as a transaction method for adult content for starters and possibly quite a few other things.

[StephiDreamEvermore Doune]

what about people its too late for as paypal is not a & option any more for me for this exact reason ?

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

Here's an interesting one for Ebbe to assist with the resolution.

A merchant just posted that they'd been banned from Paypal for using it to buy goods in SL that are outside the Paypal Acceptable Use Policy. 

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full

Here's the issue, the Second Life Marketplace does NOT permit the seller to BLOCK the use of Paypal for content that could lead to the suspension of Paypal service for the hapless purchaser!

In offering items for sale via SL Marketplace, customers at risk of being banned from Paypal without realising.  Most people would assume that if there's a PayPal button that it's ok to use it.

It appears that Linden Lab needs to immediately cease offering PayPal as a transaction method for adult content for starters and possibly quite a few other things.

---

Where is this posted?

[Innula Zenovka]

I'm a bit confused about who's at risk here, Sassy.

Am I right in thinking that is the account that purchases the item rather than the person selling it?

I'm thinking that because, since if you use the PayPal option you are (I assume) in fact buying L$ on the Lindex to fund the purchase rather than transferring US$ to the seller, the name of the merchant selling the item is never exposed to PayPal -- the vendor should show up as LL, I would have thought.

 

[Sassy Romano]

Yes it's the purchaser and if performed via USD PP transaction, then it would appear not to involve L$ at all.

[Innula Zenovka]

I've never actually bought anything using the US$ option, nor received payment with that method as far as I know, but are you sure it doesn't involve L$?   I've just gone as far as I want to in setting up a dummy purchase, and this is what I see:

That looks to me as if I'd be buying L$ from someone (presumably the Lindex, via LL), because otherwise I don't understand the currency conversion fee or why they bother to quote L$ total now due.   

If I went ahead and hit Buy now, how much would end up in which of your accounts?   I think you'd get L$695, and it would show up on my PayPal as me buying L$ from LL, possibly with "Sassy's Bad Day Flirt Jeans" or "Sassy Romano" as the reference.   But I don't know, since it's a facility I have never used.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

I've never actually bought anything using the US$ option, nor received payment with that method as far as I know, but are you sure it doesn't involve L$?   I've just gone as far as I want to in setting up a dummy purchase, and this is what I see:

That looks to me as if I'd be buying L$ from someone (presumably the Lindex, via LL), because otherwise I don't understand the currency conversion fee or why they bother to quote L$ total now due.   

If I went ahead and hit Buy now, how much would end up in which of your accounts?   I think you'd get L$695, and it would show up on my PayPal as me buying L$ from LL, possibly with "Sassy's Bad Day Flirt Jeans" or "Sassy Romano" as the reference.   But I don't know, since it's a facility I have never used.

 

---

I've been using a different method for tier payment and haven't needed to buy any L$ recently so I couldn't view any staements on PayPal (they only go back three months). But checking my old E Mail receipts from PayPal, all they say is "You made a payment to Linden Research" with no reference as to what the payment was for.

[Jason1 Draconia]

Hello Ebbe, Welcome to SL as we hope you enjoy  it here with us also! As SL is a community to be experienced on so many different levels. My main concern in SL would be some thought on correcting land bot behaviour. I have been speaking with people who have been identifying an ongoing issue with land bots specifically for purchaseing land that take advantage of newer clients or lag spikes for people setting a land parcel for sale for 1L. Most every SL reposter in the forums avoids confronting this and blames those to have fallen and taken one for the team and move along approach. As this actually beleive it or not both affects that persons love of SL as well as LL revenue and reputation wise that is passed along to others about not coming into SL due to it. I have had some thoughts on this as possible choices to help curb this from occuring, both with the community's help and LL's.

These ideas are just that and hope others will build on them or correct them. Main thing is that people selling land at 1L lose their land and money invest not to mention (TIER costs that LL would get)happens often enough to talk about.

Land bots from what I understand search land listings repeatedly to find low cost lands to buy based on that... Can we find a solution to it thru not allowing land listed for sale at or below a certain price in the list for it to not pickup those lands? Something to look into.AnotherissuewithLand bots is anonymity,  Landbots which have purchased land , people have no way to really communicate with the Bot owner/ handler. Could we force an issue with those Scripted Bots to have their Paid verified Account showing on their Profile for legitamacy? In all honesty it's in everyones best interest to be able to get in touch with those who use land bots.  Land Bots are usually in hastily made groups, where their Owners/Handlers who supply the land credits are in the group with their names hidden. The above idea to allow those Bots to be linked to the main account (payment verified account)would help remove that to keep those Land resellers more responsible for their actions. Some seem to buy the land than flip it to a third company fast to both distance themselves from what the Bot has done and to come back to resell the land as an 'innocent' land reseller.

Last thing I would point out , over the forum posts I have read on Land Bots. Most just point out nothing can or will be done that it is pointles to make a change. Or simply derail or mis interpret the extent o nhow this both affects the Community and SL in general. One of the great things in SL is the ability to 'own' some land to decorate as you would and have a feeling of safety and privacy. In all of the world a community a sstrong and diverse as SL is. It's amazing that not one person that I have seen in any forum reply on a land bot,land dispute ever questioned the bot owner beyond that they are here and it is allowed and bots are great. But has anyone thought or mention that Bot's are scripted? That the Owner COULD in fact write it to ignore lands set below a certain price? Guess not after so many years. Blame the people who were affected is much easier than aknowledging something that has been going on for too long. 

For those I have spoken too one couple lost about 75 USD for the land purchase price  plus 125 USD land tier fee, another who I have spoken to over 10,000L not to mention the land tier they would of been paying to LL. The land market both affects current SL clients as well as those who may be coming into SL. Which also affects every other part , Marketplace sales for homes accesories etc. This is a big big issue.   

I would suggest a look into and change in this area of some great concern both for the community as well as Linden Labs for both lost revenues and enjoyment and more importantly positive feedback. Anyone who has had this happen please post in here with your welcome message to Mr. Ebbe. State your landbot issue, the date,  land size lost, what SIM how much you may of lost and tier that you may of had to pay but not now and how it affected you and your feelings about SL. If you have some better ideas on possible change for land bots please add anything constructive! 

 

[Innula Zenovka]

You probably haven't noticed, since the change was made with very little publicity, but using LandBots to purchase mainland was banned at the end of January.  See Linden Lab Official: Bot policy.  

While that probably won't stop the practice, it at least gives people grounds to AR the culprits. 

 

ETA   The change seems, in fact,  to have taken place Mid December 2013.   My mistake.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

You probably haven't noticed, since the change was made with very little publicity, but using LandBots to purchase mainland was banned at the end of January.  See

Linden Lab Official: Bot policy

.  

While that probably won't stop the practice, it at least gives people grounds to AR the culprits. 

---

WOW! 

People have been complaining about this for as long as I can remember.

I'm curious though, how did you find out about this?

Because this is an example of Dismal Communication.  Policy changes need to be announced so people know.

[Innula Zenovka]

I found out about it because, over at SLU, Dari Caldwell mentioned having seen the news "in a different thread in a different forum."   I don't know where she saw it.

 

[Dillon Levenque]

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

I found out about it because,

over at SLU, Dari Caldwell

mentioned having seen the news "

in a different thread in a different forum."   I don't know where she saw it.

 

---

 

Probably Inara Pey. I know I saw the notice and Inara's is about the only blog I visit, or at least the one I visit most often. I get her article notices on my Feed.

 

(Edit) Yep. I saw it here: http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/lab-updates-bot-policy/ . And it looks like you were right, Innula: it does say Jan 30 2014.