"Select" merchants

[Polymath Snuggler]

As a creator I can tell you some of my most innovative stuff has come from my learning of a new "cool thing" for some other platform and then going "wait how can I apply this to my SL work"  Likewise a lot of my wierd hacky cheaty things I have to do for SL wind up having applications elsewhere.   Turmoil has some oddly productive side effects.

 

That being said SL has to present itself as an attractive platform.  Presently that comes in the form of an approxmiate 12% tax on sales compared to a 40-70% for other platforms.

 

A slight bit of instability is acceptable considering the low tax rate.  I'm concerned about Sansar though.  What's my incentive to dev for that platform instead of Unity marketplace~ or Turbosquid or SoE Player Studio, Or Steam Workshop  or ~ or ~ or ... you get the idea.

HEY LL PEOPLE IF YOU READ THIS THREAD ~  ^ THAT COMMENT IS YOUR TAKE AWAY.

[Darrius Gothly]

When I was learning to snow ski, I put on short skis and headed for the "Bunny Slope". I fell, I got bruised, and I learned how to ski better.

When I came to Second Life, I was enthralled by the easy hurdles, relatively short ramp to get something of interest built, and then after a time by the height of the ceiling on things that could be created. Even though I am personally incapable of getting anywhere near that celing, I have seen others do stuff in SL that flat out amazes me. So it's been good for the short-ski wearing populace .. and those with all the top-quality gear too.

The platforms you mention (TurboSquid, etc.) and now possibly Sansar, all seem to eliminate the Bunny Slope. I'm just very concerned that lopping off the bottom end will destabilize and eventually hinder the rest of the slopes. When it comes to Second Life, I think the Bunny Slope has been absolutely instrumental in its longevity and interest factor for many people.

(Metaphor mixing seems to be my thing tonight .. sorry for the brain-bending)

[ChinRey]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

You have voiced the reaction that most worries me .. withdrawal from investment and growth.

---

Exactly but that's only part of it.

Second Life is only a game and Linden Lab is only a game company. No, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against games, it's the "only" part that I have problems with. Especially because it could have been so much more, and even especiallier (is that a word, Sassy?) because many people have tried to make it into more than a game. Some have had some success there but it's always an unnecessary struggle, trying to adapt tools to purposes they were never meant for.

It's not even a game with a clear goal, it's just playing around with fancy gadgets or - recently - fancy outfits for your avatar. As somebody said in BB chat yesterday, SL is where we play with barbies and pretend it's art.

That's all Linden Lab understands and they understand that well, I have to give them that.

But they don't understand business. They've been trying over and over again to make Second Life attractive to the big business guys but they've always failed and they will always fail because they don't actually know what would make it attractive to those people. That is, to be fair, the current leadership seems to know and I believe the previous one did too but they haven't managed to transmit that knowledge through the organisation.

When it comes to education, nobody at LL seems to understand it. Except possibly Torley but he seems to have been sidelined and there are limits to what a single man can do anyway. Oh and whoever it was who designed the new welcome centers. They are actually brilliant but I think that was an outside contractor who only was hired for that specific job. Again, how are they going to make the best tools for the job when they don't know what tools are needed?

They don't even understand content creation. Again, with a sidelined exception. LDPW has made a recovery that would have made Lazarus green with envy and started making really good content again. But they don't seem to have any influence where the decisions are made. If you want to make quality content in or for SL, you have to spend more time figuring out ways to work around the unnecessary shortcomings of the tools than you spend on actually creating.

 

One of my first comments here when Sansar was introduced was that LL didn't need a new world, they needed a new attitude. I don't think they listened to me - more likely they figured it out themselves - but they have been working on that since then and they have made noticeable progress. But then this mess turns up and it's back to the old sins. I'm beginning to think it was too little and too late after all.

[DartAgain]

I think anyone that does well here will be able to manage "out there".

But you said Unreal Engine and to that I say yum, my personal favorite, the newest, lastest, greatest and yes, all the VR you want to work with as well. And no upfront cost until I'm ready to launch.

I'm holding out some hope for Sansar, but with a dose of skepticism. I can build any experience that Sansar will be capable of with UE without a doubt, so what would Sansar bring to the table for me? Certainly not L$ ... I can make my own currency, or none and go with real money. Same for any feature Sansar can come up with because if UE doesn't do it, I can modify the source and make it possible.

So Sansar must provide two things: Buying power and users. That's it. But if LL's monetization is still heavy like it is here, then I'm going to give 5% of my gross to Epic and call it a day. It won't cost me anything for content that I make myself, there's simply no commission to pay at all on my own models for my own project.

Another deal breaker for me is the ToS. I stopped creating for SL with the last major ToS change before this one when they decided to make this ludicrous grab of rights to do just about anything with my content, including licensing, sub-licensing, etc.

Not sure if it was Ebbe or Rod that said they didnt' see what the big deal was about users not liking the ToS changes. That for me was the straw ... turned to my wife and we both said the same thing: As if LL would EVER sign an agreement with anyone like their own ToS ... that's the big deal. But right, play dumb and take me for a fool. Besides that, legally it prohibits me from doing certain things with content and ventures, so no go.

You're right that other places have higher commissions, although 70% is on the very high end and I've never had to pay anyone a 70% commission for selling models. They also don't have a ToS that's as restrictive.

The plus side is that it's a different team on Sansar, so maybe they can get past this "you're a player and we're game gods" culture that LL has had going on. Hopefully it will include an entirely different marketplace as well. And one that doesn't play favorites or take 2 YEARS to get a single feature done.

[Polymath Snuggler]

Once you catch a glimpse of the tottering infrastructure backbone that holds the present virtual world up, you would understand the need for a new environment.

I'm not speaking of aging hardware.  I'm speaking of overall infrastructure.  From the design of an "always on" server that maintains the environment in memory at all times~ to the ballooning no-limits personal inventory databases, to the connectivity issues regarding the number of data requests the servers are currently built to withstand from a concurrent number of users accessing group information~ fiddling with their inventories etc etc.  SL literally cannot grow without it's current infrastructure imploding to uselessness.

 

All of that is not even taking consideration render pipeline issues.  Especially converting a non PBR based world into a PBR based one.  ( they use two different classifcations of texture sheets )  Throw into that pot ~ lack of support for displacement maps and tesselation based rendering, SL's stupidly heavy render overhead.  That's not even counting the average poly efficiency for objects in SL being unchecked for 12 years.   There's a lot of reasons to start over.  So yes.  The new platform is actually needed.   LindenLabs could be lightyears ahead in their thinking for all you know.  But the current infrastructure is clouding that ray of hope and forward thinking from ever reaching our eyes.

 

I have no idea!  I really don't!  I have high hopes though.  Ebbe has been throwing out the proper buzz words in his talks such as "scalability" and "cross platform experiences" etc etc. 

 

Small reply to Dart~ 70% is charged by some smaller studios on Steam Workshop for submitted skins & added content to their specific games.  

[Darrius Gothly]

Yours was the exact same argument used by the Commerce Dev Team in justifying their hurried shutdown of the old XStreet infrastructure and the premature "go live" of the SL Marketplace. The old wasn't really dead yet, and the new wasn't really live either. But someone upstairs circled a date, and ready or not, they made the switch.

I guess that's another bit of history that those of us with road-rash still remember painfully. We are hopeful that THE transition .. if there IS a transition .. will be better managed, better timed, and better communicated beforehand.

[Polymath Snuggler]

I talk with a lot of people ~ most a lot smarter than I and a lot more involved.  I also read crash & downtime reports and justifications for actions that LL takes.

From that I pick up some interesting bits of insight.

For example the concurrency issue:  Apparently a substantial part of why group chats didn't work was people constantly opening up their 15000 member groups to see who was online.  Mind you ~  a perfectly valid use for a group that size.  Especially for a "meet & greet" style group but it was killing the server doing that many database requests for online statuses then ~ funneling that information back to a single user.  Then doing it AGAIN when that same person hits a dead end with their "hay u wnt sum fuk?" request.  And goes back to the group to try again.  Adding all this up to include all the concurrently logged in agents on the grid and suddenly their servers implode.  LL can't exactly pay for super-servers.  But the coding for that particular function in SL is so deeply embedded in the architecture~ with so many things piggy backed on top of it that they really cannot just "oh hey let's rip out this old incredibly inefficient bit of code and replace it with how we should have done this 10 years ago but didn't know any better back then."  To make matters worse LL has outsourced a lot of the tasks that the platform performs, not necessarily efficiency checking it.   It really is a spagetti code nightmare.

 

So technically ~ I think investing what remaining capital they have into creating a new platform really is the only smart move.

 

They've clearly stated they'll maintain the two platforms separately and I believe them.  They've done an excellent job of making improvements to SL in the year I've been here.  Object occlusion & rendering , interest lists, Automated derendering of assets beyond a certain render complexity limit, LSL control for materials, Disabling large groups ( not technically an improvement, but a necessary stop-gap fix )~  Viewer Managed marketplace, which albeit was slightly terrifying to undergo ~  largely went off with only minor hitches.. and now SLM Beta search.   There have been a lot of improvements.  Exlcuding their hardware difficulties things haven't been all that bad... at least in my brief snapshot view of SL~

 

Again~  back to my diversification argument.   Sometimes operating on a different platform provides insight into a prexisting problem and gives a different potential solution.  I don't know if these improvements have been results of independent labor or bleedoff from "doing it the right way" on Sansar ~ and then going back to SL and going "maybe we can do something similar and make things better."  I don't really know~  I'm just an information sponge.  I don't have any actual internal knowledge.

[Darrius Gothly]

Just cuz the horse is two steps into the river .. don't mean you can quit yelling "Giddy UP!" *smiles*

And we do agree. The old tattered, ragged, ill-conceived and even more poorly crafted EARLY code is causing operational issues with SL ... exactly as happens with every other virtual or software product that has a lifespan as long as SL. Even Microsoft had to take XP out behind the barn and shoot it .. even though it was still working for some of us. *waves hand in the air*

It's probably because I'm an older man now, and when I'm riding shotgun with any of my children behind the wheel, I am always stomping the floor trying to slow the car down.

But you see, it's the effort spent finding and reworking those spaghetti factories that gain a crew the experience and understanding of what's in there .. and WHY it's in there. It's the historical references that keep the whole thing moving in a generally forward direction. When those references are lost (or fired or retired or ..??) then there is always the risk of repeating past mistakes. There are well known methods to avoid that pitfall too.

This thread started because a past mistake was repeated .. again. No matter how new the servers, how modern the code, or how revolutionary the concepts ... if the people charting the course keep taking the same detours through the weeds, it just doesn't look good on the bottom line.

Stomping on the floor don't work neither .. I have proof. *smiles*

PS: I realize that when a regime changes as it has several times within the Lab's walls, stuff gets lost. But there's a giant wealth of factual, experiential and dependable references "out here" .. among the users. If someone were to ask us, we'd happily give them maps with the known dangers mapped plainly.

[ChinRey]

---

polysail wrote:

Once you catch a glimpse of the tottering infrastructure backbone that holds the present virtual world up, you would understand the need for a new environment.

---

Lol.

 

Ok, I get it, no metaphors, no similes, no pointed remarks, no exaggerations from now on:

Linden Lab needs a new attitude far more than they need a new world.

 

 

Happy now?

[ChinRey]

---

polysail wrote:

For example the concurrency issue:  Apparently a substantial part of why group chats didn't work was people constantly opening up their 15000 member groups to see who wasonline.

---

That is not true. Or at least it is not true according to what Linden Lab said and since this is purely a technical issue, there's no reason to doubt them.

Several users, including me, suggested that it should be possible to reduce chat lag by making it easier for people to close chats they weren't actually in and by adding a function to switch off the auto opening of all group chats. Linden Lab's answer was always that this was such a minor factor it wouldn't make any difference.

They proved it too. When they eventually figured out that the problem was in SL, not in the code, they went straight for the spambots. We haven't had much chat lag since then.

 

---

polysail wrote:

So technically ~ I think investing what remaining capital they have into creating a new platform really is the only smart move.

---

Never put all your eggs in one basket if you can avoid it!

The issues I pointed out can't be solved with big chunks of money anyway. What they require is lots of hard, conscious, targeted work over a period of time.

To be honest, I may be a bit too pessimistic here. Linden Lab has been working hard on the issue ever since Ebbe took over the steering wheel and they probably started even before that. I can only think of two significant setbacks so far and that isn't really too bad. Even so, they still have a long, long way to go and it's still an open question whether they get there in time.

[Butch Daddy]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

Jacob, I think you may have taken the wrong meaning from this thread. If I may, I'd like to try and focus on what seems to have been overlooked.

In order to express "Entitlement", one must also feel that something is owed to you. As in, some rule somewhere says it has to be that way. As you rightly point out there are no such rules in the ToS .. or any other legal document or agreement between Merchants that use the SL Marketplace and Linden Lab. We know that very well, and that's not what has us up in arms.

Any sense of entitlement that we do express emanates from the belief that a level playing field is by far the most productive and efficient mechanism for a thriving and profitable commercial environment. There are "adjustments" that are made in any market to account for circumstances that arise, but ideally the fewer adjustments needed, the better the market will perform.

The marketing email that went out was a form of "adjustment". Specifically it was an unneeded adjustment, and it served only to skew the market in a way that didn't really help anyone. It certainly did not help those not included in the promotion. And the resulting outrage and tumult it created has not helped the bottom lines of those that were included either. And Linden Lab lost a bit in the process too. So all in all, lose-lose.

Again.

This is not a market that tolerates heavy-handed adjustments. It is very carefully balanced .. in its own odd way. But it works, has worked well and continues to work well. Many times in the past, when outside forces have injected adjustments such as this, it has always turned out badly because those types of changes just do not work here.

So bottom line? The thing we feel owed us is a place where the operation and aura of the market are honestly understood by the managers of the market.

Entitlement? Yeah .. to a place where we all have an equal chance .. to thrive or fail on our own merits .. and without capricious or ill-considered tinkering from those that don't really understand how it all works.

---

1. What do you mean by 'adjustment'? 

2. How do you know it didn't help the sellers who were promoted in the ad and email?

 

[Butch Daddy]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

(replying to myself here because I prefer offering solutions, not just gripes)

The Linden Lab imprimatur on a marketing campaign has immense power and value. Finding your name included in an email that came from a Linden Lab account is a mark of status and accomplishment that many Merchants both deserve and can afford.

Having access to that level of marketing power would be a sure-fire way for someone to break out of the minor leagues and really gain a toehold in with the Big Names.

So wouldn't it make sense to offer a Linden Lab "Recommended" marketing campaign that is

open to all

, with a

price commensurate with the value

offered?

---

First of all, it has already been established that there was no "price" involved.  No one had to pay to be a part of the Promotion.  So how would you price the value of the promotion?

Second, as outlined in my previous reply in this thread, do you seriously want content promotion to be "open to all" including those who allegedly sell copybotted or copyrighted content?

Third, if Linden Lab is trying to generate interest in the Marketplace, don't you think that the email campaign should highlight some of the best and brightest sellers/creators instead of the botton of the barrel stuff? (not saying anyone specifically is bottom of the barrel, just pointing out the folly of the claims that any promotion should be "open to all").

Fourth, alluding to a "Linden Lab Recommended" campaign, based on the vocal outrage in this thread, I am sure that any tagging of items as "Linden Lab Recommended" will result in just as much dirt kicking and crying about how it "isn't fair" because someone's items weren't picked.

[Butch Daddy]

---

ChinRey wrote:

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

Through no fault of their own, you all have basicallyimpliled to the entire community that the only reason why those sellers got picked is because they kiss Lindens butt. If I were one of those "select merchants" who were picked, I would really be thinking right now about how utterly hateful other sellers can be.

---

Where did you read that? As far as I can remember, everybody have been very careful not to put any blame on the six winners. But it is a long thread as you said, so I may well have missed something.

 

"then along comes LL and slaps us in the face with FREE advertising of "select" competitors - who you gotta blow to get a gig like that lol"

 

 

[Butch Daddy]

---

ChinRey wrote:

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

I like to think that the sellers who were picked actually earned that opportunity through their hard work and dedication. No, not everyone can put in the same time that they have because most of us have lives outside of SL to live. If that is the case, then why begrudge them their dedication?

---

I think I'll leave it to Pamela to answer that one

- if she's still following the discussion.

 

Just because someone wasn't picked does not mean that the ones who were didn't earn it.

 

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

Seems to me that everyone was treated equal.

---

No, they weren't. Take a look at the Marketplace. Yes, most of the sellers there are small time hobby creators and there certainly are plenty of shady operators there too. But there are also lots of serious fairly big merchants. Is there just one serious hair maker in SL? and only one serious clothes designer? I think not.

 

Again, without knowing the criteria that was used, there is no legitmate way that you can claim that all sellers were not treated equally.

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

Until we know for sure, if we ever do,...

---

Good point. Are we ever going to hear from LL about this? That would help a lot.

 

---

You obviously didn't read my posts in the thread. I can't blame you for that since they are a bit on the side of what everybody else have been writing about. But I happen to think they're rather important

So here's a quick summary:

My concern here is not whether things are fair or unfair or even whether they are legal or illegal.

Linden Lab has offended a large number of their core business-to-business customers, people they depend on to be able to run Second Life at all. We need those people here, we can't afford to loose them! In fact, we need more serious, professional content creators, especially with Sansar coming up. But Second Life has a horrible reputation in the professional 3D design community so most people there stay well away. This will make it even harder to recruit more creators because the rumours will spread.

There is absolutely no way the extra revenue from this stunt can make up for the loss of credibility LL suffers from it.  There are only three possible explanations why they still decided to do it and we can rule one out right away. The two left are: Linden Lab is so desperately short on cash they

had

to do something fast or: they're so short-sighted they didn't actually see it coming. I don't know which is the worst of those.

---

So let me ask you, in what way did Linden Lab offend you with this promotion?  Since you really cannot speak for anyone other than yourself, you really can only say why you, yourself, are offended by the promotion, and not why someone else might be offended.

 

[ChinRey]

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

"then along comes LL and slaps us in the face with FREE advertising of "select" competitors - who you gotta blow to get a gig like that lol"

---

Oh, I overlooked that one. Yes, that was thoughtless.

 

In case there are still any misundestandings here:

1. At least one of the six participants has clearly indicated they didn't know about the sale in advance.
2. One of the participants only made a barely half-hearted attempt to do something with the sale. It's clearly nto something they asked for but rather something that dropped onto their head and they couldn't decline.
3. None of the six participating stores show any sign of having prepared for the sale in advance. Quite the contrary, their sale displays show every signs of being rush jobs.

In other words: the six stores that participated in LL's publicity stunt, had not asked for it and did not know about it in advance. At least one of them doesn't even seem to have wanted it very much.

[Butch Daddy]

ChinRey wrote:

---

That's right but in this particular case the law might:

(e) Furnishing services or facilities for processing, handling, etc.

It shall be unlawful for any person to discriminate in favor of one purchaser against another purchaser or purchasers of a commodity bought for resale, with or without processing, by contracting to furnish or furnishing, or by contributing to the furnishing of, any services or facilities connected with the processing, handling, sale, or offering for sale of such commodity so purchased upon terms not accorded to all purchasers on proportionally equal terms.

(15 U.S. Code § 13 - Discrimination in price, services, or facilities)

Not sure if that's exactly the right paragraph, it may only cover actual goods sold, not services provided, but the point is all nations have fairly strict laws against anticompetitive practices in business. Sometimes they may seem way too strict but there's a very good reason why they're there.

---

 

Except, as has already been established, no one "purchased" anything.  So the law you quoted does not apply to the Promotion.

[Butch Daddy]

---

DartAgain wrote:

Well, no point in making points that others have made about your post, they've covered some of it pretty well.

My take on it is that unless LL changes course in the way they do business, in 5 years you won't be here for me to tell you that i told you so.

---

Sorry, but that really isn't saying much.  If you go back to the old SLExchange archived forums, and old SL Archived forums from 5-7 years ago, the same thing was being said then as you are saying here.

And yet Second Life is still around.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

1. What do you mean by 'adjustment'? 

2. How do you know it didn't help the sellers who were promoted in the ad and email? 

---

1. Adjustment means any changes in operation, pricing, performance, formatting or external activities that influence the behavior and dynamics of the Marketplace. Sending out email promotions is one such example. Changing the number and presentation format of the Enhancement Ads shown atop each page would be another example.

2. Taken from the implications of your first post. You intimated that those included in the promotion email had probably (possibly?) suffered some from being included. If not .. cool beans. If so ..

[ChinRey]

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

So let me ask you, in what way did Linden Lab offend you with this promotion?

---

I'm not offended at all, I'm worried. This was clearly a very poor decision by the company that is in charge of Second Life's and Sansar's future. They should have known better.

 

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

Since you really cannot speak for anyone other than yourself,

---

No, I actually can speak for others than myself here. Any business who learns about this incident or even hears rumours about it, will loose a little bit of confidence in Linden Lab and be a little bit more reluctant to enter any kind of busniness partnership with them.

[Butch Daddy]

---

polysail wrote:

I've seen this thread festering down here, but hadn't taken the time to read the entire thing until now.   I had the same thoughts when I saw the front page ads.

"Wow how much did they have to pay to get that kind of visibility?"

 

I thought long and hard about it and here's my 2 cents on the off chance that a CM stumbles into this thread and actually reads it ::

 

Suffice it to say I wasn't too thrilled to find out that it was free with random selection.  Irked substantially but at the same time things like this are part of the business world. 

Unfairness in "open market" contests happens.  It happens a lot.  Not just in our little small business online marketplace here but out in the brick and mortar material goods block too.  Do you know how many huge businesses today have been utterly screwed over, had to restructure their entire business and find a new customer base or flat out ceased to exist and gone bankrupt because their competitor won a HUGE government contract in an unfair contest where there was an obvious favorite?   CEO's commit suicide over this, but it happens, and it happens a LOT.  Yet everytime there's a big government contract up for grabs, every single eligble business steps back up to the plate to try and bid on it because there's really no choice in the matter.

So.  Yes.  It's unfair.  Yes it irks people. But yes. LL can get away with it.

Now~ I may be a bit wide eyed and naive in the SL marketplace.  But I want to point something out to all of you.

We all get NOTHING if LL goes belly up.

I want to preface this with something~ I really do love SL.  I thank it for the opportunity it's granted me and the income I've gained here has helped tide me over in a time of financial instability RL. ( yes~ me with my little shop of 15 items here has been my lifeline  )

But I want you (fellow merchants! ) to consider this :

If your SL shop is 100% of your RL income.  I can understand your very apprehensive "I'm dangling by a thread here and LL keeps strumming it to hear a tune"  But I ask one question?  If you're *that* successful as a merchant, you obviously posess skills to enter other online marketplaces, why haven't you created a backup plan yet?  Why haven't you put thought into contingencies?

Smart business is exactly that.  Diversification.  Broad customer base, many product lines,

many distributors

.

I'm not saying pick up and leave SL, but please be sane in planning your life~ do not put ALL your eggs in one basket.

And to LL: 

Please, if you can avoid it. Don't screw us over too hard please.  Some of us are trying to make a living here.

---

An open market only means that there are no barriers in place (other than having a Second Life Account) that would prevent anyone from listing their items for sale.

The promotion has absolutely nothing to do with wether or not the marketplace is an "open market" system.  And there is nothing in the promotion that hinders the marketplacefrom being an "open market" system.

Discussions regarding whether or not the marketplace itself is an "open market" or "free market" ecomony are strawman arguements since neither has anything at all to do with the Promotion.

 

 

 

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

(replying to myself here because I prefer offering solutions, not just gripes)

The Linden Lab imprimatur on a marketing campaign has immense power and value. Finding your name included in an email that came from a Linden Lab account is a mark of status and accomplishment that many Merchants both deserve and can afford.

Having access to that level of marketing power would be a sure-fire way for someone to break out of the minor leagues and really gain a toehold in with the Big Names.

So wouldn't it make sense to offer a Linden Lab "Recommended" marketing campaign that is

open to all

, with a

price commensurate with the value

offered?

---

First of all, it has already been established that there was no "price" involved.  No one had to pay to be a part of the Promotion.  So how would you price the value of the promotion?

Second, as outlined in my previous reply in this thread, do you seriously want content promotion to be "open to all" including those who allegedly sell copybotted or copyrighted content?

Third, if Linden Lab is trying to generate interest in the Marketplace, don't you think that the email campaign should highlight some of the best and brightest sellers/creators instead of the botton of the barrel stuff? (not saying anyone specifically is bottom of the barrel, just pointing out the folly of the claims that any promotion should be "open to all").

Fourth, alluding to a "Linden Lab Recommended" campaign, based on the vocal outrage in this thread, I am sure that any tagging of items as "Linden Lab Recommended" will result in just as much dirt kicking and crying about how it "isn't fair" because someone's items weren't picked.

---

I think you again misunderstand me.

First of all, the "Price" is open to valuation the same as any advertising campaign. How did LL set the prices for Enhancements? No clue here .. but obviously they were able to arrive at some sort of value. And apparently people are willing to pay it. So they didn't go THAT wrong. I'll trust in them to work their magic again and set a reasonable price for an ad campaign that has the impact and value of a Linden Lab approved email promotion.

Second, absolutely!! Anyone selling illegal, stolen or just plain wrong content VERY MUCH SHOULD make themselves widely known and visible to Linden Lab. That way they can quickly and decisively stomp them flat. Done!

Third, Market Dynamics. Those with the highest quality, best selling, most profitable products will by the nature of their success also have the resources to pay top dollar for quality marketing. If someone is willing to spend real money in quantity sums to advertise junk? It's their money, their decision, and their loss. And they most likely won't make that mistake twice. The stuff that is shown in the promotional materials? The first few folks that look at it .. maybe even buy it .. will quickly rank it so poorly that no one on the entire Grid will fall into the sandtrap. (Did I mention Market Dynamics yet?)

Fourth, the vocal outrage is precisely because the opportunity wasn't available to all. If the campaign WERE open to all, the most vocal griping would be about it being too expensive. To which the majority of us would respond "poor baby". I seriously doubt there would be outcries of foul play if it was something everyone could attain .. only if they could afford.

[ChinRey]

---

Jacob Cagney wrote:

Except, as has already been established, no one "purchased" anything.

---

Oh yes. Every merchant who has items listed on MP purchases a distribution service from Linden Lab and are entitled by law to the same level of service provided of course that they're dealings are on proprotionally equal terms. In that regard you can not reagrd this sale isolated from the overall service or lack thereoff LL provides to their b2b cusotmers through the Marketplace.

[Butch Daddy]

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ChinRey wrote:

 

I was actually planning to spend next year trying to establish a proper SL business and getting ready for Sansar but this incident has made me change my mind. I just can't take LL seriously at the moment and unless I see some real positive development there, those plans are dead.

 

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This is what I do not understand.

So because you were offended by the promotion, (for what, not being included?), you are going to stop trying to grow and promote your SL business?

Isn't that the proverbial, shooting yourself in the foot? Throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Cutting off your nose to spite your face? Taking your toys and going home?

The promotion did nothing that is stopping or hindering you, or anyone else, from growing or establishing a business.

It would be different if Linden Lab said that they were going to start chargings to list freebies on the marketplace (anyone remember THAT fiasco?), but they haven't.

It would be different if Linden Lab said that every item will now have to have a base price of L250, but they haven't.

It would be different if Linden Lab said that only people who own a region in world will be able to sell content on the Marketplace, but they haven't.

Sorry, but I personally think you are over-reacting.

 

[ChinRey]

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Jacob Cagney wrote:

This is what I do not understand.

So because you were offended by the promotion, (for what, not being included?), you are going to stop trying to grow and promote your SL business?

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No, as I've already said, I'm not offended at all.

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Jacob Cagney wrote:

Isn't that the proverbial, shooting yourself in the foot? Throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Cutting off your nose to spite your face? Taking your toys and going home?

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No, it's called cutting your losses. Linden Lab does not seem to be capable of handling the Marketplace in a satisfactory way so I'm not willing to invest time and money in that market.

It's pure business. If you want any success at all, you have to weigh investment (in time and money), earning potential and risk towards each other. This incident and the reactions afterwards have seriously reduced the estimated earning potential and increased the risk level.

 

Edit: Forgot to mention the lack of response from Linden Lab, that's probably the biggest factor increasing the risk level for anybody who wants to deal with them.

[Butch Daddy]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Yours was the exact same argument used by the Commerce Dev Team in justifying their hurried shutdown of the old XStreet infrastructure and the premature "go live" of the SL Marketplace. The old wasn't really dead yet, and the new wasn't really live either. But someone upstairs circled a date, and ready or not, they made the switch.

I guess that's another bit of history that those of us with road-rash still remember painfully. We are hopeful that THE transition .. if there IS a transition .. will be better managed, better timed, and better communicated beforehand.

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We don't really know why that decision was made.  It could be that some contract for hardware rental, or whatever, was fast approaching and the decision was made to run with what they had at the time.

Whatver, the reason for the decision it wasn't surprising given the way things are done these days.  Just take a look at any number of games or software companies who release at product, then have day one patches that are 1/3 the size of the "finished product" just so that they can ship on a deadline and then get a lot of stuff finished before actual release or shortly after.

It is the nature of the beast when it comes to the vast amount of bandwith that is available.  Back when games were on floppy disk, if the game wasn't absolutely complete with nearly zero bugs, the creating company would tank, not just the game.  E.T. anyone?

That is no longer the case, so companies have a LOT of leeway in what is considered a finished product by industry standards compared to consumer standards.

The best we, as consumers, can hope for is that the product we get is functionally complete, with updates and improvements being made over time.