Should DEMOs be transferable? or at least "giftable"? (and speaking of GIFTS…)

[Qie Niangao]

I'm among those who crowd into events. (It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it.)

No doubt sometimes I only can get in because of my Premium subscription. Whether that's a good thing or not is beside the point here, it's really about whether merchants (and "event planners") are adapting to current conditions which include early access favoring Premium members.

Thing is, I have these impoverished, Basic account alts who are real clothes horses. In fact, they get way more new outfits than my main account. But they often miss out on new items because they can't get into the events, I can't test their clothes for them because they all have different mesh avatars, and I can't send them demos.

That's because demos are almost universally no-transfer, and nearly never in a gift-giving vendor. Why? How do either of these settings benefit anybody? Without being able to test stuff on an alt, there's no way I'm going to gift them a full price fatpack. How isn't it an obvious win to change this?

(Much the same logic would apply even if there weren't special access for Premiums: Let one shopper hand out demos to alts and friends and anybody else who might come to buy. It's the best, most cost-effective "advertising" those products will ever get and makes better use of the time spent by shoppers using peak-time slots.

-------------------------------

Then there are the other kind of "GIFTS", the kind Events have Creators offer to "celebrate" an anniversary or something. Now, I'm sure the Event organizers are ever so excited about turning "this many years old" but most folks who are drawn to the gifts are at most only briefly and vaguely aware of the thing being celebrated. Then they're like kids ripping off gift wrap under the Christmas tree: it's all about what's inside. Commercially, the point must be to use that, uh, "enthusiasm" to draw business to the event.

Thing is, though, events are already at full capacity to start, with or without gifts. It's only later that there's even headroom for gifts to have any benefit at all. In fact, at first, they're worse than nothing: they cause shoppers to spend extra time collecting gifts that don't generate revenue while crowding out shoppers who'd otherwise be throwing L$s at non-gift products.

So why not wait a week before offering any gifts? Let the event's natural appeal draw the crowds into the venue, full of "Special Gifty-Day Celebration starts September 1st!" decorations, and stretch out the event frenzy with returning customers when the gifts are available. Creators may not want to come back and set out their gifts later, so maybe they use a special vendor that shows the upcoming gift, whetting appetites until the event organizers flip the switch to activate all those vendors on Gifty-Day.

[Lucia Nightfire]

No, for the same reason why redelivery of freebies shouldn't be allowed.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Lucia Nightfire

[Qie Niangao]

Wut

[Sid Nagy]

Makes no sense to me either why demo's are non transfer.
Copy-trans is perfectly logic IMHO.
There is no real good reason why not as far as I can see.
Demo's are promotional stuff like flyers in RL. If someone wants to pass along your flyers for free, kudos for that person.

[Garnet Psaltery]

The demo idea seems useful but I don't agree about delaying gifts, because I start by going around the whole event picking up gifts and using them as a kind of demo.  If I like something I'll go back and look for something to buy from that shop.  I rarely go to other shops because it's a terrible drudge picking up the gifts and I can never face another round.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Garnet Psaltery
Typo.

[Maitimo]

Both my alts have the same body as me, and close to the same body shape, so if a demo fits one of us, it's going to fit us all. 

That said, having demos be both Copy AND transfer makes a whole lot of sense. Once you and your alts are done with it, pass it on to a friend and it's basically free advertising.

I agree with Garnet about free gifts too; if they're good quality they often lead to me picking up more purchases from the store.  Hilly Haalan is a good example of that for me; I first heard about the huge collection of Group Gifts they have available, then I started looking at their special offers, and now I'm buying from there regularly. 

Now that we have mesh bodies, gifts (and purchases in general) can't be made transferable otherwise people would just share out the ones for the bodies they don't use. Unless sellers started changing to selling each body fit separately, and that would either be a lot of work leading to an increase in cost, or else most stores would drop all bodies except Maitreya.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Maitimo

[Quistess Alpha]

6 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

people would just share out the ones for the bodies they don't use.

in the context of a /Gift/ wouldn't that just be free advertising though? Unless of course it's a group-gift for a pay-in group.

[Maitimo]

3 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

in the context of a /Gift/ wouldn't that just be free advertising though? Unless of course it's a group-gift for a pay-in group.

Well the idea of offering gifts is they're meant to encourage you to visit the store. If people are passing out unwanted body sizes of gifts to their friends, without a landmark, they may not even know what store it comes from.

[Rolig Loon]

I'm not much of a shopper and I am definitely not a crowd person, so I tend to avoid events unless I am feeling unusually curious.  I'll admit to having visited a Shop and Hop from time to time, though, and I've been frustrated by the whole gift/demo thing. My alts are at least as bad about shopping as I am, so they rarely get a chance to pick up a free gift. If I could occasionally grab one to hand off to an alt, though, I might be slightly more likely to come back to the same shop myself later.  The gift is good cheap advertising, even for someone like me.  Similarly, if I could get an attractive demo to pass along to a friend, she might be more inclined to brave the crowd and buy the real thing. If not, where's the loss?  

[Quistess Alpha]

2 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

they may not even know what store it comes from.

I dunno, a lot of demos I've seen (although I have to admit I'm more of an MP person.) are no-mod and have the name of the store as part of the name of the item. and I can't be the only one who knows how to look at the creator of a thing if I'm curious who made it.

[Maitimo]

1 minute ago, Quistess Alpha said:

I dunno, a lot of demos I've seen (although I have to admit I'm more of an MP person.) are no-mod and have the name of the store as part of the name of the item. and I can't be the only one who knows how to look at the creator of a thing if I'm curious who made it.

Some do but many have just a couple of initials. I have an inventory full of stuff that I have no clue where it comes from.

[Mr Amore]

If a popular store upsets the status quo, then others would eventually follow.

I still find SL shopping a frustrating and often confusing experience. The thing I really miss is when a store is advertising their event items without offering the demos instore, it leads to a haphazard adventure through some shambles of an event to find that one thing you're searching for. Offering demos in store would fix everything.

[Orwar]

5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

That's because demos are almost universally no-transfer, and nearly never in a gift-giving vendor. Why? How do either of these settings benefit anybody? Without being able to test stuff on an alt, there's no way I'm going to gift them a full price fatpack. How isn't it an obvious win to change this?

   I think a lot of creators just go with 'the flow' and set their permissions as everyone else does because they figure someone else figured that was the best way to do it. Some may also be concerned with copy-botting (which, I don't know how that works, but it rather sounds like bollocks). 

   What some stores have been doing for a little while, is to make a demo available in their own store, along with an LM to the event it's at. Others have rather half-heartedly and quarter-brainedly adopted this practice, but excluding the actual item demo and just including the event LM. In the demo. Yep. 

[Qie Niangao]

7 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   What some stores have been doing for a little while, is to make a demo available in their own store, along with an LM to the event it's at. Others have rather half-heartedly and quarter-brainedly adopted this practice, but excluding the actual item demo and just including the event LM. In the demo. Yep. 

Yes. I appreciate being able to get a demo at the creator's store (assuming they have a store, and assuming the event doesn't have a rule against it which would be crazy). It does mean a trip to the store, but the creator could be helpful and provide at the event an "objectim" URI to the store demo item itself and make it handy for the event shopper to share it with an alt or friend.

In some perfect world I'd prefer the event offer delivery of demos accessed through a web "gallery" (either their own or one of the "event blogs" like Seraphim). It's a little more technically challenging than it sounds because, unlike Marketplace, the gallery won't have authentication of recipient and we don't want innocent Moles getting spammed with a bunch of illicit talpidae pr0n. So that means recreating much of the private predecessors of Marketplace (in-world sign up, etc) but with only advertising as revenue. Or events could allow/encourage creators to offer the demos on Marketplace and link to them from galleries while the actual products are still event exclusive, but that probably sounds threatening to somebody's business model, either that of events or of Marketplace.

Whether the demo links are from gallery or Marketplace we wouldn't need transferable demos for event-exclusive (or any other) items. I could just send my alts the demo's URL and they could fend for themselves.

[Qie Niangao]

6 hours ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

The demo idea seems useful but I don't agree about delaying gifts, because I go start by going around the whole event picking up gifts and using them as a kind of demo.  If I like something I'll go back and look for something to buy from that shop.  I rarely go to other shops because it's a terrible drudge picking up the gifts and I can never face another round.

If it's really all about picking up the gifts to know which stores to visit, I'm not sure why it would matter if the gift-availability event started a week after the non-gift event. Wouldn't it be better for collecting those gifts if the place weren't packed with so many early-access non-gift event shoppers?

Trying to wrap my head around that, I came up with a couple possible explanations:

1. Perhaps there's appeal to being among that initial crowd of event-goers, even if going exclusively for the gifts. (Maybe it's related to the appeal of waiting in line for the next big Apple product, if people still do that.) It's true that "Gifty Event Day" might not be quite so crowded, which I'd seen as an advantage, but maybe it's not.
2. Perhaps it's not all about the gifts and there's also something else of interest that's unveiled at the initial event, before a hypothetical "Gifty Event Day." I'm not sure what that is, but it might be important to merchants as well as shoppers.
3. or maybe it's something else that I've missed altogether.

2 hours ago, Maitimo said:

Now that we have mesh bodies, gifts (and purchases in general) can't be made transferable otherwise people would just share out the ones for the bodies they don't use.

In case there's confusion, I'm not proposing making gifts be transferable. I mean, some creators might do that for some gifts (at events or otherwise) as pure advertising, but gifts are also used as incentives to join a store group, or to visit the store/event to get the gift, or etc.

(I may have created confusion when I mentioned gifting demos, which I only meant as a fallback for increasing demo distribution even if the creator can't bring themselves to grant the demo transfer permission.)

[Rowan Amore]

Just now, Qie Niangao said:

If it's really all about picking up the gifts to know which stores to visit, I'm not sure why it would matter if the gift-availability event started a week after the non-gift event. Wouldn't it be better for collecting those gifts if the place weren't packed with so many early-access non-gift event shoppers?

Trying to wrap my head around that, I came up with a couple possible explanations:

1. Perhaps there's appeal to being among that initial crowd of event-goers, even if going exclusively for the gifts. (Maybe it's related to the appeal of waiting in line for the next big Apple product, if people still do that.) It's true that "Gifty Event Day" might not be quite so crowded, which I'd seen as an advantage, but maybe it's not.
2. Perhaps it's not all about the gifts and there's also something else of interest that's unveiled at the initial event, before a hypothetical "Gifty Event Day." I'm not sure what that is, but it might be important to merchants as well as shoppers.
3. or maybe it's something else that I've missed altogether.

In case there's confusion, I'm not proposing making gifts be transferable. I mean, some creators might do that for some gifts (at events or otherwise) as pure advertising, but gifts are also used as incentives to join a store group, or to visit the store/event to get the gift, or etc.

(I may have created confusion when I mentioned gifting demos, which I only meant as a fallback for increasing demo distribution even if the creator can't bring themselves to grant the demo transfer permission.)

I was just at Uber and their gifts are in store as a hunt.  Interesting concept.and gets people into their stores and out of the event.

[Garnet Psaltery]

10 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

If it's really all about picking up the gifts to know which stores to visit, I'm not sure why it would matter if the gift-availability event started a week after the non-gift event. Wouldn't it be better for collecting those gifts if the place weren't packed with so many early-access non-gift event shoppers?

 

Well, I've already said it's a drudge for me just going round the event to pick up gifts - I can usually manage only or two regions per day.  I could find myself running out of time doing that and going back for shopping.

[Prokofy Neva]

8 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'm among those who crowd into events. (It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it.)

No doubt sometimes I only can get in because of my Premium subscription. Whether that's a good thing or not is beside the point here, it's really about whether merchants (and "event planners") are adapting to current conditions which include early access favoring Premium members.

Thing is, I have these impoverished, Basic account alts who are real clothes horses. In fact, they get way more new outfits than my main account. But they often miss out on new items because they can't get into the events, I can't test their clothes for them because they all have different mesh avatars, and I can't send them demos.

That's because demos are almost universally no-transfer, and nearly never in a gift-giving vendor. Why? How do either of these settings benefit anybody? Without being able to test stuff on an alt, there's no way I'm going to gift them a full price fatpack. How isn't it an obvious win to change this?

(Much the same logic would apply even if there weren't special access for Premiums: Let one shopper hand out demos to alts and friends and anybody else who might come to buy. It's the best, most cost-effective "advertising" those products will ever get and makes better use of the time spent by shoppers using peak-time slots.

-------------------------------

Then there are the other kind of "GIFTS", the kind Events have Creators offer to "celebrate" an anniversary or something. Now, I'm sure the Event organizers are ever so excited about turning "this many years old" but most folks who are drawn to the gifts are at most only briefly and vaguely aware of the thing being celebrated. Then they're like kids ripping off gift wrap under the Christmas tree: it's all about what's inside. Commercially, the point must be to use that, uh, "enthusiasm" to draw business to the event.

Thing is, though, events are already at full capacity to start, with or without gifts. It's only later that there's even headroom for gifts to have any benefit at all. In fact, at first, they're worse than nothing: they cause shoppers to spend extra time collecting gifts that don't generate revenue while crowding out shoppers who'd otherwise be throwing L$s at non-gift products.

So why not wait a week before offering any gifts? Let the event's natural appeal draw the crowds into the venue, full of "Special Gifty-Day Celebration starts September 1st!" decorations, and stretch out the event frenzy with returning customers when the gifts are available. Creators may not want to come back and set out their gifts later, so maybe they use a special vendor that shows the upcoming gift, whetting appetites until the event organizers flip the switch to activate all those vendors on Gifty-Day.

Well, that last bit is sensible to someone in business, they should do it, the other bit isn't unless you are in an open source commune, and most aren't. If you made demos transferable, few would come to events then, not just your old alts, but no one, they would stay on their sim and trade demos. For some people it's fun to go to the event and try the demos even if they don't buy them. They try them *right there* even if it means making their avatar look ugly.

Any event organizer who ceases this crazy anniversary gift stuff and has creators voluntarily put out a gift for 25L instead that is better quality will get my business. Put that "collectible" on transfer as part of the gatcha replacement feature and I am so there. I do not need any more balloons, pillows, candles in cages, or signs that say HELLO FALL. It's still summer, for one thing.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Prokofy Neva

[Bree Giffen]

Demos set to copy sounds OK. I don’t think it would be useful for the way I shop. I’d rather see an end to boxed demos and timer demos. Those are super annoying.
 

Selling gifts one week later sounds like a recipe for making an event busy for an extra week. I usually go to events  a week later to avoid crowds and this idea would definitely cause trouble.

[Qie Niangao]

1 minute ago, Prokofy Neva said:

If you made demos transferable, few would come to events then, not just your old alts, but no one, they would stay on their sim and trade demos. For some people it's fun to go to the event and try the demos even if they don't buy them.

I never imagined this was a popular—or even unpopular—pastime. If people go to events for the joy of trying on demos (at the event or otherwise), my whole mental model of the event business is completely wrong. I'd never suspected those creators were offering free entertainment to event goers out of the goodness of their little commie hearts.

Seriously, though, even if this is how it works, I don't really see the advantage of crowding the region full of demo-fondlers. If that's all they want the demos for, wouldn't it be better to entertain them at home and save space at the event for paying customers?

[Rowan Amore]

53 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I never imagined this was a popular—or even unpopular—pastime. If people go to events for the joy of trying on demos (at the event or otherwise), my whole mental model of the event business is completely wrong. I'd never suspected those creators were offering free entertainment to event goers out of the goodness of their little commie hearts.

Seriously, though, even if this is how it works, I don't really see the advantage of crowding the region full of demo-fondlers. If that's all they want the demos for, wouldn't it be better to entertain them at home and save space at the event for paying customers?

No one I've ever known goes to events for the joy of trying on demos.  In fact, most complain about idjits who try them on AT the event instead of grabbing and going, like most considerate people do.  I try them at home, save the ones I'll want to buy, then return in a few days after the event has calmed down.  

LOLed @ little commie hearts

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

Selling gifts one week later sounds like a recipe for making an event busy for an extra week. I usually go to events  a week later to avoid crowds and this idea would definitely cause trouble.

Yeah, I guess that's more for the benefit of the merchants and events than for the shoppers, especially rational folks who wait till the crowds die down. This would spread out that peak demand: Good for merchants and maybe for the early shoppers (shifting more demand later so the "must have it first" crowd gets a better chance) but those who very sensibly wait for the peak traffic to pass would need to wait a bit longer on average. That waiting further spreads peak demand, again good for the "sell side" but not so much for later buyers whose admirable patience would be stretched even more.

[Arielle Popstar]

I like Demo's available at Events and Saturday Sales. Try it on right there and if I like it, the full version is right there. No hunting around for links to it on the MP. Of the demo's I can try at the event I tend to buy 50% whereas if I pick them up and wait until I get home, I might buy 20% because often I cannot be bothered having to look around for the full version. It is rare I find that the Demo package contains an actual link to it. I will admit though that the ones I do try and buy at an Event or sale, have a bit higher rate of Buyers Remorse.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

The only concern I might have with giftable demos/freebies is the one people have voiced in prior discussions. Griefing.

I'm absolutely sure there would be people spamming items at another person, and that person may be upset by that.

Especially in the case of vendors with a free gifting feature, blocking the griefer wouldn't solve the problem. You'd have to block the merchant.

And things like maturity ratings wouldn't be respected by in-world scripts, the griefer could be sending obscene items, which isn't possible through MP even with paid items.

[Innula Zenovka]

1 hour ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

The only concern I might have with giftable demos/freebies is the one people have voiced in prior discussions. Griefing.

I'm absolutely sure there would be people spamming items at another person, and that person may be upset by that.

Especially in the case of vendors with a free gifting feature, blocking the griefer wouldn't solve the problem. You'd have to block the merchant.

And things like maturity ratings wouldn't be respected by in-world scripts, the griefer could be sending obscene items, which isn't possible through MP even with paid items.

Would offering both the recipients of (possibly unwanted) free gifts the ability to block offers via the system of future gifts *from the person who sent the gift* and also offering the merchants the possibility to block people who abuse the system from using it in future not offer a safeguard against this?

Both could be done reasonably easily through experience tools, I think, even without a Linden-owned grid-wide experience.