LL Has a New SL Web Site

[Prokofy Neva]

So the Lindens finally made a new web site so we don't have to keep looking at the Steampunk guy and that blue alien women suspended from wires who reminds me of the Bee Girl -- as cool as it was.

Log out and come to secondlife.com and you should see it.

The new one has a beautiful Japanese opening scene and other different scenes. Nice to have a change, as I long wanted to have "skip intro" from the other one, which boiled my eyes, but at least now it's changed.

Then it looks like they finally made a web site of the kind that your boss at work males you do, and you hate doing it, but it needs to be done. You know the kind. Pretty but practical, trying to trudge through to those all important clicks going to warm leads and ultimately conversions. Yay!

At least, I always like doing the things themselves at jobs, not then making up beautiful brochures about us doing the things, and explaining why we should be funded (in their case, purchased) with click-throughs and case studies and onboarding and all that kind of stuff.

Yeesh, I just spent two days helping my son with one of these business plan marketing manuals for his RL business and what a chore! Well, it's like cleaning your house before the cleaning lady comes, you have to make this monstrous pile of text and stills and videos and case studies so that the shiny new marketing manager then has stuff to work with and convert it into a thing of beauty and joy for ever. Hate.

And no doubt some Lindens had to be dragged kicking and screaming, but finally it's done, you can click through and learn about virtual meetings -- although here, I would have shown more leg, as in the fashion sections, to be explicitly more leggy than Meta. I'd have even shown ballet! Here you have at least a 3/4 profile showing there are, in principle, legs.

Then they have community and creativity and fashion linking to click though and land on Flickr (funny, just as so many Second Lifers are fleeing there with their crackdown banning adult content on free accounts). These links lead to specific residents with businesses. They all look fabulous and they are the right choices but I do wonder if those people now enjoy the windfall of essentially a free splash page add all year round, or whether the Lindens will change that up with new links. No reason why they couldn't change this once a day, quite frankly. (Although it could be that because I wasn't logged in, I didn't get a different one each time).

So for the second "Expect the Unexpected," each time you click, you get a *different* Destination page. I haven't tried it enough times to see if it is revolving through a short list or only some topics, but it seemed to change enough.

 

 

[Coffee Pancake]

The new video is an improvement, at least that's SL .. upscaled potato rez SL, but SL all the same.

The stuff below the fold is clinical and misses the most important point.

What is SL for ??

Make friends and connect with people.

Yes it really does have to be spelled out right there on the front page.

[Quistess Alpha]

Not to be cynical, but the only thing can see when I watch the video is that animations are a bit janky; people's faces don't move, or move in creepy ways, there's no ease-in ease-out on the most visible neck movements, the guitar player isn't strumming in quite the right place (I'm a tad iffy on that one), the cat-walker moves too quickly with each step, etc.

I don't notice it much/have more lenience when actually in-world, but I would kinda expect better from a cinematic.

[MoiraKathleen]

I like the new video better than the one it replaced.  Even if the animations are janky or faces don't move or the guitar player isn't strumming in the right place, at least it's SL avatars in SL, and it better represents what one will actually see in-world. 

[animats]

This is better than the old one. Showing fake content was both unnecessary and embarrassing. SL doesn't need to do that.

The video is dim. I'd suggest bumping up the brightness on the video.

Also, add "Live in-world video" text. Most of the wannabe metaverses have video of stuff that doesn't exist yet.

Second Life. The real metaverse.

[Cali Souther]

Agree - it's an improvement.

Agree - it could still be improved. 😉

 

[TimKoul]

Yeah, its good. I like it. They should work on the rest of the website now because clicking on the links makes it look like you landed back in time on a Geocities page.

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Not to be cynical, but the only thing can see when I watch the video is that animations are a bit janky; people's faces don't move, or move in creepy ways, there's no ease-in ease-out on the most visible neck movements, the guitar player isn't strumming in quite the right place (I'm a tad iffy on that one), the cat-walker moves too quickly with each step, etc.

I don't notice it much/have more lenience when actually in-world, but I would kinda expect better from a cinematic.

But it's what people might actually experience, warts and all, so.in that respect, I think it's a perfect view of REAL SL.

[Lucia Nightfire]

I see no video.

Is there a way to just play it?...😐

[Nalates Urriah]

There is the matter of honesty in advertising.   ...can those two words be used together?

Making a slick video for promotion and cleaning up the motion and placement of limbs is common in marketing. But in the case of SL I would consider that dishonest. The world bumps, jerks, and has problems. I understand not featuring those blemishes, or as Rowan says 'warts'. But covering up those a new user will see first hour in... I think that will be counter productive... or NOT fix the high signup versus low retention rates problem.

I notice that there is no mention of building our own world. No mention of this being a creative platform. I suspect as the world is propagandized into expecting all to come from government/others the Lab's marketing is moving in the same direction. SL is here to be experienced. Not SL is here as a place to express your imagination and create something.

I think the advertising is now directed at the less creative and technically oriented.

The way "real profits in a virtual world" is expressed leaves me wondering how many people will actually connect the idea to taking RL currency out of the game. I think this could have been made WAY more explicit.

 

 

[Nalates Urriah]

4 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

I see no video.

Is there a way to just play it?...😐

I can't find the same video on YouTube.

Be sure to use an external browser, not the viewer's internal one. It shows on my Firefox browser.

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Nalates Urriah said:

I can't find the same video on YouTube.

Be sure to use an external browser, not the viewer's internal one. It shows on my Firefox browser.

Doesn't show up for me when I log out and in.

I never use the internal browser.

[animats]

9 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

I see no video.

Is there a way to just play it?...😐

Actual video:

https://assets-global.website-files.com/60a83025d932b623a6a61ff8/630fe340050f1115dab79a01_SLLPSept2022-3-transcode.mp4

The dimness problem is coming from the web page layer on top of the video. The actual video looks pretty good.

 

[Sid Nagy]

"A new world is waiting" says the website.
So am I. For the video to start. ........ Nope, no video, not logged in, plain Firefox.
Ah well.... what's new?

Edited September 2, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[animats]

That video seems to be a 9 megabyte file, not a stream. Browsers may not start it until it's been fully loaded. If you have a slow network connection, it may take a while to load.

Firefox on gigabit fiber, no problem.

Fennic on Android 8 over weak 4G connection, connection timed out on first try, works on second try.

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The new video is an improvement, at least that's SL .. upscaled potato rez SL, but SL all the same.

The stuff below the fold is clinical and misses the most important point.

What is SL for ??

Make friends and connect with people.

Yes it really does have to be spelled out right there on the front page.

It had friends and groups and socializing, though. It shows people dancing at a club.

It shows "Sprockets" -- a place the Lindens use a lot in their photo shoots which I didn't realize was an actual place in Bellisseria until recently which I think isn't an actual well-used hangout. 

[Prokofy Neva]

32 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

There is the matter of honesty in advertising.   ...can those two words be used together?

Making a slick video for promotion and cleaning up the motion and placement of limbs is common in marketing. But in the case of SL I would consider that dishonest. The world bumps, jerks, and has problems. I understand not featuring those blemishes, or as Rowan says 'warts'. But covering up those a new user will see first hour in... I think that will be counter productive... or NOT fix the high signup versus low retention rates problem.

I notice that there is no mention of building our own world. No mention of this being a creative platform. I suspect as the world is propagandized into expecting all to come from government/others the Lab's marketing is moving in the same direction. SL is here to be experienced. Not SL is here as a place to express your imagination and create something.

I think the advertising is now directed at the less creative and technically oriented.

The way "real profits in a virtual world" is expressed leaves me wondering how many people will actually connect the idea to taking RL currency out of the game. I think this could have been made WAY more explicit.

 

 

SL long since ceased to be a "your world/your imagination" proposition as the feeling the Lindens have built up over the years is that customer content only creates problems, tickets, griefing, ugliness, liability with theft or illegal actions. Customer content has to be managed and only a few resident groups and businesses selected not only to showcase in ads, but steer toward inworld for a manicured experience.

Once the Lindens threw their weight on Bellisseria, which was a reasonable and rational choice given that the world is made up of people who want suburbia and managed experiences, not indy graphic designers and coders, everything they do follows that logic. And they aren't wrong. I had hoped they could have a tolerance for the "wilds" still. But they don't. They tried directing advertising at creatives, and they got a lot of them who built up the world, but they washed through and left, going back to RL which is more compelling for them or in a few cases, to other worlds. You can't attract masses on the basis of creation with this interface; in fact the lion's share of creation is now done outside of SL on third-party tools and uploaded.

[Marianne Little]

48 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

But it's what people might actually experience, warts and all, so.in that respect, I think it's a perfect view of REAL SL.

Yes, that's true. Making the ad for impossibleSL, with perfect avatars and animations that no one will meet when they log in, is maybe not smart.

Good riddance to that blue alien!

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

All I get is an error referring to " https://assets-global.website-files.com" and a bunch of gibberish after that. No images or video playing.

[Ceka Cianci]

I just see this

EXPLORE.
DISCOVER.
CREATE.

A new world is waiting...

Join Free

 

Then below that is stuff you scroll down to, but it looks just like that big gap up there, only black.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Quistess Alpha]

59 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Is there a way to just play it?...😐

https://assets-global.website-files.com/60a83025d932b623a6a61ff8/630fe340050f1115dab79a01_SLLPSept2022-3-transcode.mp4

ETA: didn't see Animats had already posted it, woops.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Quistess Alpha

[Sid Nagy]

36 minutes ago, animats said:

That video seems to be a 9 megabyte file, not a stream. Browsers may not start it until it's been fully loaded. If you have a slow network connection, it may take a while to load.

Firefox on gigabit fiber, no problem.

Fennic on Android 8 over weak 4G connection, connection timed out on first try, works on second try.

I have a few problems in life, but Internet speed is not one of them.
Still no clip,

Now why is retention rate so low? (Other thread discussion).
People want it fast and now on a website. Waiting time means departure time.

[Sid Nagy]

They still try to play this already long time ago broken record as well:
Is it Philip who still dreams this dream?

 

Quote

 

Remote Meetings Redefined

Make meetings fun again with virtual hangout spaces, classes and conferences. For over a decade, leading companies and educators have trusted Second Life for branded social spaces for events and remote meetings.

 

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[MoiraKathleen]

I don't have any wait time at all for the video to start when I go to secondlife.com.  

[Ceka Cianci]

4 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

I have a few problems in life, but Internet speed is not one of them.
Still no clip,

Now why is retention rate so low? (Other thread discussion).
People want it fast and now on a website. Waiting time means departure time.

They used to say 20 seconds and someone was usually gone. that was when High speed internet was first coming around.. I'm sure it's much shorter now with how much more people have become impatient.