Sylar Lawksley

Even in beta, the webpage alone is enough to keep me away. Mind you, I don't have an in-world business anymore or any need for advertising, but curiosity got the best of me after reading all of the above comments. As far as I'm concerned, there is no need for everyone to be going crazy over this. For those concerned about LL wasting time on the advertising platform, have a quick gander at the page. It's pretty obvious, to me at least, that very little time, concern, devotion or thought has gone into the project. For those upset about having ads on the webpages, there are plenty of ad blocking programs/add-ons for your browser - look into them. In regards to prices, and being a webdesigner myself, I can tell you that the prices, discounted or not, are not horrible. For the big names in SL who are making enough to spend on the ads, more power to you. Would I ever use it? No. For starters, not accepting Paypal payments leaves me worried. If the company has not gotten serious enough to partner up and make use of the industry standard among payment processing, they aren't serious enough to have my RL information, let alone credit card information. Next, take into the consideration that the SL website(s) are a pain to navigate. How many times have you wound up on the wrong page or you had to go through four pages to make it to your destination? Do you want your impressions being wasted? Let me rephrase that: Do you want you money being wasted? My last thought on the "beta" advertising system could take pages to discuss, so I'll keep it short. PG, mature and adult ads are in three separate categories - the SL website is not. When I search for a skin on Marketplace (I won't even delve into that monstrosity) and enable mature items so I can find what I'm looking for, that doesn't mean I should be privy to seeing adult ads at the top of each page. Closing up the thought, if I am paying for an ad to be shown and it follows guidlines, no one should be able to deny them without a refund. (And I'm pretty sure, though not positive here, that it's against the law in the USA.) As for those who are ranting on about the search still being messed up, I do not blame you. That's just like paying for electricity and only having light every once in a while. What slays me about everything is the fact that LL is ignoring its residents. Without each and every person who logs in once a day, week, month, be it a creator, organizer, customer or explorer, Second Life would shut down. LL is not the reason that Second Life is amazing - we all are. When you give tools to a man, the man who carves the statue is the artist, not the one who made the tools available. Coming out of my metaphorical rant, there are things that need to be focused on. Broken search, classifieds, events, viewer problems, registration problems... I could go on for days... My point is, features are those shiny things we are distracted by when we're driving down the road. They're there for a few moments and then they're forgotten about. I'd venture to estimate that over 80% of the places listed in searches and classifieds (as these seem to be the most complained about problems) are for stores. If there is no traffic to the store because they cannot be found, that store makes no money. That store goes without money, they can't afford tier. They lose their land, they pack up and leave. Where does that leave us all at? If every shop suddenly closed down tomorrow because of the previously mentioned scenario, LL would be forced to close Second Life. You can't ignore the core networks that make up SL and expect new features and shiny things to compensate for them. "But I digress." These are just my thoughts and opinions, so please don't let this be the start of World War 3 in the forums! Just wanted to share my ideas on the new "shiny thing" as everyone else has.