Seba Serpente

Most of these other groups and organizations are not commercial, however, most do have some way of funding, mostly by asking for donations, tips or fundraisings, wich brings money into the equation technically making it similar to commercial businesses. We all have expenses to cover.

I have a recently growing confussion regarding Second Life's meanings when it comes to Advertisement and Branding and hopefully an official source could put light onto the subject. Recently there has been plently of mentions regarding advertisement and commercial activities on Linden Lab official things like Linden Home Covenants and SL16B Guidelines. What I understand on these is that branding is being seen as commercial advertisement, but is not exactly clear. For example: Recent changes to Linden Homes covenant as described by Patch linden: "As a note of clarification and to call out a specific use case example: If a content creator is using a Linden Home as a display model to feature content they’ve created specifically for a Linden Home, this by itself is ok. What you may not do is put up signage on the parcel that advertises it, your store, brand, redirect people away from the home for purchases, etc. You can not sell items off your parcel. What you can do is direct people to your Linden Home as a demonstrator of your creations from elsewhere (your main store or marketplace listings). Also, the little cafe/pub type places that have popped up are really awesome and fun, but should also follow the same sorts of guidelines." SL16B Exhibitor Policies: " Your display at the event should not be commercial. Exhibits promoting buying and selling of goods and services do not fit in with our policies and theme. Any part of an exhibit that violates this rule will be removed. While commerce is a very important part of SL, this is a party, not a mall or sales fair. No selling is allowed and no advertising will be permitted. " What does the word brand means for Linden Lab and what exactly falls under advertisement? It is extremely common in Second Life for users to advertise a variety of things in many ways. The most clear way of advertising would be using logos with messages that would direct others to either visit a location, a website, open a group, etc, often of stores or content creators, but the problem starts when they also advertise groups that are not exactly identified as stores or paid services. They can be advertising groups of people with something in common, or a society with same interests, or even a legitimate non-profit organization. Eeven these cases that are not stores by the mean of the word, they do also have a brand, often a logo that identifies these groups, societies and non-profits, and those logos or brands are also widely used by Second Life users on all kinds of situations. Now, what I understand is that branding is branding no matter what the brand is for, the brand purpose or what it represents. I also understand that branding does not necesarily means advertisement. A logo could be use in a way of showing support, giving credit, or simply the logo is part of an object or texture already and there is no intention from the user to use it as a way of advertisement or brand awareness. There are numerous cases of logos (or branding) being use for other purposes that are not commercial, for example: Belliseria houseboats commonly features large yellow flags with a logo that represents a group. These homeowners clearly don't intend to commercialze the land with these, but non the less, the logos are a brand and they could be seen as advertisement depending where Linden Lab draws that line. Would be interesting to know what other people thinks about this matter, and if someone has been affected by perhaps some loopholes that may exist giving this situation.

Lets make a new Second Life Mechant mafia that will meet twice a year to jack up / fix prices. Thats the solution to this madness!

It is a big deal to increase things to not get hurt. You would buy $.99 cents french fries in a heartbeat, you woudnt buy $1.10 fries that easilly. Is deep inside the human mind to take some numbers more seriously than others even tho the difference is near insignificant.

Facebook is not the ideal medium for second life related communications. In fact, is against facebook terms of service to have an account for an avatar as it does not represents a real person. Second Life has features built in for these purposes and in theory, should be the best tool... in theory.

Here is another problem with the decrease on the free account groups: People will leave a lot of creators groups and they no longer will be well informed of new releases, updates and offers. This means a decrease on product sales and a lower power for store owners to keep their consumers up to date, or simply keep a close relationship with them. That plus a probable increase in product costs due to merchants earning less with the process credit fee increase, plus the mandatory premium account cost to be able to manage the business properly. The saving on land that some might get is not enough. Is all more expenses and less earnings our way.

I just switched to premium when Bellisseria went online. Not renewing once this year premium is done. I have enough problem with that 5% Process Credit fee cutting down my revenue by a lot, not going to invest even more on the premium.

I agree that it looks kinda stupid in a way that linden lab is having such great sucess with Bellisseria at the moment, making this change seem completely unnecesary.

Being a free member you aren't directly paying Linden Lab a steady income. Yes, you will buy products, you will rent lands, you will pay tips, you will probably exchange lindens... they get something ot of all that in some way or the other.. but is not a pure continuous stream like premium memberships.

Hitting negatively the premium members that are the loyal customers like previous said.. heavilly hurting the active content creators with that doubling on the process credit fee. Effectlively pushing both active members and active creators out... lets see how a second life with only landlords holds on.

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