Dartagan Shepherd

@Lasher: Pretty sure it's supposed to be just an inventory -> inventory transfer with the folder, although that's a good point about people not using product boxes and branding as much. I think for me it would depend on the product whether I put the item in a box in the folder, or just put the item in the folder as-is with notecards and such at top level. It would be even better if it handled sub-folders for neater organization of items. Mostly, for the sake of convenience though to customers I'd nix the product box just to make the customer see my brand. I already sold them the item, the brand name is probably in the folder name (because I'd put it there), and they really want to get to playing with my item rather than looking at a box with my brand on it. Kind of a win-win for me and the customer in that they have the convenience of just rez-and-go from the folder.

@Darren: Piecing it together from various conversations by Lindens, direct delivery seems to work like this: You put your item in a folder of your own under a special folder (say #Marketplace) in your inventory (assuming folder name becomes the name of your product listing) Any items in that folder are delivered as a folder to the buyer (you don't need to be logged in, this is direct database transfer from one users folder to another), no scripts or in-world mechanics needed. There was some mention in a blog post of a configuration notecard that you could put into that folder to give it specific instructions I believe. By doing it this way, some other things become possible that we'll hopefully see like an actual receipt of delivery of items. Verified delivery would be a huge bonus! Or being able to use textures in your product inventory folder as product images, etc. Updating your items would be as easy as updating the product folder, such as renaming, swapping out a landmark or notecards or objects, etc. Could be a bit off about some of the finer details, will see how that shakes out as we go. Would save enormous amounts of time packing products as well.

It seems that it will be optional at first while it's being developed, which means that those with hesitations can wait it out until it's more mature, as stated by Brooke at the last user group meeting: [17:52] Brooke Linden (brooke.linden): initial public roll out will allow merchants to either list in item with AIS delivery or Magic Box delivery As decent as a scripted delivery system "can" be, it has inherent problems. We use networked vendors and most of the devs seem to share some common failure rates. The idea here is to bypass the inworld calls where possible I believe, which means eliminating some points of failure. Pretty sure this will prove to not only be more reliable, in being able to access data directly and bypass in-world scripts, but should also be "much" faster. Other than that, not going to fret about tomorrows problems today. Looks like a public rollout that makes sense so far, being optional at first and giving people some time to try it out.

Great job! Thank you.

This is a great idea, I think integrating the Marketplace with the viewer is a goal, or at least there's a very partial implementation (Viewer 2 shows the SHOP button at the bottom of the inventory pane, which pops up a web window to the Marketplace). But right, it would be fun and a great convenience to search and open up Marketplace object "profile" window, and to be able to send a link to those to people which would pull up a nice little product profile from the Marketplace. After the direct inventory delivery system is working, I'm imagining that it wouldn't be too hard to also look for a landmark in that products folder in your inventory and also show a See This Item In World link, so that people still have the chance to go to the persons shop. Best of both and a more integrated shopping experience with in and out world. Kudos if I could

Darrius Gothly wrote: Dartagan Shepherd wrote: This is pretty much the stance we take. The path of an entrepreneur being one of personal motivation and responsibility, the decision to work with SL as a platform is already a done deal. ... Once again Mr. Shepherd, you demonstrate the greatest weakness in your line of reasoning, that being a complete and self-imposed blindness toward the damage your "business partner" (SL) is doing to your efforts. We operate our businesses on this Platform. We accept that foundation from which to attempt our commercial success. But we object to changes that have no explicable reason, no discernible benefit ... and only damage as the measurable result. I demand you stop insulting the business people that operate in SL by calling them slackers, whiners and idiots. They are none of those. They ARE responsible, creative, intelligent and dedicated people struggling mightily to make the best of their efforts. Your position that they are just not trying hard enough is diingenuous and fallacious as they DO try hard. It is the counter-productive and senseless changes imposed on them for no apparent reason and no discernible gain that they call out against. I responded to a person that contributed to the topic at hand, which to me is what we can do, given the topic for Inworld Marketing and Advertising Best Practices. I already know what limitations are there, that doesn't mean I choose to derail a post to use as a rant, it means I'm interested in talking about what people are doing and can do for marketing practices, not what can't be done. There are places better suited to specific issues about search, Marketplace bugs and ideas to improve advertising rather than every post being a catch-all for gripes, such as Jira reports for bugs, a separate thread for those specific issues, or putting these issues on the agenda for the next user group meeting. I've never been involved in a marketing discussion anywhere that focused only on what you can't do, so your concept is a bit strange to me. You may also want to stop "demanding" what I contribute or how I contribute my personal opinion to these forums, that's not your place. Even stranger is the bit of word twisting in your last paragraph. You may want to consider the fact that there are many people who are successfully marketing in SL, and so you might want to let those people speak rather than turn this thread into some righteous cause, as those are the ones people (including myself) would love to hear some input from. Which is kind of the point of this thread I'm imagining, sharing marketing successes and best practices in our existing efforts as merchants.

Jura Shepherd wrote: The point for me is that, despite whatever LL is doing, people are still coming into stores to buy things. My experiences are not like Rene's at all. For some, the cumulative reach from a distributed approach to marketing isn't hundreds, it's easily thousands and even that isn't considered a great feat. Now, that would be cumulative in that it's on and off world efforts and I would agree that in-world reach is much less. Even so, the caveat there is that the conversion rate for in-world efforts are much much higher than off-world. If reaching hundreds is simply not worth the effort for some, that's fine, but I can assure you that there are diligent brands that will be happy to take those hundreds from you. Again, I'm not saying now, or in my previous post, that the native tools aren't a problem. It absolutely is and I don't like it. All I'm saying is that crippled system tools aren't an argument for doing nothing. This is pretty much the stance we take. The path of an entrepreneur being one of personal motivation and responsibility, the decision to work with SL as a platform is already a done deal. If I felt the platform was unable to sustain virtual business we wouldn't be here in the first place and so we place the burden of making our business work on our own shoulders rather than a platform we've already evaluated and committed to years ago despite any flaws (which I've got to say over the years have greatly improved, selling is easier today with a flawed search than it was back when you couldn't teleport for hours or a day or two and we tend not to measure improvement in hamster-time). But back to the topic at hand, which is not perceived flaws of SL, but the personal burden of success within a platform each of us makes the choice to do business in as adult entrepreneurs, yes absolutely agree on taking what works for you in the platform and then doing your own marketing above and beyond if you're an aggressive or full time entrepreneur. One practice we use is to not only advertise to a focused/target market, but also well outside of it. Here's a for instance: I've heard people say that ad boards in world don't work that well. In our experience they tend to work best when chosen carefully and outside of the market for that product. I tend to think that to compete in a market where everyone has the same tools it takes more than the tools provided by LL, no matter how good or bad they are (although I do think they're quite good when used effectively) in order to rise above. Compared to RL as a "platform" and issues like zoning, taxes, insurance, payroll ... SL as an entrepreneur platform is a joy, but like any other venture, it takes determination and using practices above and beyond the "standard" tools provided. Great to see someone else recognize that personal responsibility and accountability is more key than the flaws of a place you've made the personal choice to use as a business platform. In that sense it mimics RL success/failure. If nothing else, I would say constant experimentation is the key. What worked yesterday may not work today, what didn't work yesterday might work today. Stay fresh and open with marketing ideas, never become stale.

A huge improvement all around. Better consolidation of info and already finding it easier to get at the bits I'm interested in. Moving the KB over to here is a great move as well. Thank you for better tools, they are much appreciated.

Last word about votes, I promise, but @prok regarding Jira votes and democracy ... You've probably seen this, I know I have many times, on a fairly regular basis: User with best of intentions but not correctly understanding an issue says to group: "Hey everybody, this bug makes boxes spin out of control and causes warts on avatars!" Group: "That's terrible!" User: "Yeah, but here's the link to the Jira to go vote!" Group: "What's a Jira and how do I vote?" Click, click, click and 10 votes later, the issue is now more popular. Repeat the next day or on a different group for more votes. Result, the voting is sometimes the most uninformed of all indicators in the Jira. Not always of course, but often enough that it's a regular occurance. I've already seen a few people advising setting watches and piping email to trash, so they may end up being ineffective indicators if that goes the same way. To you, Prok, this is one example of why you don't apply government concepts to business, it's a mis-match. Uninformed voters are also a flaw in democracy that we must live with, but that's another story. Management implementations, customer service and feedback solicitation are entirely different beasts. The lure of virtual worlds is that it makes people think virtually, which is often detrimental to being effective. Virtual or not, companies are not governments and social experiments. (That applies on both sides of the fence, you can never completely escape the need for traditional management, unfortunately). One personal peeve I'd like to ask of either LL or the community is to eliminate the "threats" and mentions of other grids. Not only are they not really threats, the bulk of users that they manage to obtain are SL users, and thus they leech off of this world at the cost of all of us. While you may be perfectly right in being unhappy with Walmart, and telling your friends they should go shop/join Sears, it's tactless and a bit impolite to those of us who are happy with Walmart and not interested in shopping at Sears. And yelling about Sears ... in the middle of Walmart, doesn't help improve Walmart, sorry to say, or spur Walmart employees and shoppers to positive action. Also, as a merchant and resident, I'm not interested in anyone stealing my SL friends and customers to tote them off to a micro clone, as visionary as that might be. These should be generating their own traction, on their own dime, with their own marketing. Also a little business tidbit, if they can't gain traction outside of SL users, it's a dud, ala Purple Jupiter couldn't manage it, even with millions in capital and some decent people who were far more experienced in related industries. You're doubling the work on merchants, the confusion with SL residents, etc. Your own dime, your own time, your own space I say to those grids, k? If you can manage that, you might actually go the distance, but you need to do that on your own, like SL did if you've got the "right stuff".

Great stuff, thank you, thank you.

True, and there are no bug-free games. Or game companies that don't have difficulty with improving their clients, servers and communications.

Well thought out. I've watched votes on Jira's get a bit political and people would often treat Jira's as "hot topics". Jira votes were often fine for those championing a cause, when that "cause" was in line with the majority, but often it was not. I've seen some Jira submissions gather votes, then folks move onto the next hot topic and gather more votes for those and on it goes. When a bug report in particular becomes "something else", it's no longer working as a reporting mechanism or gauge of interest. These hot topic Jiras in particular I have to say are generally not well thought out, and being unable to vote against them, especially when they're fairly low priority in light of more serious issues but because they're hot topics they're set to higher priority than they need to be, including showstoppers made them useless. Unless you wanted to write some paragraphs in Jira comments explaining this, which would degrade them to something resembling forum posts (which also need serious attention, not exactly nice to folks having a good experience and looking for community. Those tend to drive off the positive folks here to just have fun and they reward bad behavior). At least for scenarios like this, watches are are a more sane gauge as people lose interest in one hot topic and move to another. If you're really interested in the long term, you'll set a watch and be interested in what others have to say enough to watch the emails and are probably willing to actively participate in those issues rather than "vote and go".

Whoa, Facebook is blown way out of proportion. Firstly, if I'm not mistaken nothing critical is on Facebook that isn't also posted elsewhere. I think every major accouncement ends up being a blog post on the main blogs here. Secondly, you don't need a Facebook account if you want to check up on info there, you can view most of that anonymously. Try looking at http://www.facebook.com/secondlife So no one is missing out by not following Facebook. The same is mostly true of Twitter, even if something is mentioned on Twitter first, if it's really important, it will be posted on one of the Second Life pages. Someone mentioned Google in terms of them being able to manage information, but Google is also on Facebook! Microsoft is on Facebook, most businesses worth anything are on Facebook. It would be a sloppy company that didn't try to maintain a presence on these major social networking sites, and the majority of companies get this. It would also be a bit irresponsible of LL to not provide it's users who are already on Facebook to not give them a home spot in a companion space that they also enjoy. It may not be your thing, but they are also SL users, like yourself. The only difference is that they do happen to enjoy Facebook. Every other company that they're into provides them that courtesy, why shouldn't SL? It's about choices and fulfilling customers needs in a bigger world and internet, and reaching out to people who are already into social networking and saying "hey, we've got this great thing called Second Life and look what we've got to offer!" Don't like it? Don't use it. You're not missing out on your SL experience. No harm, no foul.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: I still think there needs to be the establishment of some form of non-LL controlled SL MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION. Where interested merchants can join and topics of concern can be discussed and even votes to the membership can take place. Then this association could also carry these common issues and priorities to LL with a stronger confidence. We would also have more of a voice that LL would find harder to ignore. Yeah I know... many of you will say "there is no way we can get this flock of merchants herded together to establish this association.". We were close in late 2009 when the clutter tax fiasco cropped up. I still see value in this organized group. I do like the sound of Focus Group better than User Group. I think that's probably decided at this point though. Here's the rub with your merchants associations. We did that back in the boom. We did a BBB and an Even Better BBB and all kinds of experiments with RL -> SL types of businesses, organizations, etc. Most business and merchant representative groups were focused on exactly the same things that are already pretty clearly said by everyone else in forums, Jira, etc. This is not to say that they weren't representative, (and a bit redundant) but opposed to a more democratic approach, there was nothing they could really offer or accomplish that the general populace or LL sponsored initiatives weren't also communicating. So, the announcement is due out tomorrow I believe about Office Hours and User Groups, let's at least see how that program goes, given some time for LL to experiment with for a while. I'd much rather sponsored initiatives and company efforts at controlled feedback than self appointed middlemen, because that's not really representative, and it's always political. Calm, focused groups tend to paddle downstream, which is much easier on the arms and it gets you someplace quicker.

@Ciarran and @Rachel Sorry about that, I guess I let a personal peeve get mixed in there. My wife and I were in a virtual world type place years ago. It wasn't an adult space, but it didn't take long before some wannabe master was hitting on her even after he knew she was 16. I was furious. And that's not to say that a good portion of the Gor type lifestyles aren't chok full of responsible adults that would never do anything like this, because that's also true. As long as there are the exceptions of some fool knowingly hitting on jailbait though, with no job and no life, I think the lowest common denominator needs to be dealt with. The more you push Gor, the more a teen is eventually going to find out that its core element is the slavery bits, because without them, Gor is not much in the way of writing or storyline as RP goes. Failure to face that fact I think is folly. I'm more frustrated with LL I suppose, and even though I'll stand by the decision, and it's not likely to be changed, I just refuse to accept SL in general as a place for 16 and 17 year olds. But if they're going to do it, do it right and protect them properly. The logic part is easy though, it's all legal liability. There's certainly not an ethics or morals committee running these decisions They created their own liability though, and so we own it by proxy. That said, I miss the old days when you never knew what you might find walking through your local SL mall, heheh. But right, that whole issue is probably moot at this point and out of context of a keyword discussion, so again, sorry for that. I think the keywords issue is that LL plugged some pre-made solution in there and it's very agressive and needs to be taught what words to allow and of course problems need to be addressed with many items getting plugged into the wrong Maturity Rating. I respect all lifestyles, respect Goreans and merchants that may lose sales over this. At any rate, will try to keep that out of the discussion, not that some of the justifications don't make it tempting to interject reality doses.

You're reaching. I can use certain "aids" as paper weights on my desk too, but not many parents would appreciate that in a public office. And while I'm sure clothed pole dancing is all the rage in some parts, I don't think that's the general association. I've shopped for Gor in the past. I knew to also look in medieval, rustic, Roman and a bunch of other things. I also know Gor involves sexual slavery and people looking to hook up beyond SL. That I wouldn't want my 16 year old around. What I do in my personal adult time and what I'd want a 16 year old exposed to are two entirely different things. In defense, I'd not let them in at all, personally. We decided to go with PG only a full year before they implemented age verification, not because we particularly liked it, but because we could understand which way the wind was blowing and that there were certain inevitable bits coming as SL grows up. This isn't the first community/world to undergo these kind of changes and be bitten by the need for more protection and rules as they've grown up. It's still difficult for us, knowing that we're all adults and yet we have to keep our conversations "clean", even at times when no one would be offended. Don't know, all my life I've had to learn to respect what's proper and improper in whatever space I find myself in. I don't try to justify it with strange arguments like dancing clothed on a strippers pole though

Toysoldier Thor wrote: This is the actual real example of what I have been trying to say in my posts. The whole strategy of black word listing is wrong and doing it on the most critical and hidden KEYWORDS is even more wrong. LL has absolutely no clue about their own customers. I am not Gor nor follow or participate in thier in-world activities... BUT I respect them as critical base of customers of mine even though I do not sell ANY items that LL would have categorized my items as sexual, kinky, immoral, etc. I sell sculpted landscape terrains and shapes and it is well known that some of the most beautiful landscaped sims/terrains in SL are in the Gorean & Medieval sims. For me to ignore marketing my ROCKS to the Gorean population would be utterly stupid. But now with LL black-balling major SL cultures like the Goreans, they hurt many of us Merchants in our ability to sell to them effectively in SLM. As for LL itself, they are giving the Gorean cultures yet another big reason to leave SL and set up their sims, lands, shops, and all their spending on SL competing grids. This is already happening now and we all know which grid is growing fast because of LL's policies and failings. I set up my shop in this competing grid as did many of you fellow merchants as we want to follow our customers. Again LL - yet another wise move by you on finding more ways to write your own demise - your compeititors could not do more to help you. A disclaimer that on a personal level I would be perfectly fine with an SL without minors at all. However I do see the strategy and the bonus of teen/family "friendly" world, and that the overall market is a bigger one, rather than a smaller niche world like a certain red light world some of us are familiar with. Being work-safe and teen-safe makes for a larger world with more varied interests, in many cases promoting interests beyond just entertainment. So in that sense I'm behind it. Also not against Gor of course, but what is the problem understanding the connections between "innocent" items and adult activities? I heard someone just mention in world "omg, dance poles are flagged adult and they don't have anything explicit in the pics". Am I the only one that can connect the dots that dance poles are a strip club item, and while an innocent hunk of metal in itself, doesn't mean I should be promoting stripping to a 16 year old minor? (Yes minor, here in the US, meaning that it's illegal for a minor to gain access to a strip club in RL). Many aspects of Gor are innocent, contain great roleplay elements and are not "evil". A campfire is nothing in itself. A rag, or a free-womans gown is nothing in itself. And yet the roleplay consists of alternative lifestyles which carry over into RL activities and relationships, promote slavery that is of a sexual nature (implied where not explicit). I could tear most of the pages from the Gor books out, place them before you and the majority of them would have nothing at all adult or suggestive in them. And yet here in the US in some stores (such as Barnes and Noble) you will find the Gor books in the adult section. Is this really that hard to grasp that it's not the item, it's the thing the item lends itself to. If you're promoting a Gor item, you're indirectly promoting the whole of the Gor "lifestyle". If you sell a dance pole you're indirectly selling and promoting stripping. It's that simple. It's not always a fun issue to deal with, this liability and protection thing, but if we're adults having an adult conversation can we at least behave like adults on the issue instead of sounding like a caught teen and saying "what? I was only ..." On the subject of other grids, you need to quit with this. Besides breaking the guidelines by mentioning them, I know you can't wait for some magical world to spring up, be volumes better than SL and magically steal all the SL residents. Punishment to LL for not making you the kind of sales you think you deserve here and that's nice for you. But it's extremely rude to your "fellow merchants" to try to siphon users/customers/sales from here to another place. Many of us are committed here. We're not interested in the symbiotic relationship between opensim clones and SL. They will always be leeching off the SL userbase, because they can't market their way out of a paper bag to users outside of SL. I notice that you're not willing to make that break from SL in order to make a few bucks on another grid until all your money opportunities dry up in SL, but you are willing to take my customers from SL to make a few extra bucks in another world. How considerate of you to your fellow merchants. The few hundred active users on other grids are not and will never be a threat. Personally I'd love to see the viewer source closed, and compatibilies between opensim and SL closed for good, if you people are going to continue to leech off the SL userbase, though. Not doing me or your "fellow merchants" any favors there. Good luck with your whopping concurrency of a few hundred at best, maybe you should fully commit. But as you said earlier, your rocks are not at all affected by this ratings policy. If you want to sell other grids, do it in your own space on your own dime. But I've got a feeling if you weren't selling people on other grids to SL users, you'd have a concurrency of 5 rather than 300 on them. Assuming any of them are up to 300 concurrency.

Exactly so. And even regardless of publicity is legal liability. Can't be avoided, must be done. There's protection for both legal minors AND merchants in this, the better it's implemented. Which means of course keywords factor into it, and descriptions and anything else that points to something that might incur legal liability. I know some merchants probably aren't concerned about this aspect of it, but you surely would if it were to bite you. Or if it were to bite LL in a such a way that all adult content were to be removed in response to these kind of problems after the fact.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: Yes or No question. Will assume No. Selling life preservers to Titanic victims is only profitable if you can convince them that they're sinking. Otherwise you work for tips. But either way, the band plays on I have a desk lamp that I put a Gor keyword on to check something for a poster here and forgot to remove it. Checking up on that will be an interesting experiment. Back later.

Ciaran Laval wrote: Yes, I can understand why the keyword discussion was deleted, although it really does highlight why an account verified forum would be useful, adult merchants and users could do with a place to discuss issues and not being able to raise these issues with LL via the forums is somewhat disappointing. Great point, whether some of the forums could be tied into adult accounts and/or Maturity Ratings.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: If that were the case, then there would be ZERO threads running in the General Discussion area Heheh, true. Then again, this is all relatively new, and we're only seeing the results of one teams adaptation to teen integration. Would expect to see more consistency with Marketplace, in-world and general content across the board. Of course that may not happen either. Either way personally, and drama and questions of ratings and content, morals, ethics and all that rot aside, from a business standpoint, the less liability the better for everyone.

TatianaDokuchic Varriale wrote: Mickey Vandeverre wrote: Can't find the keyword list that people were working on at all. Would like to know where that went - was helping some people out there. I think the keyword list discussion "Censorship Keyword List" has been removed. I replied to it and it no longer shows in my Recent Activity. Go figure. Public parts of LL properties are considered General by default, including the forums. Discussions that themselves push the limit of General will most likely get put here, assuming more adult conversation is allowed in the Merchants Roundtable. Something like the keywords list would most likely get deleted because it is in itself, not General by mentioning adult words and thus violates the rating to the forums themselves. I'd expect post content to at some point also come under the Maturity Ratings.

Gavin.Hird wrote: Will these guidelines be detailed enough to also apply to goods sold in-world? I mean there is no point i locking them out of the marketplace if they can purchase the "forbidden fruits" in-world. Edit: It will seriously disadvantage marketplace merchants if the same goods can be traded on G parcels, yeah? This is a good point, not so much that it's "not" covered in world by the maturity ratings here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Maturity But that is a bit location/activity centric and doesn't so much cover "things" as content as much as imply it. This is a good chance to tie that in together to give the maturity ratings some cohesion across the board and tying it in with products both in-world and on the Marketplace. I'd go so far as to say maturity ratings wouldn't be a "bad" thing to be settable on in-world objects, but that's a lot of complexity to add to the system.

Already sent a hearty welcome on the other thread, but here's another one. Looking forward to 2011! Someone mentioned a bear and that is a tradition here in SL. Coming from a gaming industry backround though, you need to show your Linden co-workers a thing or two about bear-building and build the best bear to date! Of course let them challenge it with better bears. Or threaten them, there are some Linden bear slackers! But raise that bear-bar, this is 2011 and this is a platform capable of bearing more fruitful bears. Toy with the other Lindens first with a bear that has your Twitter feed on a chalkboard your bear holds using Prim Media. When they start getting the hang of it, plug yours into an old Z-Machine intepreter (if you don't remember Infocom, you're fired!) and show them how Interactive Fiction bears are done. Don't make them breedable, because that's spooky and that market belongs to us. Carry on!

@ Dartagan Experience is nice but exeperience at a game company does not prepare one for what Second Life is about. Best if he took a fresh look at things not think in game terms I know that we understand the vast differences between SL and a game. And yet, you will find no CEO that has more closely related experience to an open ended virtual world than someone with game experience. From multi-user, to software, to game/world-centric communities that outlast the popularity of any given game. This particular CEO also has experience with virtual goods and content creation. The similarities are great enough that the question is still asked "is Second Life a game?". The new answer needs to not be "no", but rather yes our virtual world is an expression of many things, a game being one of them. This will allow us to reach more people on more familiar ground. People that understand what a virtual world is already "get it".