Rene Erlanger

Gavin Hird wrote: Ranking top on google means squat when 98% of your new signups leave within the first hour never to return. Over 5.2 million of them do every year. That's true...and i was being kind to Second life! .....in the last 18 months, it's actually been a slow but gradual decline in the "average number of avatars logging in during any given day."

Gavin Hird wrote: Yes you could, but the difference is that new residents are sent directly to the marketplace from the viewer menu, and therefore may not even have to set foot in-world to shop. Combine that with the massive amounts of free to nearly free items that preceeding any commercial products for the most common search items, and you have a scenario for diminishing returns. Select top sellers in Marketplace with all ratings ticked....and i'll bet the majority will be Meeroo products, Freebies & dollarbies in top 36 items (3 pages of 12 items)

Madeliefste Oh wrote: Gavin Hird wrote: The net effect is not the same, because it keeps concurrency low and therefore new signups (16k per day) largely find a ghost town, where there before were campers (and such.) – So they leave, never to return. – Over 5 million per year turn their backs within the first hour. I agree that getting rid of camping was a big mistake. Yeah, getting rid of camping keeps the concurrency low. But how do freebies on the marketplace keep the concurrency low? One doesn't have to log in, .to TP in-world and collect the same Freebies. There are a couple of very large in-world Groups for Freebies that do exactly that.......Merchants would advertise in group about their Freebies......and swarms of avatars would land and collect these Freebies...and crash their sims in the process! PS The last part was a joke!

Madeliefste Oh wrote: I think that removing camping from the grid has had a big influence on the long tail of the market. The majority of the SL residents are not willing to spend any real money in SL. In those day when it was so easy for new residents to make some small amounts, there was a large newbie market to sell to. Because even the people that didn't bring in money, made at least money roll. By forbidding camping LL cut of a piece of this long tail.. that part of the market where small guys make small bucks. When a happy camper in 2007 or so was willing to pay 20 L$ for a funny t-shirt, but this funny shirt started to loose it's value, when this easy way of money making for newcomers was no longer around. That was so true....yet another Jack Linden b#ll**bleep** policy change! :matte-motes-sour: Whilst i supported the removal of Traffic Bots or not counting them as Traffic.....i did not want to see the end of real avatar camping. It stands to reason that it would impact the in-world economy sooner or later. Although I never camped myself.....i heard lots of nice stories, where groups of campers formed friendships that are still maintained to this day! It was a good way to meet people and interact....not all were afk.

Gavin Hird wrote: From a commercial standpoint, a L$10 item is not worth it. It does not even cover the cost of storing it on the server disk-farm and transmit the product record to the website for display to you. From the (commercial) creator's standpoint – how many would you have to sell to even get to a minimum wage hourly rate for the time you spent creating it? Yep, i've often wondered about that...especially if you happen to pay rent or Tiers for SL land too! How many of these 1 to 10 L products would they need to sell to cover their in-world costs....no wonder so many Merchants only use "break-even" as their goal.

Gavin Hird wrote: Concurrency currently varies between about 32k and 65k throughout the day. There are about 32k sims or so, running on 5-6000 servers. This means that on the best times of the day there are a maximum of 2 user agents per sim on the grid. Anything that would bring the concurrency up to the double, or gasp - even 10 user agents per sim at peak would be a tremendous boost for SecondLife and the SL economy. Totally agreed Gavin....and the key to Second Life's future too!

Josh Susanto wrote: I think the assumptions are that both higher concurrency and higher land value are always desireable, regardless of how they are to be acheived. If you want to see these guys' heads explode, ask them whether they would prefer to sacrifice concurrency for land value or land value for concurrency. I would prefer much higher concurrency.......there's far too much land on SL Grid and i've said that for several years now. Just think of 31k sims on the grid versus peak logins of 60-70k.....that's 2 avatars per sim when SL is at it's busiest. LL (or Jack Linden) are responsible for over supply of Mainland. Now we're paying the price of great swathes of empty barron land right across all their Mainland continents. Creating Zindra (adult) & Linden Homes compounded to those problems. LL couldn't really do much with the Estate Sims market, if people are willing to buy sims. I supposed LL could have capped supply....which would have meant relying solely on the secondary market of resident-to-resident buying & selling of Sims. That would have pushed up values for both lands & sims. LL would not have benefitted from such a strategy, as they're in the business of maximising their own Tier income and selling as many Sims as they can. They don't care that most sims stand there virtually empty for most of any given day....nor that it drives their resell value into the floor! Estate Owners can't even give away their sims....lack of takers, so they end up returning them to LL.

Madeliefste Oh wrote: Rene Erlanger wrote: You make out Marketplace is some sort of new phenomena....i'd like to remind you we could buy items offline and have them delivered (or at least place in "Favourite" folder to buy later) as far back as 2006 with SL Exchange. The only difference between the the two, is that LL owns MP and promote it in their official Viewers which naturally they never did for SLEX. No no, this is not the only difference and certainly not the most important. To be able to shop on Slex you had to put money in your slex account. So you had to go to these terminals first subscribe there, put money in your account, before you could buy anything on slex. Though slex was populair, it was something you only discovered when you were around for a while in SL. And because the marketplace doesn't need subcription, shopping online became possible for all residents in stead of only a group who was willing to subscribe. Now the most important difference is, that a shopper doesn't have to create a shopping wallet at the marketplace first before he can buy there. They can simple use the availabe amount on their account to shop, both for in world and on marketplace. Ahh yes, i forgot about those ATM Terminals and putting money into SLEX....my bad! :matte-motes-bashful-cute: Aside from that very important factor ....imo SLEX was the better shopping website.

Josh Susanto wrote: >Josh - you don't expect me to read your Story? You have my messages mixed in with yours, without any paragraphs. Learn to use the "Quote" button and write in short sentences or use paragraphs. I have tried and failed to reformat that, but I'll certainly get it done before I expect you to respond in any serious way, which is only reasonable. The quote button is still producing error messages, the other format functions are still gone, and I still don't know why this interface has changed when I haven't done anything to change it. OTOH, it's not the first time I've been met with such weird kinds of "coincidences" when saying something critical of LL. Try one of the other Browsers...I'm using Firefox at the moment with none of your issues. I know Chrome is able to handle it. I haven't tried it on Opera as yet..... and try to avoid using I.E

Sorry Josh, I'm not going to respond to your messages....until you learn how to use the "Quote" button and break up your messages into readable paragraphs. I'm sure you have some valid points in those messages, its just too much of headache to de-cypher, as to which are my passages and which are yours.....just imagine how it is for other readers. It would give off the appearance of you being Schizophrenic .....making a statement on one the hand and then arguing against that very same point in your very next sentence!

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: I'm sorry, but I just have to chuckle a bit. I gave up some parcels, because after tracking landings, observed that a very large portion were not coming to the store to purchase, they were simply clicking away and buying. There is no reason to pay for excessive prim space when most do not go see! unless of course, your ego requires it. That's not failure - that's smart biz move. And it worked great. For the most part, they are not even inworld when they are purchasing. You don't track anything like that, so you don't have a clue what the buying behavior is. I'm sorry, but I cannot be one of the oldbies that is tied to endless amounts of costly prim usage, just to promote a 3D experience for Linden Lab and the other oldbies. And that has nothing to do with Freebies. eta: that should say "tracking NON-landings" as opposed to tracking "landings" You obviously not creating enough new content....as Furniture creators can never have too little prims or land for that matter (to display their products) Tracking visitor landings by parcels, even sales by parcel are easy enough to perform.....if you set it up correctly to begin. with and promote each area effectively.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: then you are living in another year. 2010 perhaps. People use the marketplace for convenience to save time and to shop from their home or office in physical world. They do it all day long. If you cannot grasp that, from a change in numbers, then you are not using marketplace. Good luck trying to convince customers to give up that convenience. You can call me ignorant all day long, but when you keep posting that you don't have a clue what the numbers are on the marketplace.....one has to wonder. Linden Lab has a history of changing strategies....I haven't give up on In-world commerce yet, even though it's looking bleaker than say this time last year.. You make out Marketplace is some sort of new phenomena....i'd like to remind you we could buy items offline and have them delivered (or at least place in "Favourite" folder to buy later) as far back as 2006 with SL Exchange. The only difference between the the two, is that LL owns MP and promote it in their official Viewers which naturally they never did for SLEX. Ironically SLEX was a far better all round shopping site than Marketplace...when you add in "Land Sales", "Auctions", "Currency Exchange with immediate transfer to Paypal" and a vibrant "Forum Community" listed by categories much like it is now. What numbers are these Mickey?....the ones that Linden Lab published for Q3 or Q4 Financial Reviews....or are you privy to some secret Financials only accessible to the "knowledgable one"?

Clarissa Lowell wrote: Rene Erlanger wrote: It's been proven that other well marketed VW's have all grown during a RL recession without the need of providing it's membership with free in-world products. Even ones like SL that don't "entertain" but make the person use their own imagination and work to find the fun? Not just an MMPORG? You mean MMOG? ....you can create for IMVU too, but obviously it doesn't have a patch on Second Life. I'm not sure if those creations "have to" be listed on the IMVU shopping site or can be kept by the creator. I'm sure there will be other virtual platforms springing up, where users can create it's own content.....it's just that Second Life was efffectively the pioneer of such model.

Josh - you don't expect me to read your Story? You have my messages mixed in with yours, without any paragraphs. Learn to use the "Quote" button and write in short sentences or use paragraphs.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: Josh - he doesn't even use marketplace. He said he doesn't even shop on marketplace. I was looking for "lime green glass" as a texture. Textures is a very popular category. I believe that the number was 150k He's just rambling and didn't even do any searches. Listen to yourself! If you ever manage to learn how to read properly.....you'd know from this thread alone, that I stated my usage of Marketplace Search to help locate the more obscure products...and then buy those same products from their In-world stores. The reason being, I want to support the in-world economy. (and less chance of a non-delivery too :matte-motes-sunglasses-1:) What has 150k listed textures have to do with ...when there isn't a single one for "lime green glass"! Who is rambling now? :matte-motes-tongue:

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: You don't "have a dog in this race" because you don't even use marketplace. You have no clue what is going on, and are living in 2006, and disgruntled because whatever you were doing in 2006 is not working for you now. You really are one ignorant person! Haven't I listed on Marketplace ? So that must have been during 2011? I remember having to re-do all the Descriptions Fields as they were ruined through the migration process. I have news for you.....I always continued making sales on Marketplace! :matte-motes-wink-tongue: Being away from SL for 7/ 8 mths...i didn't have much chance in optimising keywords on my MP Store or add items to it.. When I arrived back to SL, there were more important tasks In-world to worry about. I view Marketplace as a supplement (an add-on) to my in-world businesses, it always been that way!. Yes, I do have a "dog in the race"....I want commerce to return to the Grid. I signed up to a 3D Virtual World platform not to a 2D glorified Shopping site. Why should i be disgruntled Mickey? .....I still possess all my land & commercial holdings in SL? Have you? :matte-motes-tongue: So you've learnt how to use Twitter, Faceboook, blogs and how to effect your obscure keywords on Google main search...and that makes you hip?

Josh Susanto wrote: >Nope...if you want to list on Marketplace one should have to register at a minimum providing real name and address. If you can't make that little step.....then continue with your anonymity selling your products In-world. If that's what we're actually talking about here, then, sure, yes. But is it? My above quote (in blue), has nothing to do with Freebies.....its just a suggestion what Linden Lab should do with Marketplace....and might help reduce the amount of infringements. Anyway with this new proposed SOPA laws coming from the U.S......LInden Lab might well have to tighten up their Merchant policies especially when it comes to copyright material being pirated from other sources. (which we have plenty of)

Josh Susanto wrote: >I was making a statement....and not any contemptious remark about Freebies. Micky was wondering why she could not see Freebies ...when she searches "Lime Green Glass" or other obscure search terms.....I only stated the obvious that you'll see the largest amount Freebies in the most popular sectors (furniture, skins, fashion, hair etc)......i doubt you'll see many freebies for say "Crystal Chandeliers" for example. There wasn't a single Freebie out of 379 entries....and only 6 Dollarbies. (4 of which were in the first 12 under "Relevance") Then what was the point of characterizing the items as largely copybotted; the very point of your passage I obviously mean to emphasize by cutting the thign down to one line? There you go twisting my words again...where did I say Freebies were largely copybotted items.....i used it as an example of a sub-group....you can add other sub-groups....those that infringe copyright material....or those that re-sell or distribute full-perm products without permission. How hard is it to figure out the "Quote" option.? To any outsider reading your message...it looks like you wrote the entire message and near the end of it, started to contradict yourself. I know you're one of these open-source advocates and would prefer that everything in SL were FREE, that much is obvious to me. You shun commercialism, you hate that some folk are prepared to spend money on the game by leasing Sims or land from Linden Lab. You can't stand looking at commercialism In-World...and would rather it all be shunted off the grid to one side (i.e Marketplace) IMO you'd be better off on some of those Open Sim Grids, which are crawling with Open-Sourceniks!....there you would find your Utopia!!!

Sorry Josh...can't read you reply....it's just way too long....and its too hard to de-cypher what i wrote and what you wrote......there is a "Quote" button when you write messages...you should use it and makes it easier for others to read. Besides we're from 2 different schools of thought...and we're not going to agree on anything. I joined in 2006, and there were Freebies around then....but i rarely went hunting for them. The quality wasn't that good compared to nowadays. There was also a diffferent mentality back in those days....we didn't expect free things and if we did get something nice that was free, we were deeply grateful . Nowadays it seems a large section of the community expect high quality free items. Thats the biggest change from back then....and 2012. I'm not saying to get rid of Freebies in any venue (MP or In-World)...it's too late for that....but I do believe Second Life would have been successful with or without them. The main draw..is that it doesn't cost anything to join SL....that's the key! Don't be so niave, of course Grid size matters when LL are employing X amount of staff. Losing 900 Estate sims last year, wipes off at least 2.5 mllion USD income in 2012....and we don't even know about the amount of lands abandoned on Mainland continents. I guess thats why Rodvik announced that LL will be involved in devloping other revenue streams (i.e products), so that they're not so reliant on SL Land income as they are now. You do rabbit on and make assumptions what i think they should do with Freebies on MP or what they should do In-world. Marketplace has always been secondary environment to me....and will always continue to be. If you want millions of Freebies listed on Marketplace, than so be it. My only dog in this race....is that Marketplace has been heavily promoted inside the LL Viewers and responsible for driving people to MP...instead of in-world commerical areas. The sections i did read....are just pure jibberish, every reply I made, you want to associate Freebies to it....when my quotes had nothing to do with Freebies at all. Your Land comments are total nonsense.....you have no experience of running an multi-sim Estate, yet you make all those glorious assumptions regaring residential tenants and commerical tenants. You obviously can't grasp things properly as i stated that I rent both "Commercial sims and Roleplay sims" as 2 separate types of rentals....the latter being supported by commercial activities (a Market)...they are not one and the same. It's like you have a chip on your shoulder......that you resent that people can actually afford Sims. You forget Estates provide a valuable service to hundred of thousands of Land renters...who cannot afford an entire sims nor want to live on Mainland and pay LL premium subs fees. Without the growth of Estate sims, and without people willing to take the plunge and make that committment to SL, we probably wouldn't have a Second Life grid.....or it would be very small on a par with Open Sim grids.

Shouldn't happen too much In-world unless you're buying from a badly scripted Vendor system. Marketplace is another story!

You're right....but that message had nothing to do with Freebies sellers. I felt it's just a general requirement that LL should impose if one wants to list products on Marketplace (regardless of Product pricing)

Josh Susanto wrote: >"So as to make Marketplace Merchants more accountable...when loading copyright infringing material or re-selling full perm content in breach of original Creator's EULA.....or loading copybotted products onto Marketplace." OR to create a select group of people who will be automatically favored in any such dispute. Such is not exactly historically unprecedented in other contexts. Nope...if you want to list on Marketplace one should have to register at a minimum providing real name and address. If you can't make that little step.....then continue with your anonymity selling your products In-world.

Josh Susanto wrote: >That's a cheap shot **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**: :matte-motes-sour:....selecting part of paragraph. Why not display the context it was written in? > The fuller context actually only further empasizes the brush of unwarranted contempt with which you are broadly painting the pertinent group of merchants. I really don't understand why you'd want me to rehash the totality of what you said, given that it does the opposite of help your argument in this specific instance. I was making a statement....and not any contemptious remark about Freebies. Micky was wondering why she could not see Freebies ...when she searches "Lime Green Glass" or other obscure search terms.....I only stated the obvious that you'll see the largest amount Freebies in the most popular sectors (furniture, skins, fashion, hair etc)......i doubt you'll see many freebies for say "Crystal Chandeliers" for example. There wasn't a single Freebie out of 379 entries....and only 6 Dollarbies. (4 of which were in the first 12 under "Relevance")

Josh Susanto wrote: Speaking as someone who likes to do things in SL other than go shopping, I would personally consider this to be an improvement. Since noncommercial activity can't be as easily taken off-grid as can commercial activity (as it had been), it stands to reason that if one kind of development is stifling another kind of development, and the fist kind happens to be commercial, the problem can probably be at least partially solved by taking some of the commerce off-grid. I'm pretty sure that's what actually happened, too. Counterintuitively speaking, what should we expect to be more sustainable as a form of rent revenue? Commercial or non-commercial? I understand that we expect commercial rentals to pay for themselves. But that means they also essentially have to. Other types of rentals aren't expected to pay for themselves, so there's actually less danger of them being shut down if they fail to do that. When I finally get into the SL rental property business some day, I sure won't be focused on the commercial. I'll keep it as mixed as possible, in fact. Nothing is more tedious than a sim that's designed like one of the districts in the capital of Brazil before anybody realized WTF the consequences were going to be. ....but that's the beauty of Second Life, it can be all things.....you can have Residential lands, Roleplay sims, gaming sims, Commerical sims, Fantasy sims, lands with breedables etc etc. I went to my 1st Meeroo's auction last night and thoroughly enjoyed it, even though..I never ever gotten involved in buying any breedable products.!! The atmosphere was pretty awesome. Commerce was the cornerstone that built Second Life....."creating for profit"... which developed the majority of what you see today on Second Life. Removing In-World commerce or even most of it....will lead to a shrinkage of the main grid as the 2011 Land figures have shown..... and Second Life will be poorer for it! Sim & Land Tiers are still the major part of Linden Lab's income..... If.they lose too much of the Grid, we might see more employee lay-offs like in 2010. I have been renting both commerical & residential sims since 2006.....and you're wrong on that point.! Some of my longest tenants have been Commercial and Roleplay (supported by commercial activities) sims. I've also had long term Residents, but i've also had some very short term Residential tenants (less than a month)....Commercial tenants tend to make a longer commitment , they won't pack and go after a month!! Residential tenants are reliant on RL factors of whether they can continue affording that RL entertainment budget......a Commerical tenant has a chance to break-even or make a profit, it might not cost them anything from their RL income....or far less than the Residential Tenant. Josh Susanto wrote: I'm not sure I follow your reasoning here. The RL recession kicking in (officially no earlier than) in 2008 would have no later effects on SL A) because the RL economy then suddenly stabilized or B) because the recession ended and was actually reversed? I'm unaware that either of these things actually happened, but feel free to enlighten me. Or is there some 3rd possible reason I'm not seeing? Please explain. Well, as purse strings tightened in RL, one of the first areas that get's trimmed back are people's leisure & entertainment budgets e.g holidays, restaurants, playing golf, theatres, cinemas, bars etc etc. There's an argument that suggest that indoor entertainment actually gains from a recession...as its cheaper form entertainment. Playing games like Wow, Everquest, IMVU, Second life...or buying an Xbox DVD films, or whatever become more popular at the expense of outdoor activities. Like i keep harping on for the hundreth time....other VW platforms have continually grown over the last 3 years (not SL though) Josh Susanto wrote: Yes. Partly because of the SLM and partly because the market for you products is edging closer to total saturation with cheaper or better stuff. 2 of these 3 factors are at least ostensibly open to the influence of decisions you can make and execute on your own. Partly agree if we're talking since Marketplace introduction (from Mar 2011), but it was also going down earlier i.e since back end of 2009....that was more to do with increased competition as you correctly stated plus the lack of growth in Second Life's concurrency. Josh Susanto wrote: > Land prices are cheaper than they ever were And that's bad because....? Many reasons going back to 2008, when Jack Linden dumped an extra few thousand Mainland sims onto the grid, ....or adding Adult ratings and re-locating all adult activities to Zindra, ...or LL setting all their abandoned lands for sale at $1 L per sqm...thus killing values of neighbouring lands.to...or introducing Linden Homes made up of 100's of sims....or lack of improvements to the Mainland infrastructure (roads & railtracks)...or effectively dealing with griefing...etc etc The list is quite long. Private Estate sim owners are reducing rents, because some of SL' s largest Estates get special deals with LL, which enables them to rent out Homestead or Full sims at cheaper rates than most other Realtors. With the lack of Second Life growth in concurrency, the pool of would-be renters are limited......hence to be competitive rents have to be reduced. Josh Susanto wrote: Other VW's aren't really very analogous in terms of what users demand from them and why. WOW isn't a very creative place from what I've seen. There's no need to allow freebies there because users contribute so little to the generation of any real content. SL users have always wanted to produce new and valued content of their own, and that tends to mean at least some continuing introduction of component-level materials that don't pose large financial risks. No one needs those in WOW because the whole point of gettting gold is ultimately just to find ways to apply it to advance levels. There are no levels in SL (yet, anyway, thank G#d), so spenfing Linden dollars is a lot more like spending real money, and people are (or should be) somewhat more resistant to spending it or (and this is the point) having to spend it. Marketing-wise, WOW et al don't need to offer a lot of things SL offers, simply because they have essentially fixed narrative application as simulators. That is, because SL doesn't especially simulate any one thing, it can't as easily fail to provide things users won't much want on the basis of those users' assumptions of what the simulator is "about". Ironically, because SL is potentially about everything, it isn't really about anything in particular. For this reason, in order to keep users around long enough to decide for themselves what their own SL experience is "about" (as contrasted with the obvious answer "it's about advancing to the next level") SL needs to offer them an abundance of things which WOW et al do not offer. I believe this includes freebies. The n00bs get excited about houses, cars, shoes and guns. That they can get at least some version of such things for free is exciting to a lot of them just long enough for them to realize they have other reasons to log on. If they had to pay for such things, a lot of people wouldn't stick around long enough to develop a more sophisticated understanding of SL, and that may even include some of your customers. Yes, even yours. Other VW's have grown during the recession not because people are leaving their SL commercial rentals in order to slay dragons and whatnot, but simply because these services are, in fact, cheaper than other forms of entertainment people must or should increasingly forego. The people playing WOW are not people who would be managing malls in SL if it weren't for all the d@mned freebies on the SLM. They're people who get something out of WOW they can't any longer as easily get either from RL or from non-VW types of games. Ask a few of them if you don't believe me. A lot of them go to WOW because it has often become easier (cheaper) than leaving the house in order to see or do something interesting, or to interact with other people. But, to follow your reasoning, all WOW needs to do to kill its own economy should seem to be to offer more free stuff. Is that right? I wasn't really thinking of WOW as i classify that as game ....a MMORPG. I was thinking more on the lines of IMVU, Habbo Hotel. Twinity, Active Worlds , Kaneva which are all MMOG...a different category of online entertainment. Second Life main growth explosion was due to Free sign-ups and no longer requiring to pay a one-off fee for Avatar account.... SL growth wasn't due to Freebies. SL would have grown regardless of Freebies or not.....say LL decided that when selecting "PAY" or "BUY" it had to be 1 L at a minimum (that could have been programmed in) That 1 Linden $ minimum sale price would have made a big difference to inventory sizes.

Josh Susanto wrote: >I'm just curious what level of incomes are derived from Marketplace with nearly 2 million product listings? Most RL businesses fail within 2 years. Doing bigger deals with more expensive products and more conspicuous listings hardly seems to me like a better measure of success than whether someone is actually consistently turning some kind of a profit; ANY kind of actual profit. I am. If you're not, maybe you could try things my way. Lesson #1: How to Use Freebies... No thanks...I don't want to add to the overall problem. I do reasonably well in-world despite having the goal posts moved to Marketplace.