ralph Alderton

Sassy, I understand and appreciate what you are saying but if the world doesn't LOOK GOOD and excite them first, they won't be here later

Hey Lasher, There are dozens of computer games with millions of users which are far more complex than SL. If it's beautiful and compelling enough people make the effort needed to acclimatize to the new But and here's the biggy and I'm going to say it again because it has to be said : Secondlife is drowning in junk and poor quality content and the SUPERABUNDANCE of said JUNK in the marketplace is to blame. Linden Lab should stop pretending that the massive AWESOME amount of junk is having no effect. They are pushing everyone to the marketplace which is full of junk. So people see junk, they buy junk, they download junk, they use junk

The Lab is searching and wondering why they are not converting these 16k signups to active users. The answer is simple a SUPERABUNDANCE OF JUNK CAUSES super-duper CHURNOVER

Sassy, Nobody expects visuals from Facebook, it's a 2D web site. Secondlife is a 3D virtual world, it's all visuals, new users will compare it to 3D games Rodvik stated that Secondlife is starting to attract a younger crowd, these younger users will compare Secondlife to the latest games and it won't compare well How things look is of primary importance to all human beings

16k people a day , 112000 people a week, 480000 per month agree with me - they walk away from Secondlife because it doesn't look good enough to make them want to stay How things look is of primary importance, it's foolish to think otherwise. I'm not the only one who thinks this way, the nearly half a million people per month who walk away from Secondlife feel the same way

Hello Nathan, I absolutely agree with you that the most wonderful thing about Secondlife is the openness and freedom. I would never want that to change. VIVA SECONDLIFE ! Secondlife IS special in this regard and of course it's amazing that everyone can build and create if they want to learn to do so. But how Secondlife LOOKS is not a secondary concern. It's a primary concern. If Secondlife doesn't look good it won't attract people and they won't stay. The mass market are NOT creators they're end users, consumers, socialisers - Rodvik stated as much in his recent keynote speech at SLCC - and those social creatures want somewhere exciting and attractive to be social. The failure to convert 16k signups to active users and then eventually paid users could easily be attributed to way Secondlife looks and that is because of the dominance of junk in the marketplace and consequently inworld The Lab is searching and wondering why they are not converting these 16k signups to active users. The answer is simple a SUPERABUNDANCE OF JUNK CAUSES CHURNOVER LL churnover 16k users per day. Concurrency is flat even with 16k signups a day ! That's incredible churnover of users. Clearly the Lab don't think junk is a problem and don't think the way Secondlife looks is a problem. And that IS the problem. LL don't perceive, they don't GET why people are not staying and why the churnover is so incredibly high. Imagine saying to a 3D game company - hey it doesn't matter what the game looks like. Top 3D game companies entice new users with exciting screenshots of their games prior to release. They spend millions getting the art style and graphics right. To suggest that how a virtual world looks has no baring and is a secondary concern is simply wrong. Forgetting any perceived inconvenience to Merchants, how new users perceive Secondlife is of absolute concern, now and for the future. The super-duper high churnover is indicative or something. If there's a shadow, there's something casting that shadow - and junk is casting a dark shadow over Secondlife. Perhaps the problem is that very few Lindens actually use Secondlife so they don't know or care what it looks like. They don't think it matters, but it does ! How things LOOK is of primary importance.

Madeliefste, Actually I think Minecraft is beautiful because everything is of a kind, it all belongs to that world, it has a consistency and a beauty to it, nothing clashes with anything else in style or execution etc Minecraft is beautiful because of it's visual unity and that's part of what makes it successful

Chelsea, nearly 2 years ago I suggested and supported the idea of listing fees to reduce the amount of clutter and junk building up at the Martplace And 2 years ago I said SL will not and cannot grow in these circumstances and I'm very sad to say it but I was right. The grid is smaller, concurrency is less, user hours less etc The SUPERABUNDANCE of junk IS a problem and IS damaging the growth and popularity of Secondlife Not a popular opinion, not even considered a problem, but it's true none the less. The SUPERABUNDANCE of junk is hurting Secondlife and I'm not happy about it:matte-motes-crying:

Darius, This is clearly a sensitive issue that needs to be discussed and I would call it wisdom to post as an alt Secondlife can be a savage and cruel working environment and I'm just being prudent I'm part of this community too and my ideas and voice might be different from the majority but it doesn't mean I should say nothing It would be cowardly and lazy of me not to share my concerns for the future of SL

Josh I hear what you are saying and it's definitely giving me food for thought. I like to think I'm flexible in the way I think and I can accomodate lots of different ideas to formulate my own position There are some great freebies out there. The essence of my OP is that the balance has been lost in favour of freebies and (dare I say it) junk items Not all freebies are junk, but when there's too much of something, a SUPERABUNDANCE, it becomes spam and detrimental to everybody's experience of SL

So, to me, if LL can't create an algorythm that properly ranks things in the interests of all parties, then they should not allow freebies, period. All the reasoning for freebies on the marketplace can't out way sustainability, which should "ALWAYS" overrided "CHARITY". If things are not sustainable, there can be no charity, as there will be no world or users to give the charity. Nicely put Medhue

Deej Thank you for sharing your experience it was interesting :matte-motes-big-grin:

As you may have noticed Darrius, I'm not whispering in the shadows JUNK - 'If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and goes quack , it's a duck'

Chelsea, what you should ask yourself is : If we have 16000 sign ups a day, where are they all ? How come concurrency figures have been the same for the last 2 years and slipping ? How come the grid is shrinking ? we lose sims every month If we forget Tier costs as the biggest factor in regards to lack of growth and stagnancy, Number 2 on the list of reason why 16000 people a day log off and never come back, is the fact that SL doesn't look engaging enough and it doesn't look engaging enough because of one thing - JUNK, junk, junk 16000 people a day are interested enough in this virtual world to register, why do they not stay ? It's either because 16000 are too stupid to handle the interface - which they're not - or they see stuff that they don't like Human beings are visual creatures, it's our strongest perception of the world around us. Secondlife just does not look good enough and it is the junk that is driving them away 'Denial ain't just a river in Egypt' Mark Twain

Mickey, what I want is for Secondlife to succeed and prosper and I don't see that happening when the world is overwhelmed with junk, free or otherwise There have been several possible good solutions in the thread such as separate areas for junk and freebies, listing fees, mechanisms to remove stale content, premium account only to sell at the marketplace etc Junk and freebies, which are effectively product spam, is a real issue that is damaging the Secondlife brand and preventing growth

Qwalyphi, that's because they just leave in disgust wondering why people bother with SL

Mickey, almost every keyword in every area is infected. The marketplace is dominated by free demos, junky freebies, 1L$, 10L$ trash, from page 1 onwards in every area. What other e-commerce site or RL retail shop would allow their most important shelf space/pages to be taken up with , what is basically, cheap junk ?

I wonder how long people would play World of Warcraft if they got a mount and epic armor right after logging in Ishatara, that's a very interesting and pertinent observation

I think, its the combination of full perm + freebies/cheapies = people endlessly trying very hard to resell tired old freebies/cheapies. As long as there is potentially pennies to earn they will each play merchant Endless loops of reselling bury all else given enough time QFT When I say freebies I also mean cheap low quality junk

16 thousand sign ups a day - fantastic achievement 15 thousand nine hundred and ninety nine walk away from Secondlife, we don't appear to even be retaining 1 user per day .. Concurrency proves this, SL is totally flat and slipping 16 thousand people a day are walking away because SL does not look cool enough to retain their interest. There are dozens of computer games with millions of users which are far more complex than SL. If it's beautiful and compelling enough people make the effort needed to acclimatize to the new But and here's the biggy and I'm going to say it again because it has to be said : Secondlife is drowning in junk and poor quality content and the SUPERABUNDANCE of said JUNK in the marketplace is to blame. Linden Lab should stop pretending that the massive AWESOME amount of junk is having no effect. They are pushing everyone to the marketplace which is full of junk. So people see junk, they buy junk, they download junk, they use junk Let's be real let's STOP prentending............ ' You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear'. Junk in, Junk out Denial is not just a river in Egypt Mark Twain

Jaidyn, Most quality merchants are to busy trying to stay a float and swim through a sea of junk. If you can provide a service that helps them rise above the clutter and dross and gain visibilty, you will succeed How will you help us rise above the noise and junk ?

Linden Lab are working hard to improve retention rates, doing this that and the other. Improving signup numbers, making it easier and more fun etc, etc But they are overlooking one of the most obvious reason why retention rates are poor - Freebies and the SUPERABUNDANCE of low quality content that dominate the marketplace and consequently dominate the world And what's the problem with low quality content ? It don't look so good Which means Secondlife don't look so good There's is loads of brilliant content in Secondlife, amazing creators, incredible products - swamped, drowned out, mobbed by a plethra of dross and currently the Marketplace enables this smothering of the good stuff The zero cost to market in Secondlife is both an amazing thing and a destructive thing. The SUPERABUNDANCE of anything is dangerous - The equation is simple, the bad is driving out the good Secondlife retention rates will NOT improve when freebies and low quality JUNK dominate the visual look of the marketplace and the world If Secondlife is to attract and retain new and existing customers it needs to LOOK BETTER, it needs to look more attractive to attract. The Lab can do a hundred good things but unless they address the massive overwhelming SUPERABUNDANCE of dross Secondlife will never attract and RETAIN. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt Mark Twain

Currently it is less expensive to have a 0L or 1L item on top of search than buying a feature ad QFT It's beyond a joke. I ask you , What other e-commerce site or RL retail shop allows the lowest price products and free products of the lowest quality, to dominate the most important pages, or take up the most important shelf space ? Good Grief !!

0L$, 1L$ and 10L$ products are choking the relevant and important first few pages for lots of products at the Marketplace I'm constantly amazed that LL would prefer that the cheap rubbish comes up first rather than the good stuff. Wouldn't it be in LL's and SL's better interest to show off the great creators and great content at the marketplace. I utilise 4 full sims for content sales and visibility at the marketplace is important. But it seems that LL would rather promote 0L$, 1L$ and 10L$ products rather than products that actually make a profit and help creators maintain their sims. Let's not forget that land is LL's main source of revenue. Sim owners help LL make their 75-100million USD revenue per year Perhaps the time has come for me to drop 2 full sims. That would be $600 USD a month less for Linden Lab and a loss of $7200 USD each year. ok, let's have a little bit of maths. How much are my 2 full sims worth to LL ? So at 5% commission at the Marketplace. How many sales of 0L$, 1L$, 10L$ rubbish products will they have to sell to make up the $7200 USD revenue lost per year ? 5% commission of 0L$ is how much ??? ummmmm that's nada L$, Zero, nothing. 5% commission of 1L$ is how much ??? .05L$ Woohooo now we're cooking. 5% commission of 10L$ is how much ??? 1/2 a L$ YAY !! Really worth having that in the catalogue. 250 L$ = 1 USD (approx) So LL need to sell 500 10L$ product to gather 1 USD at 5% commission So to make up for the 2 full sims I'm going to drop if something isn't done about this soon LL will need to sell 3,600,000 10L$ products. 3.6 million 10L$ products to equal the loss of my 2 full sims Maybe I should drop all 4 sims and just list at the marketplace - that would be a loss of $14400 USD per year for LL but would save me $14400 per year ! hmmmmm maybe I'm doing this all wrong Do LL know which side of the bread the butter is on ?

You are correct Sally The important first few pages for almost every product and keyword search, when searching Relevant, are awash with horrible cheap 10L$, 1 L$ and 0L$ dross On top of the cheap dross we have a SUPERABUNDANCE of 0L$ demo products choking the first several pages of relevant search Shoppers are lazy and most people search via relevance and rarely search in specific categories, new, highest price etc 0L$ , 1L$ , 10L$ stuff should not appear for relevance at all. It's bad for business and bad for Secondlife. It helps propagate rubbish content which does not reflect well on anybody or anything