Toysoldier Thor

Dear Brooke (not the generic "Commerce Team" group name) There has been a lot of bad blood that has built your between your team and the Merchant community. Walls have been erected since early 2011 between your team and all of us Merchants that are your #1 userbase / customers. There are countless examples and inceidents that have raised these walls higher and higher between you and us. But what quickly can break all these walls down and bring our two critical teams together again is two establish a frequent, fully open, and honest two-way communications between you & your team and us in the Merchant community. It has to be Frequent - I am suggesting weekly at minimum. Maybe even 2 a week - one early day SLT (like 9am slt) and one late day SLT (like 4pm slt). This would fit your normal business hours windows and allow a wider range of merchants to attend one or the other. It has to be frequent to ensure that no issues that are occuring get pent up. It has to be frequent to begin to establish a business bonding between our two groups. It has to be frequent to allow the backlog of initial ideas to flow. with a large window of communications. It has to be Open & Honest - You surely know we are not lacking on being open and honest. But if these meetings will succeed and a relation re-establish between us... you and your team has to be open and honest with us. Remember that LL's MP is a monopoly - you have no business secrets to hide from us. We the Merchants start feeling your team is showing up and engaging and willing to share whats going on INSIDE your team... you will go a long way to establish trust and willingness from us to want to be a partner with your team. It has to be Two-Way - Brooke, you team and the Merchants of SL have common interests.... we both want the MP to succed, grow, and be a solid, trusting, effective product distribution and sales tool. AND... as the actual users of your MP, we know what we need from the MP to make it as effective as possible. You and your team needs to listen to our ideas and make priorities from the top needs we have from MP. We know LL puts requirements on MP for you to deliver as well. You tell us what yours are and we will tell you what ours are. But we want to see proof from your team that you will be working on our priorities. So Brooke, I am suggesting your team go to the SecondLife User Group wiki.... http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:User_Groups And select one (hopefully two) times a week from the calendar and establish the MARKETPLACE User Group. I would suggest that you and Dakota and even someone else from the MP devlopment team also show up for these meeting. If you have not attended one of the other weekly LL user group meetings, I would recommend you attend one - like tomorrow's at 4pm slt. See how its conducted. See how the flow goes. AND HERE IS WHAT US MERCHANTS WILL DO OUR DARN BEST TO DO FOR YOUR TEAM AT THESE MEETINGS We will bring flowers to the meeting and as much has we have a long pent up level of frustration... We will promise to behave. IF you feel that the attending merchants have transitioned to a RUDE BEHAVIOR... you can openly call us out on it and ask us to stop with the emotion. We in turn can in turn openly remind you if we feel you are not abiding by the "open two-way rules". I would also suggest as an amazing kickup of the first meeting that Rodvik make an appearance. I know it sounds silly but I truly do think it adds credability to the meetings for both sides. CONCLUSION.... Brooke.... lets be business partners and resolve these issues between our teams. Respond to this posting as Brooke.

wow that took a lot of work but i made it. But only 2 ppl here. Where is everyone else?

Knowl Paine wrote: Several months ago, there was a discussion about creating a sort of better business bureau for SL Merchants. The idea was met with mixed replies, some for ,some against. It is the fault of Merchants, if they are not organized, and working collectively. There should be Official Merchant Groups, they should have weekly meetings Inworld. Recognize top sellers for their accomplishments, this is business, it's nothing personal. yeah Knowl, it has been talked about but I know from many rounds of this idea over the years that it wont fly. I would prefer it stay simple and if the Commerce Team met frequently enoughh and was willing to openly and actively engage with us in the same manner that I have seen the Lindens from other User Groups, just the sheer frequency and openess alone will encourage the active Merchants - big or small - to also participate on a regular basis. Keep it Simple and the Commerce Team committing to listen and take our ideas serious. That is my thought

Iwould have to say that among all the concerns the merchants on this forum have is the complete lack of Merchants input, feedback, suggestions to improve the MP and an unhealthy closed communications block between the Commerce Team and the Merchants. Rodvik, if there is one aspect you could influence is that the Commerce Team provide what all your other LL teams provide.... Weekly User Group meetings with the Merchants. From these meetings, I think alot of other problems could be resolved and Merchant concerns addressed simply because we can talk to Commerce Team and work together on what they are doing with MP. Is this possible? and if so, what would the Commerce Team want from us?

Rodvik Linden wrote: Hey folks, just dropping a note to let you know I have read the thread. The team reads the boards every day so they asked me to pop in to acknowledge that they read the boards and I have also read this thread. I appreciate the feature requests and bug notifications in particular. For sure we can up the tempo of communiation in blog posts and notifcations to upcomig changes & fixes. We remain commited to our merchant community and I appreciate you taking the time to write down what you would like to see in the future for SL. Thank you Rodvik. That is all we ask is to be heard by you and to help us improve the Marketplace that only benefits you, the Merchants, and both our customers. How would you like to collect our concerns?

Faye Feldragonne wrote: This is from 08, but it's worth a read about virtual goods and the law. If a player in a MMOG were to accumulate a large amount of in-game currency (or special items) and then lose it through another player’s fraudulent actions, was anything actually lost? WOW... that was a VERY INTERESTING READ ! And SecondLife is even mentioned in the detailed discussion. Thanks for sharing that.

I agree as well that no Merchant really has the means nor would it be of interest to most Merchants that they take the legal sword up. Nor have I ever stated that they should. In fact I already posted previously what I said just now. But if there is an entrenchment belief in the community and moreso with Rodvik and the Commerce Team that $L are not real currency and have no value and we at LL have even covered our butts to officially tell you it has no value.... then it give the Commerce Team an easy out whenever their many changes directly impact a Merchants EARNED $L account to do what they clearly are doing now..... ^shrugs^ and state to the merchant community .... "well sorry about your loss from our boo boo" and then point their finger to the TOS that you really didnt lose anything of value nor are we responsible for what ever you did lose. I have in no way threatened Rodvik in anyway because of this. How can I or any Merchant honestly "threaten" Rodvik or LL? If they and their lawyers truly beleive they are in the right and their position on the true valuation and governance of the $L currency is accurate, then why would he care if we are discussing if $L currency has value or not? If he would rather it not be discussed and its generally ONLY being discussed now because Merchants want to point out that the failed / weak practices and management of the MP is causing RL losses to Merchants... one would think a CEO of a company would want to **bleep** this whole issue in the behind and do what any leader of a company should want to do - Sit down and listen to and understand the frustrations and concerns from this segment of his customers regarding one of his departments and a critical aspect of what makes SL successful (i.e. the main distribution of content into the SL grid). I dont even care if he would want to conduct this session as a BLOG he initiates on this SL Community that starts out with him saying "Merchants of SL... I have been hearing you have some real concerns with the Marketplace and how it is managed and run. I am aware of some of these issues but it is clear that maybe I am not aware of all the issues that truly are concerning you. I have talked to my Commerce Team management to get their perspective on the situation and why this team's respective Merchants community is frustrated. But now I would like to hear your concerns. As such, I invite any Merchants and even Customers of Marketplace to post your comments as to the list of your concerns. I want to assure you that I will be reading all the comments and that I will also be asking a member of my staff to develop a list of the concerns that I am sure you all are more than willing to share with me. After 1 week, I will ask my staff to post a followup to my Blog with the top 5 - 10 concerns (that was determined by the frequency and overall popularity of the concerns among all the comments from you). I will ask you all if myself and LL captured your top concern accurately. I will then promise the community that I will instruct my team to come up with an action plan for each of the concerns and come back to you within 60 days with how I and my management team will address your concerns. In conclusion... I want to tell you that maybe LL has not paid enough attention on the concerns by this segment of the SL community but you have my attention now. And I promise to come up with a plan to address your concerns because I do fully understand that without a healthy Merchant / Creator community - there is no SL. And we cannot have that. signed <Toy wishing it was Rodvik that blogged this>

Innula Zenovka wrote: Unless you're seriously expecting Rodvik to say, "Good heavens! You've persuaded me that the L$ is, in fact, a form of currency. I shall direct my legal department to rewrite Section 5 of the ToS forthwith, in the hope we can thus stay under the radar of government regulators", which seems a bit fanciful, to my mind the only thing that's going to persuade LL that the L$ is, in fact, a form of currency would be a judicial ruling to that effect. Making claims is one thing. Persuading a court to enforce them is quite a different kettle of fish. Has anyone, in fact, sought profession advice from a competent attorney about the likelihood of a court being persuaded to set aside the ToS in this respect? It seems to me rather a specialist area of the law, I have to say. In all honesty... what Merchant has the financial capability to expend that much $ to prove this? And also, its moreso a factor that Rodvik would just want this to stay quiet so that it never even comes up as a challenge - either legally or because of regulatory review. And for the Merchants - most of whom do understand that regardless what LL's TOS states knows full well that $L has actual value - its not as big a deal for us if LL or the outside world officially recognize it or not.... we Merchants simply want Rodvik and LL to provde a level of service with the understanding that they are dealing with systems that their customers use to generate RL incomes from these $L tokens. As such, IF ... IF... Rodvik would rather that this topic is not even discussed... the solution is so very very simple..... listen to the concerns from the Merchants and address their frustrations and concerns and provide a healthy trusted reasonable MP service to the Merchants so that there is no reason at all for Merchants to bring up the topic. Its really quite simple.

PPS... You may or may not be right about Rodivk's reaction to the thread... but the entire topic of the value of the $L is a critical aspect IMHO to getting Rodvik's attention as much as the long laundry list of other issues that needs to be addressed within the Commerce Team. Getting the point across and having Rodvik realize that others are realizing that LL cannot hide behind a TOS statement that the $L is simply a game token without value is a critical point that will scare Rodvik more than anything else. Why? Because if the $L has proven value and if there is enough shouting about it on the open threads that LL is trying to pretend that their practice of running a virtual economy using a $L currency that can actually be exchanged for true $US currency as not only endorsed by LL but actually promoted and run by LL.... enough RL attention might be drawn to this that LL would have to deal with RL litigation and Government scrutiny as to "what is LL doing here and maybe these so-called virtual currencies need to be better regulated". We Merchants have ZERO power to get Rodviks attention since we know, LL Commerce Team knows, and Rodvik knows that the MP is the only game in town and all the complaining and conerns we have wont change the fact that we will continue to use this poorly run untrusted MP until SL shuts it down. BUT... Rodvik absolutely does not want to draw the attention of government regulators that find out that LL is running a virtual currency that has real value and that poor LL practices are causing potential fraudulent activities to happen due to negligence on the part of his staff. i.e. LL could not hide behind the argument in the TOS that "any losses we incur - we are not liable for it" even if it means we put in poorly developed and inadequately audited controls on the financial systems that cause a LL customer to have his/her lindens taken without concent or not receive lindens for sales made. So ... I would completely disagree with you that the "does $L have value or not" debate in the SLU thread was only a distraction that would have made Rodvik move on to another thread. It was likely one of the only reasons he is likely reading the thread even with the FUD and thread stomping that the SLU regulars are doing to the thread.

Couldbe Yue wrote: and one last thing whilst I'm still on my high horse.. I've only been in sl since 2006, during that time I've lived through VAT, openspace, adult content, XSL/SLM and countless other dramas where the emotional pitch has been borderline hysteric and threats of lawsuits and leaving have been rife. Adult content was an absolute classic for that, countless people threatened to leave and you know what? I still see them around. Those threats are empty and do nothing to support any case. Reasoned argument (as with your LM suggestion Toy) goes further. Disregarding your first posting as I know you didnt like me putting the SLU thread thug regulars in a bad light..... So Couldbe, Could you please point out where any one of us Merchants on this thread as well as those on the SLU thread threatened in ANY WAY to pull up stakes and leave? If this was such a strong message you read in the SLU thread or this one, you should have no problem at all finding at least 2 examples where any one of us that have been trying to get Rodvik to take notice of the fiasco that he has allowed to continue in the Commerce Team. It sorta proves that you were so tied into the emotions of the thread with the SLU that you failed to notice that it was the SLU Thread Thugs that constantly threw up the same lame argument that I have always heard from the LL CheerLeaders over all these years..... "If you really hate MP and the Commece Team so much then just leave! - Only Sell in-world" One of the most stupid and ignorant responses that a LL FonBoy seems to keep using. Why? Because they know full well as do all of us responsible Merchants of SL that LL's MP is a monopoly and as much as we hate the incompetance that is running MP and the lack of customer support and the constant bugs that impacts sales and take $L from our accounts without notice and unauthorized..... as Pamela has said many times and almost all Merchants agree "A BROKEN MP IS STILL BETTER THAN NO MP" I suspect you will not be able to meet my challenge and find that clear statement from any one of us that said we will leave if Rodvik doesnt talk to us. Maybe you should go back to the SLU thread and be less sympathetic to the childish Thread Thugs who's only purpoose is to thump their chests and try to prove to the other regulars that they know better than any non-regular SLU member. While I am still on my high horse... Ask yourself this Couldbe.... Why would I, Darrius, Dart, Luna, and many others in the Merchant community go through so much trouble and take so much time and endure so many arrows from thread goofs to take up a cause simply for the purpose of wanting to leave MP? why? I can tell you as a fact that I would not waste my time and effort for any cause that I did not care about and that I had no care for its future and that I could just as easily abandon. Unlike the SLU Thread Thugs that do not care about MP (as one of them have stated many times in the SLU thread) and would rather take up their valuable time disrupting other's causes, we do care and that is why we take the time.

provide steps / details on how to use the IRC? and how to get ready to help you at 4pm tomorrow. I might get others to help if i can get clear instructions

are these network changes related to what we discovered about sim lag during heavy sim event? http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Increase-in-Instant-SIM-LAG-amp-Crashes-During-Larger-Events/td-p/1683765 I would love to help but i do not know about this IRC stuff. is there a slurl that we can go to in adititi tomorrow at 4pm slt?

Luna Bliss wrote: Well Toy, regarding the SLUniverse forum I think it's an alpha male thing - you have to go through this procedure to be accepted I've noticed. As a male especially you can't act like you know anything till you've been pissed on a bit, kind of like what my dog used to do in the yard to mark his territory. Many of them are more disappointed in LL than even we are - they've pretty much given up. I more talk to those who used to participate there and gave up on SL totally, leaving long ago for other grids or just quitting virtual worlds altogether. They were fighting against you, and most were not really fighting FOR SL. They do show respect to Rodvik when he appears in the forum though, well most do anyway, but many trash him on the forum and in other venues due to their disappointment in the management of SL. Thanks Luna.... but when it come to Child Psychology (like what one needs when dealing with the teenaged regulars on SLU) I am very familiar with what was going on in that thread with the marauding hordes. And you are right, a couple of the kids that showed up on the thread were the informal leaders among their little SLU gang and want to show the gang that they can kick around an SLU new-comer. Their childish behavior was very predictable and easy to spot. I am sure the rest of you know who the gang leaders were too. You may also have realized that I played them like a fiddle. I tore them a new hole in business logic. When they quickly realized that their lame SL business logic was bested by me, they quickly resorted to their next level of defence (because they were made to look stupid by me in front of their gang). If you take a read, they escalated to a typical Teen Behavior response... they started with a group campaign of foul language, aggresive vocal attacks, and derogatory images. It was at that point in the thread that I knew I had them on the run - and they didnt even know it. When you have a "bully teen" in the group at this point, he really badly wants his confronting target to escalate and engage in an equal and escalated level of counter-attack in hopes that his gang will be inspired to come to his defence for a gang beating of which they can all enjoy the victory and he can thump his chest in front of his gang how he lead his group into battle and the gang won. As such, that is when I took him to a place these bullies didnt want me to take them.... I pointed out their immaturity and then slapped them emotionally in the face by thanking them for helping me accomplish my goal.... by creating a ton of interest in the thread that Rodvik cant help but notice". This ticked them off royally and they escalated their personal attacks on me.... but as you noticed I stopped posting completely. These lil teen bullies must have been steaming mad that I abandoned their hi-jacked thread. Read their last few posts AND... in the end.... it was fun to manipulate the lil Teen Bullies into generating so much attention on this thread and its TOPIC TITLE that you created Luna and that stayed on the top of the busiest forum thread for almost 2 days. Yeah - maybe Rodvik wont respond - but he and/or some of the senior LL management likely noticed. So, I dont have any tar and feathers to pick off. If I wanted to go to battle with them - I could have easily made them all look like the fools they are, but then I would have given up my primary objective for the thread. I have bigger fish to fry than to kick a bunch of SLU kids around the forum. Thats like kicking a kitten - no challenge and no fun.

Spica Inventor wrote: http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/77023-sl-marketplace-cheating-merchants.html#... My first time over there. The L.L. ministry of propaganda agents where pretty easy to identify weren't they? ;-) Ohh I know.... the little respect I had for the SL Universe evaporated after the thread you pointed out. As you all can read for yourself on the thread - its infested with immature hords of LL Fanboys. You cant even have a good healthy conversation there. But it is now clear why Rodvik hangs his hat there since its likely lined with a large tribe of LL defenders. But I will say - it does put SLU's reputation into perspective and it does say something that Rodvik participates actively at SLU and never makes any appearances in the actual SL Forum threads that are owned and run and official endorsed by LL. Pretty sad situation.

I like the theory. And yes... with LL's past love for the use of UDP some time during the inception of the SL architecture, this could be a very likely theory. I know that smarter LL Engineers are now realizing the UDP was a bad protocol to include in the architecture for aspects of the SL design where a reliable and acknowledged conversation was critical all along. They are actually deep in the works now of switching from UDP to TCP (and yes - the HTTP application protocol above TCP). But it does still surprise me that the initial system architects at the time believed UDP was the way to go. I guess they were too short-sighted in their scope of just how big SL could eventually become. That is too bad. It would be akin to an architect back in the 80's saying "who would ever need more than 640K of RAM on a PC?". Unfortunately, none of this helpe people like Faye. But Darrius.... you didnt continue to provide a theory on the follow on questions as to why LL had nothing at their disposal to recover. Why does LL not have any forms of effective backup of the Asset Server? Even if they had an offline Asset DB that is about 1 day and 1 week old from current where LL Staff could go to and recover assets from the DB and restore them back into the production Asset Server? Old / Outdated assets for a users inventory is better than no inventory at all. And.... why was her assets not on the Beta Adititi grid which I understand only copies from prod once a week? Bad timing that her assets were wiped and the backup to Adititi happened on the same day? And... finally, why could LL not get some of at least the finished assets from MP? Yes she would have lost all her input materials she bought - but - at least she would have the full perms of the selling assets. Just some questions as we patiently wait for Rodvik to post on this thread and tell us that he would love the opportunity to meet with us and have a good two-way dialog.

@Faye, With regard to your current strategy in light of the mass destruction of your business with no recovery ability by LL, I am a bit puzzled why you would reduce your price on MP and plan to shut it down. If you have decided to end any plans to restore an active SL business, why not simply leave all your content on MP at its original price and simply leave it selling on MP indefinitely? Just let your products continue to sell until market demand & time slowly reduce your sales to zero. They would be stale content in that you will not be updating the content - so what? If a customer finds your product and wants to buy your product - even if its 3 years from now - let them buy it. Your avatar is still alive and you can still respond to any customer calls and help them if you are able to. If not, simply tell your customer "due to a major LL failure - I am unable to assist you on this request". If they dont like it... ohh well... you really dont have a business to maintain anyways. You might want to place a small comment on each of your items explaining the situation you were put in because LL lost your inworld content so "be warned". In fact, here is what also doesnt make sense, can you not regain your assets from the MP DD database? At least you have the full perm copy of the content you are selling on MP. But I surely would not take a strategy of actively closing your MP - let them all sit there and let them all collect as much revenue as you can from MP until they sell no more.

What still boggles my mind and is simply not registering with my comprehension of the how instant and absolute your loss could be and LL had absolutely ZERO CAPABILITY to recover these specific lost assets??? I might ask Sassy as I bet she would know the details as to why but havent seen much of her - so Darrius or someone else in this forum with some stronger understanding of LL's SL architecture - can you explain to me how this scenario Faye is describing could be surgical in nature and so utterly absolute to the point that LL had NO ABILITY to restore/recover? Again - this is what Faye said happened to her in August: Over the years I've lost items here and there with rolling restarts, or mysterious disappearances, but this wasn't one item, and as time went on, I realized it wasn't just my building folder (everything I make clothing with other than Photoshop imports), but a weeding out of every singe folder. It was as if I'd moved from my main avatar to some low inventory alt. So someone try to explain to me that some - not all - of Fayes inventory went poof. Then explain how LL had no backup of her assets - especially in light that the impact from this LL faux pas meant the complete destruction of a LL Customer's entire business. And also in light that any normal person would think LL would take extra effort to restore, not only because its the right thing to do to service a customer but also to get her business back up and running. A healthy running Merchant business means she conitnues to sell on MP and generate more MP SINK for LL - not to mention she continues to stay as a premium SL customer in good standing. Then explain to me how these assets could also have been POOFED so quickly from the Adititi Beta grid as well? So if LL had no abilities to recover data from something so severely Customer Impacting as Faye has described, what does it tell you about the overall fragility of the entire SL Grid to be corrupted & lost with no abilities from LL to recover? Anyone with tech deep smarts on SL's design? Help my mind grasp the logic.

Hello & Good Morning Faye, I guess your story really bothered me enough that it bounced around in my head last night. I woke up this morning with an idea which is a real long shot since it has been so long since this happened and since I would have to assume the LL Support staff already suggested this idea to you as a last ditch effort to salvage at least SOME of your creations / business from LL's failed untrusting asset database... But its worth a shot to just go check... Did you go log into Aditit (the SL beta grid) and see if any of your valuable business assets are still in your inventory over there? Remember that I believe each week, LL makes a copy of every Avatar's inventory and places it on Adititi so that any Avatar that wants to do some beta testing, can go there and play with a copy of any of their inventory without it damaging the main grid and using TRULY ZERO VALUE $L Tokens. Since Mesh came out, I frequently log into Adititi to upload me mesh model and look at it and make corrections and upload a few times until I am happy with how it looks on the grid. THEN I upload the final model on the main grid when I know it will look the way I want. I see all my content from the main grid in my Adititi avatar - except its a week old. If you would have done this a day or two after you lost it on the main grid then the chance of your content being on the Beta grid would have been excellent. You could either download the important files (textures sculpts etc.) or more importantly you could have asked LL Support to grab a copy of you r inventory from Adititi and placed it back onto the main grid. It might be too late now but since your loss was a corruption of the asset server, a wild luck might be that the same corruption might have prevented your content from being removed from the beta grid. Its just an idea..... but go take a look.

Faye, Before I go to bed... sorry I missed your post. THAT IS TERRIBLE.... and sadly this is the culture and utter arrogance and lack of customer support within LL. Sadly I do not think Rodvik is really much different - he has long since passed the 100 day NOOB ticket so his influence on the company to change the focus and be more customer service driven should have been noticed. It hasnt. In fact it appears he is so focus on creating new LL products for Apple that he just hopes SL will survive long enough for his other products to take over. He has gagged the JIRA so that the new STEAM players do not see just how bug ridden and ugly LL is operating inside. He has placed internal gag orders within LL as well. Seems the Commerce Team is the most loyal to that order. So.... sadly Faye, how they treated you fall completely in line with their TOS that they fully survive on..... "If we screwed up and you lose it all on our account - sorry about that now shut up and try again". Maybe Rodvik is reading these posts but rumour has it he would rather read from the insanity at SLU. He doesnt even believe in reading posts from his own company's forums. But... sorry again Faye for all the losses LL has incurred upon you !

What is ironic - is that one would think the feeling among the Merchant community as a whole would see and experience what most of us in the SL Forums have known and been frustrated about for so long... yet I discovered on the SLU that there are still a lot of SL residents in an utter sense of naive bliss that things are not that bad and $L are only worthless tokens with no value! This is coming from actual MERCHANTS! Can you believe a Merchant would say that $L has no value? So like... then why are they merchants?? Anyway... I know Ela that its an uphill battle to speak with Rodvik but if that is what some of us merchants want.... to climb the the mount and speak to the voice of God to hear that he dont care... then I guess the question that Darrius was asking... why would you be against it? If you are not for it... it wouldnt hurt you by us wanting to bring the issue to his attention. Thats more of what he was saying. Its 2am - time for bed!! Night to all... and I extend my hand and shake yours Ela

i do agree though that if the merchants that want to make a stab at TRYING to get a time to actually know rodvik heard our concerns... and then even if he says "thanks for telling me but it is what it is"... at least we know that right from Rodvik... that he doesnt care about the MP and that he fully understands that his team is not well suited to grow and run a Marketplace but its all he wants to do about it. I guess I am a pitbull on progress and I personally cannot stand incompetance and ineffective solutions, systems, or people. but at least if I hear it from the CEO of the company that he really does not care about MP and ecommerce in SL... then i can say "i tried".

Ela Talaj wrote: Darrius, with all due respect, I don't think you understood my post. Actually Darrius... I think you might have mis read her posting. Read it again.

Porky Gorky wrote: Pamela Galli wrote: As I have said many times: A horribly botched marketplace is better than no marketplace. Well seeing as you generate profit from the marketplace and it is a significant source of income for you then I can completely see why you hold that opinion. I generate sales from it too. In fact 2 of my businesses are run purely on the MP without any inworld presence. But putting profits aside, I am very much apposed to the Marketplace in principle. Websites like SL Exchange and SL Boutique used to support the sale of inworld content. The focus for merchants back then was designing and developing engaging inworld shopping experiences with the web based sales interfaces playing a minor role in the majority of commercial enterprises. Today that philosophy has completely changed and it seems that inworld stores are just there to support the sales of virtual content on a 2d website, and not a very good website either. It is systematically diminishing the presence of commercial enterprise and ingenuity inworld. There was a time when presentation was key in SL. The way you presented creations within your 3D space was key to success. It resulted in thousands of interesting and engaging plots and projects, all designed to draw the customer in and achieve a sale. This is something that the MP is destroying and LL are primarily to blame by driving business off of the grid and onto a website. We have lost a huge chunk of what SL used to be thanks to the development of the marketplace. Yoru last post is a full thought to consider - I am not saying I agree that it would result in a strategic benefit - but its a model to consider. Like Porky said, I am in the exact position as him. I also do understand Pamela that if Rodvik resolved the problem by closing the MP it would hurt you and a lot of us Merchants immediately and in fact - some permanently. But, IF (this is a big IF) Rodvik were to consider closing MP to wash his hands of all the problems and grief and consumed LL resources, there is both positive and clear neegatives to this strategy. ON THE PROS: Yes, closing the MP would completely force all Merchants to move their sales inworld. For those merchants that survive the mass migration back to inworld only sales, it would surely spike inworld land usage up significantly. This in turn would possibly slow down the constant slide of abandoned sims inworld. It wuold have to - at least short term. It would also put 5% more sales volume back into the Merchant's hands since LL cannot collect commissions on inworld sales anymore. NOW THE CONS: But lets look at the big picture... first of all, if we could turn back the clock before LL decided to take over and massively grow xstreet to what it is now, then right now maybe SL's overall health would be far better now. BUT.... shutting down MP would be akin to Pandora's Box. LL simply could not revert back to a no-MP solution. Like it or not but the vast majority of SL residents have spoken with their $L wallets ... they want to buy on MP and not as much inworld. Too many conveniences for the customer vs. inworld (we know all the reasons). Taking that away from the SL residents would cause a HUGEEE backlash even if there was a magical way to get 10's of thousands of merchants to instantly revert back to inworld only sales. It would likely further encourage residents to migrate to other grids. Then ther is the sheer logistics and tsunami sized impact closing MP would have on the SL economy. A lot of merchants are MP only and their sales are not great enough these days with the massive drop over the past few years of content pricing to afford a parcel of land to sell from. A good portion of Merchants wuold simply close up and abandon the idea of being a merchant anymore. Then even for those that survived the mirgration, we all know that the Inworld search is an utter disaster. Sales in MP are far more effective because as poor as search is in MP, its 100 fold better than inworld search for content to buy. And then there is the small matter that for LL losing a significant SINK that makes them a profit both in 5% commission sales and the Listing Enhancement fees (even better sales recently with the Commerce Teams self administered picking of Merchant pockets). I believe I read a recent blog posting that this is LL's 3rd largest SINK. So, exactly why would Rodvik decide to wipe out LL's 3rd largest sink? Soooooo Pamela, as much as it is a business strategy for Rodvik to consider and has some positives to breathing new life into the grid, I think the CONS far out-weigh the PROS and Rodvik would not seriously think of shutting it down. You have nothing to fear on losing MP. BUT ( there is always a But)..... There are other options Rodvik could considered as a strategy to address all the problems plaguing the LL Commerce Team and MP. Consider these options: OPTION #1: LL Partner with an External Vendor to outsource the MP operations & growth under LL's direction. By outsourcing, LL would immediately replace the current Commerce Team with a team with proven experience in ecommerce and hopefully with mature systems support & management (including proper code development and deployment). This team would be responsible for SLAs and customer service. LL can then hopefully take the existing Commerce Team and divert them into some other LL initiative.... not ecommerce. Maybe give them PATTERNS! OPTION #2: LL encourage 3rd Party ecommerce sites to return to SL - open the DD API - Gracefully slide out This would be hard to transition to but I think it would have the best overall value to Merchants and Customers. If this transition could somehow be orchestrated, competition is what is missing now and competition is in bad need ! Maybe - to add incentive for LL to gracefully bow out of the market, the agreement would be that LL get 1% of all sales transaction from all sales as compensation for the 3rd party vendors having usage access to the DD API or whatever delivery mechanism. OPTION #3: Rodvik could realize that MP poorly managed and decides to overhaul the commerce team. The easiest option for Rodvik to execute on IF he want to fix all the problems and get the Merchants and Customer back on side and happy with MP. It simply requires Rodvik wanting to clean up the team and address some of the fundamental concerns.... communications & deploying fixes and features that Merchant find important. Sadly, as simple an option as this is... its one that we all know to date that Rodvik has shown no interest in. OPTION #4: Do nothing and leave the Team do what they can and disregard any Merchant & Customer concerns The option that sadly we all should expect as we all have seen to date that Rodvik does not have ANY CARE about how the MP is operating or that merchants and customers are not happy. Just let the MP flounder in its direction like an un-anchored boat.

Actually Darrius, Ela's response to this thread was not a surprise to me at all. And as you have already noticed about her attitude on the other threads, she has taken more of a "Sympathetic to the Commerce Team" position. This has been Ela for as long as I have watched her postings here on the forum as well as inworld Merchant User Group chats. I do not know exactly why she has such a strong almost unwavering loyalty to the Commerce Team even during events where clearly the Commerce Team has royally screwed up. Its extremely rare if she is openly critical of them. I was told quietly the reason but I wont say. Anyway, because of her deep consistent position of defending Commerce Team at almost all cost and of course as you know I am the strongest YING to her YANG as an open critical of the team's many failings.... she dont like me too much and this thread was her opportunity to throw a dart at my initiative as well as defend the commerce team where possible. I dont mind... if Ela has her private reasons to make sure the right people see shes defending LL that is fine by me. And she is correct in that although it was pretty much a safe assumption that the vast majority of Merchants (and yes even Customers) of Marketplace would fully endorse the need for Rodvik to step forward and listen to our concerns about MP and the Commerce Team, I do not "officially" speak on behalf of all Merchant. So technically she is correct. Just thought it was a no-brainer assumption that all Merchants would like answers from Rodvik.

Ela Talaj wrote: Some concerns listed are certainly valid though I could've argued about others but I don't remember voting for you as Merchants representative to issue demands in anyone's name except for in your own. Did I miss the election day? Well if you are a Merchant that does not wish to have Rodvik step and listen to Merchant's concerns (what ever list the merchants wish to bring up) and have him explain why or explain how he will start addressing them... then I guess you are right - one cant assume ALL merchants would want this. I did believe I stated that I was just providing a small list and that if any other merchants wanted to throw up their own concerns they could. The idea of the request was to ask Rodvik to sit with us. But sorry if that is not something you wanted Merchants to do. Notice to Rodvik..... Not every Merchant wishes to sit with you and have you explain the conduct of your commerce team or the list of concerns.