Wayfinder Wishbringer

Rene: "I can't see how in future one can maintain a whole sim (for a Main store)....when people are shifting away from inworld shopping towards Marketplace. In the long run, I cna't see how LL comes out ahead on the income curve.....i would have thought Tier income from shops & SL businesses would be more in value than Marketplace commissions." Words of truth. What I have to wonder: how can everyone clearly see this... except Linden Lab? I posted the same thing earlier in this blog-- that with SL Marketplace Linden Lab is competing with and destroying their primary income source: in-world land. How do they not understand that? Mind you, that's fine with me. I don't own now and never intend to own their ridiculous $295, 15,000-prim, crippled-building-tools properties. My group does... in order for the group itself to function, but hanged if I'm going to spend Porche prices for poor and crippled performance. So bring on the Marketplace! LOL Darren: "Hi wayfinder just a small idea that may push sales have you actually designed your own website" Thanks for the feedback Darren. Here's how I view it though: In order for a website to be of benefit, people have to actually visit that website. And as I indicated above, only 27 people clicked out of 8,000 impressions. That's not exactly generating killer web traffic. I have an in-world store-- a large one in a well-trafficed area. I have several high-level products on SL Marketplace. I am running a 100,000 impression banner ad. If that't not enough to generate SL sales... then I seriously doubt adding a website to the mix is going to make any difference... especially since that website can't generate actual sales (all it can do is present a catalog, which they can purchase from yes... either my in-world store or SL Marketplace... where they've already been). What I have to consider here is that I have many merchant friends-- experienced merchants-- who are telling me that sales are way down. They've told me, repeatedly and consistently, that 2010 is one of the worst years they've ever had in SL sales. That is my experience... which is something considering I've introduced several high-level products over the last year or so. So my conclusion: despite the Linden Lab self-back-patting PR, inflated "transaction" claims (you just gave your friend 1,000 L$... HOOOOO.... "transaction"!)... SL isn't doing all that well. We know for a fact they lost 500+ sims from June to August of this year (no telling how many since then). They're doing so poorly they decided to remove their usage stats from the splash page. They've kicked EDU in the slats, foisted a truly lousy viewer on the grid, and basically thumbed their noses at experienced users (the ones paying the bills). They discard customer feedback and narcissistically do whatever they want to do... while disgruntled customers begrudgingly fund their egos. No wonder sales are down. That may sound a bit blunt and frank, but that's what I (and obviously many other people) see happening here. SL economy is tanking. This should be our busiest time of the year... and sales are no better than they were in July. I have to believe that there will be many, many merchants closing shop over this "sales" season... when they realize they can't even sell enough to pay rent any more... much less cash out.

I do say I like the easy-to-read demographics on the server page. Here's what I found: * In two days I have had 8,000 impressions appear (supposedly. Who knows?) * 27 people have actually clicked. That's an average of 1 click for every 296 impressions. Not impressive overall. Not terrible, but nothing to write home about. * Out of those 27 clicks, not one sale. That's okay. I can accept that. 27 clicks, not a large population on which to build a results evaluation. Still, one would think that out of 27 people who were interested enough in a product to actually click the banner... at least ONE might buy it. Especially since it is a killer product that outsells all my other products fourfold. It's cheap, it rocks... and not one person bought? Like I said, I can accept that. Let's see how many people click and buy over the next 2 weeks... and if the advertising proves worthwhile... or not. It will be an interesting experiment. But I do have to say that zero sales out of 8,000 impressions is not promising.

Well glad you're happy. I respect your opinion. But I have a couple of questions: 1) Did you buy an ad campaign? 2) Has that campaign produced any results? Because I'm tracking my $10.oo (cheap cheap) 100,000-impression campaign, featuring my most popular product... and it has yet to produce a single result.

Ticious: "When I got home, I tried again using Firefox and Safari and got the same horrible looking result I had in the first place. There should be a disclaimer in the initial post. The site only supports IE." Not meaning to contradict, but I accessed the site using Firefox, and it worked "fine"-- if one defines "fine" as "mass of first-semester web-student coding". I didn't have any trouble with actual access. It was with core concept, design and user interface; that was not due to the browser. I managed to sign up for a $10 test run (couldn't resist-- curiousity got the best of me. All I can say is this: at this point, with my ad running, I've noticed zero change in market activity (and just to be fair I decided to put my best foot forward and advertise my most popular product.) So thus far, not impressed.

B00tsy: "Glad that you understand karma from a business perspective." Exactly B00tsy. Whether we call it "karma" or "reaping what you sow" or simply "just desserts"... LL was warned and had it coming. They've been cautioned about the company driving customers to the point we would see open rebellion. I believe that's what we're seeing here. Now, LL may not believe in karma or similar concepts. But experience indicates that while consequence may be slow in coming... it does come eventually, in one way or another. LL sure seems to have kicked karma more than once over the years.

Here is something that I find VERY interesting: From a total sociological standpoint, what we are seeing here is, imo, a predictable and condemning development: Linden Lab has been doing things wrong for so long, have been self-focused for so long, have stabbed their customers in the back so many times... that it has gotten to the point that even when what they're doing isn't wrong... their customers still fume (me included). The simple truth is: there's nothing that is inherently wrong with Linden Lab selling banner ads. Yet almost every person here (with very few exceptions) is just ranting at Linden Lab (I think justifiably). What we are seeing here is just the opposite of a company that can do no wrong; we are seeing a very rare instance of a company that can do no right. People may not like the severe lack of professionlism in their website (and seriously, that website looks like it was put together by a first-semester student), we may not like that they don't accept PayPal (what is that all about?), and we certainly don't like the fact that this company doesn't seem to have the basic coding skills to make SEARCH work, get simple CHAT to function, or deliver a lousy group notice reliably... but despite all that, there's basically nothing wrong with banner ads. Yet people are angry with LL about this matter. There's an explanation for that: consequences for actions. After a while, people simply start distrusting every motive and action. And LL has nobody to blame for that... but themselves.

Sylvar: "What slays me about everything is the fact that LL is ignoring its residents. Without each and every person who logs in once a day, week, month, be it a creator, organizer, customer or explorer, Second Life would shut down. LL is not the reason that Second Life is amazing - we all are. When you give tools to a man, the man who carves the statue is the artist, not the one who made the tools available." Well said Sylvar... and echoes what others have been saying for years. Recently I watched a video in which some person (I justifiably forget his name) said, 'What we have to realize is that in the end game, this company belongs to Linden Lab and they can do whatever they want. It's their company." Now while that is technically true, what ever happend to "your world"? And does that mean they are not responsible to their customers... or can't be sued to the floor if they cross the line? (which they do, regularly). As you state Sylvar, we created this world. We are the artists. Bottom line, Linden Lab is an organization of techs and managers who provide us a chunk of bare grass and tools. This world is ours. Without us, this world fails and dies. The fact that Linden Lab doesn't seem to recognize that fact-- that they treat us as if we have no say at all in what goes on with this platform-- is just astounding. This has had severely negative repercussions on their grid. This grid is floundering. In the first five years I have operated my group, we have NEVER had difficulty filling land, filling shop space, or attracting people to events. Since October 2008 we had to cut back from eight sims to one, reduced our market space by 1/3 (because merchants simply aren't renting booths), and can barely get half a dozen people to attend events. This is still the same group. We do know how to operate a large group on SL... with 6 years of experience behind us. I ask other merchants on SL how they're doing and the answer is always the same: sales sux. Merchants are closing down booths everywhere. Why is this? Because despite repeated failures, Linden Lab is still ignoring their customers and doing flat whatever they want to do. Because this is a company that does not learn from its mistakes. Because this company disrespects and abuses its customers on a regular basis. Abuse your customers... lose your customers. Nuhai: "On a simular note, remember that if your avatar does get revoked that any inventory, land, etc. has NO value in real life... Any company may freeze a client account if there is non-payment or a payment dispute. That is just good business practice and one I expect Linden Lab follows." I appreciate your post Nuhai, and well-stated. Unfortunately however, quite inaccurate. Inventory and land both DO have RL value-- as evidenced that RL money can be paid for them. Also as evidenced that RL money has already been paid for them, and would have to be paid againt to replace them. That is RL value-- value that can be sued over if destroyed (that would be considered in RL law as vandilism, criminal negligence or malice). I fully agree that people who do not pay their bills should have their avatars put in "hibernation" so to speak. That makes sense. Then when the bill is paid, that avatar can be made available to them. That is what LL should be doing. That is not what happened in the two cases I mentioned above. It's also not just a matter of borked assets. In my example above I stated two examples (one of them very prominent) in which Linden Lab intentionally (and allegedly with malice) destroyed the assets of users... in one case wiping the entire inventory of a customer (thousands of US$ worth) over a lousy $20 past due bill... and another in which they callously and without any ethics whatsoever destroyed the work of thousands of people when they totally obliterated 5,000+ sims from their database... not even keeping archival copies. No Nuhai... this is a company lacking professional, ethical policy... and without excuse. Which is the whole point of what people are saying in this blog: customers have had enough and are now to the point of open rebellion... just as we've predicted for some time now. That is what we are seeing happen on this, and other blogs. Marx: "*snarky comment deleted by the original poster*" LOL. Been there, done that, and in response to the same entity. That gave me a chuckle for the day. Marx: "Truth be known, I would say that even some of the most popular brands in SL that have had sim-sized stores have never been entirely self-supporting - at least not consistently. And as the economy continues to flinch along, subsidizing one's labor of love out-of-pocket - or partially, at least - becomes more and more difficult to justify. Sims get sold off or closed, shops reduce in size." Absolute truth. Like I said above, just last month Elf Clan closed down 1/3 of our marketplace. We are not a small group. We are not an unknown group. Our traffic is good, our group is active. But despite the LL propaganda machine... sales simply are not what they once were. I know this for three reasons: 1. I'm a merchant with 5 businesses, and all 5 businesses have dropped in activity. 2. I'm a market owner with my finger on the pulse of how merchants are doing in that market. They're not doing well. 3. I have several experienced, professional merchant friends, and every one of them is saying their sales are down the tubes. Merchants are stating their after-Thanksgiving sales and pre-Christmas sales are abyssmal. In the past, Seasonal sales have typically created 70% of annual sales. Merchants rely on those sales to survive the rest of the year. But those sales aren't there, I don't care what PR Linden Lab puts out about "L$ exchanges". Why is this? Because LL has never recognized (intentionally I think) the differce between object-generated sales and user-to-user transfers. So... somone wins L$ at an event-- that's part of the "economy". Someone is given an L$ gift by a friend (which goes on all the time), that's part of the "economy". So someone gives a friend L$1000... that friends spends the L$1000... and Linden Lab counts that as L$2000 worth of transactions. Someone wins 5,000 at an event, spends that 5,000... Hoooo! 10,000 in "transactions". Someone buys L$ from an in-world supplier. They spend those L$. Double transaction, every time. Woohooo! Healthy economy! We're doing great!!!! Not. Not according to the information available to me. Like you say Marx... merchants are shutting down. They're losing money on rentals. They're paying out-of-pocket. Linden Lab sim count is decreasing. IMO, this company is in survival-desparation mode... and they're desperately trying to figure out any way they can to pull in more money from their customers. Including (ahem) banner ads. ;D Deeper: "i have a cuestion, as Ll say, the magic boxes will be eventualy obsolete" This is actually probably a good idea if not for one thing... LL has a rich history of totally borking just about everything. So I can see rich possibility in some hacker figuring out how LL is handling that "special folder"... and ripping merchants right and left. Scenarios of eight legged glowing green goats with fangs. (if anyone catches the reference, kudos. ;D)

I hate to even seem to support LL in anything (LOL)... but in my "test run" (just to see what is what) I spent $10 for 100k impressions. That is actually quite reasonable. Now... whether those impressions actually generate response or not... that has yet to be seen. The only reason I even tried this is because it was a measly ten bucks and I am curious. The question is, as it always is: will people actually pay attention to banner advertising? Will it actually generate extra business? Myself... I'd like to see some kind of statistic on clickthrough (number of people who actually click the ad). Interesting I haven't seen a word from Linden Lab on being able to trace clickthrough. Is there any method prvovided? I see some kind of "statistics" area... but it totally devoid of data or even headers. My guess would be-- based on company history -- that they will provide little or no confirmative statistical data. If they do... we'll see what it shows.

BTW follow-up if I may. Someone back there said "You can't compare IMVU with Second Life." Sure you can. They may not be the same product nor offer the same services. But they certainly compete for the same audience. And from what I hear, simple, piddly IMVU is kicking SL under the carpet.

@Anisha: I enjoyed your post Anisha. I don't agree with everything (thus this post) but I thought it thoughtful, somewhat insightful and well-stated. So figured I'd play the "other side" and perhaps the truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle... or at times on either side. "I was reading an online article, in which a quote by Warren Buffett was stated which goes like, Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business." Good point. That's part of the problem with LL: their "premium" product... isn't. They charge new Porche prices for rusty Volkswagen service. It does no good for them to try to attract "new users" if their core product will just drive people away as it's done in the past. To date, Linden Lab has lost some 20 million "residents" and has a current retention of (supposedly) 750,000. If their product had been stable and functional... if they had concentrated more on foundation performance rather than new toys, gimmicks and schemes... they might have retained a lot more of the customers they already had. While they say they are working on the core foundation now, any company that totally ignores 88% of their residents saying "We hate your new viewer interface"... still is offering unappetizing food on dirty dishes. After 7+ years online, they still think they know how to run SL... when it's pretty obvious they do not. They haven't changed their business plan and methodology in the 6+ years I've been a member here. "Doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome is the very definition of insanity." "As much as my knowledge of common sense (highly uncommon though) economics and finance helps me, there is no second thought that SL economy is in decline. However, it is still one of the most productive economy compared to other Virtual Worlds in my opinion." Well, that's not saying much really. But I question the statement. It's already been indicated that IMVU is more successful than SL. From what I've heard, systems like World of Warcraft has a far stronger economy than SL. Are we comparing SL to OpenSim... Reaction Grid... Inworldz? Some of those companies have been in business less than a year; of course their economy isn't going to be as strong. But their customers are far more satisfied... and far more loyal. Give them another year, and then let's see where their economy stands in comparison with SL. LL has had 6 years head start on them. Let's give other companies at least a little time to pace... and then we can see how both are faring by comparison. But right now, as a merchant with years of experience, I can say this: SL economy is tanking. I don't care what propaganda and PR claims LL puts out... the SL economy is hurting. "For sure some of the products Linden Labs have launched have failed to deliver, the management decisions backfired and as a result highly glitched unstable SL." I thnk what is more realistically the case... is that Linden Lab management decisions backfired and caused their products to fail to deliver. How many times have we heard customers scream "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" I think one of the major problems (no... THE major problem) with Second Life... is the Linden Lab Management team. They simply can't leave well enough alone... and they seem to always be plotting and scheming (those are the only accurate words I can find to express my observations with this company). "* The weekly stipened (and if my information source is correct, some older accounts receive L$400-L$500 )" Yes, some older accounts do. Newer accounts receive about half of that... and from what I've heard (I don't know personally) those are special, "non cashable" L$ that can only be spent in-world. If that's the case, not at all the same. "If we deduct the real money value of the benefits from fee we are paying, the actual amount we are paying for membership is meagre." What real money value? I'd have to see that listed out. ; ) "But defenitely, they need to improve the response time to the complaints." What... you mean more than the three months it just took a friend of mine to even receive a response from Support? Yeah, I'd have to agree with you. Question: Can we do without Premium Membership? Answer: No I would have to differ. I cancelled my Premium membership years ago. I run a large group with over 2,000 members, on a full sim, run three virtual businesses, host events, and have over 90,000 items in my inventory. Sure we can do without premium membership... as about 700,000 people prove every month. Question: Could we have done without XStreetSL? Answer: This answer is undecided. Question: Can we do without Marketplace? Answer: A Big No. I again disagree. Of course we could do without the Marketplace. In truth, I am one of the people that feels Xstreet / SL Marketplace has done more harm to the grid than good. People shop there instead of coming to sims and supporting in-world markets. As a result, merchants close down their in-world shops and display on SL Marketplace instead. Again I will say this: doesn't LL have a clue that they are shooting themselves in the foot and competing with their own product? Not only that, but the web Markets encourage people to stay by themselves, shopping on a website, rather than enjoying the community of SL. I earnestly believe the entire grid would have been far better off if Linden Lab had never allowed access to L$ accounts outside of Second LIfe and had forced all commerce in-world. It would have created a stronger community, a more interesting shopping experience, and would have supported sim ownes and landholders... which is LL's bread and butter. Imho... Linden Lab management was sorely mistaken to ever allow external L$ access. With XstreetSL closed, marketplace is the only official non third party medium to render the merchan services and products. How about... in-world merchants? What are they, chopped liver? ; D Question: Can we do without Mainlands? Answer: No. For the people who can not afford to pay high tier fees to private land owners or VAT included tier fees to Linden labs, a mainland at cheaper price is anyone's dream. Which is still $195 a month. At one time private sims were $195 month (and some grandfathered sims still are so). Some people like mainland. Others hate it. The ones who like it, the reason is always the same: "Price and visibility". Could we do without it? I'd say if LL reduced all sims to $195, we could somehow manage to find a way. Anyone noticed lately how sparcely mainland is populated? (At least that's the word I've heard... I avoid that laggy, griefer-ridden continent like the plague). Question: Can we do without Beta Advertising? Answer: Time will tell. I dunno... we did without it for 7 years without the economy totally collapsing. And I can not resist to say that, no matter how much we bash the Second Life, in the end, we are still here and that too every day =) Unforutnately, not everyone can say that. Like I said, some 20 million people have left the grid. A number of those took their business elswhere... and thus, they aren't still here everyday. They threw up their hands in disgust and left. To conclude, I would like to apologize for a long post and some issues totally out of the line with main post. I rather enjoyed it... agree or disagree. It was well-written and thoughfully stated, which is always enjoyable to see here.

Just to see how this works, I placed a $10 ad order for my alt. It was a matter of sheer curiosity... to see how the system works. So okay, they actually hooked Wayfinder Wishbringer for ten bucks. It was worth it just to see what's what. LOL What I found... As expected, the whole website is clunky, non-intuitive and cumbersome. The order process refused my PayPal credit card. Now that was a shocker. Okay, so they don't have an option for PayPal... but to refuse a legitimate PayPal MasterCard credit card? That seriously makes me wonder what is going on between Linden Lab and PayPal. When it refused my PayPal card, I entered another card... upon which it made me enter the entire order process again, from scratch. In other words, instead of saying, "okay, this credit card works" and processing the already-entered order... it said "okay, this credit card works, now please re-enter all the order information you just got through entering, all over again." Typical LL process. Not being snide at all, but I have to wonder: is there a soul at Linden Lab who knows anything about flowcharts, system planning, and foreseeing possibilities? The fact that this is "beta" is pretty much irrelevant. The idea is for beta to find obscure bugs... not blatantly foreseeable bugs that obviously no one bothered to think about. This seems a long-standing problem with LL methodology: let's just throw out the first knee-jerk thing that comes to our mind and let the users work out the problems. Major design flaw: When someone enters an advertising order... it then forces them to go to their email (several minutes later because of course... it's slow) to get the link to upload their banner ad. Better behavior: upon ordering, send them immediately to the banner upload page. Why have the customer jump through unnecessary hoops? And again... there is no guarantee that LL will even follow through on the order. I mean... who exactly is in charge of tracing whether they fulfill their obligation or not? How do we know they displayed 25,000 impressions over a two week period? I will make a prediction at this time: these ads will have virtually no effect on overall sales. That is something I can track... and will be tracking. Overall, I'm not really impressed. Honestly... it just seems like another "scheme" for them to earn some fast cash... instead of doing what they should be doing... namely... make the product itself worth using.

Ya know, after reading a few comments above, I have to say this (not contrary to the comments-- sparked by them): Linden Lab makes its money selling/renting/whatevering LAND, right? That's their bread and butter, yes? Sooo.... let's employ external sales areas like SL Marketplace, so merchants don't need land to sell their objects. They can just display on SL Marketplace and ignore land rentals. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Seriously... they can't see that SL Marketplace is directly competing against Second Life? Then they wonder why sim sales are decreasing. I'm not knocking SLX / Xstreet / SLMarketplace. Fun places to shop. I am saying that if you're a company that rents land for a living, it just might not be a good idea to set up a shop that competes with your land owners. Especially when that land is ridiculously expensive. And especially when those folks can then say, "Hey, I'm selling more on SL Market than I'm selling here... I don't really need this land." The point? When you've got a company that can't see something that obvious... there's a good chance they're going to be pretty clueless about every other business operation as well. ; )

Thanks Shockwave. LOL months have gone by and... "Motion to dismiss". Typical legal song and dance. I was frankly amazed LL didn't get sued to the gills over the OpenSpace sim fiasco. That had some major repercussions on areas of both bait and switch and destruction of assets. Not to mention monopoly activity with both LindeX and Xstreet. Allegedly. ; )

Vangel: "...to my horror I also discivered this in their buyer agreement "We have the sole right, but not necessarily the obligation, to delete at any time any of Your Advertisements that violate (or that we in good faith believe violate) these rules or that we believe to be inappropriate for any reason. You are not entitled to any refund, credit, or payment if we delete any of Your Advertisements which we believe violate this Agreement or the Terms of Service." LOL see this is what I'm talking about... typical Linden Lab blue-sky "We are GOD and can do anything we want" mentality. LOL. This is just hilarious. They can cancel your service and KEEP YOUR MONEY??? Yeah, right. @Nuhai: While you are correct that customers do have a way to get their money back by "force" so to speak... typical Linden Lab response is to cancel their account. "You don't pay us, we will wipe your avatar and assets off the grid." That is how they operate. Let me give an example: A friend of mine had a real life job with an unexpected schedule. One day he was called out on an emergency, and the end of the month rolled around and he couldn't pay for his land or get to an Internet connection. So of course he lost his land. (as expected). But the assets on that land weren't returned to him; they were wiped. So his huge, costly home and furniture were gone. BUT TO MAKE THINGS WORSE... that job put him in a position in which for months he was pretty much out of touch with everyone and everything. So he winds up owing Linden Lab $20. So what do they do... put his avatar on hold until he pays? No, they destroy his avatar and all his inventory ... wiping them from the database. So when he returns, all of his stuff is GONE. How much stuff? This particular guy was, up to that time, an ideal SL customer. He bought everything. To his estimation he had $$$several thousand dollars of purchased inventory. They destroyed thousands of dollars worth of investment... over a lousy $20 past due. They didn't hybernate his av... they flippin destroyed it. Is he alone in this? No. When the OpenSpace sim fiasco occurred, those who shut down their sims... over 5,000 properties... later discovered that rather than archiving those properties (which would have been very simple and sensible)... Linden Lab totally destroyed them, wiping them completely from the SL database. They didn't even keep archival records. So months later, when Linden Lab said, "oops, we've decided to grandfather those sims at $95"... the owners couldn't even get those original properties back. They would have had to rebuild from scratch. Naturally the general response was to tell LL where they could shove their no-archival $95 "deal". So no, Linden Lab has no qualms at all about destroying you and your property on a whim. Force a chargeback because they rip you off... and you can pretty much count on it. Which is why that as a concept won't work; Linden Lab knows most people won't risk losing their av and properties over a financial dispute. NO PAYPAL??? In this marketing situation, it strikes me as odd that Linden Lab reportedly won't let people pay via PayPal... that they have to pay by what, credit card? That very much makes me wonder what this company is up to. I do know this: I simply don't trust them at all to keep their end of the bargain. Why? Because I don't think they have the basic skillz. Considering how everything else on SL "works"... how would we know they actually deliver the number of impressions they promise? There is so much else on Second Life and their Marketplace that goes wrong all the time. I mean seriously, when a company can't get chat right, their demographics are non-existant, and search doesn't function... are we really to expect them to accurately and professionally track ad impressions? LOL. I don't think so, Tim. Honestly, I'm not trying to be overly negative... but this company has a reputation for totally borking stuff. And if they do... they don't owe your money back? HAR!

Shockwave: "People who have invested lots of money in SL when LL was still telling the lie that we owned our virtual property..." Know what amazes me more than just about anything Shockwave? Consider: some 20 million people have used Second Life. Some 750,000 (supposedly) are current "residents". Now, Linden Lab pulled an (alleged) blatant bait-and-switch operation with OpenSpace sims. They are currently imposing on our legal copyrights, property and assets, as you point out above. They opened up LindeX and put GOM out of business and purchased Xstreet, putting everyone else out of business (both of which were blatant infringements on anti-monopoly laws... Linden Lab using internal functions unavailable to competition in order to seize the market). They have been directly responsible for regular and significant breaches of business ethics-- breaches which would land any other company in court on a regular basis. So what I don't understand... that someone with the knowledge, funds, and gnards hasn't initiated several major class-action Federal lawsuits and nailed this company to the floor. It amazes me that out of all the users of SL... no one has taken the obvious steps needed to define the limits of this company and their responsibility to their customers... or simply to win back customer rights that are already established by law. This is just an observation. LL has got to be the luckiest company I have ever seen, because if it was any other company, they would be sued to the gills on a regular basis. But somehow, LL keeps avoiding that process. Then the lawsuits we do see filed somehow disappear from public view and we never hear about them again. In fact, in the history of SL I have personally only heard of one successful lawsuit. The others just seem to... vanish. LOL, that's a hoot, eh?

Hey, not to look at things always negative, but I would have to question the effectiveness of any advertising company that chooses to call their product "inventory" and their options "flight plan". Seriously guys... isn't there anyone at Linden Lab assigned to keep the blue-sky market mentalities in check? Considering how LL manages everything else... and how your focus is always on YOU rather than your customers, this strikes me as a very good way to hand over yet more money to Linden Lab and get zero return on investment.

RedMokum: "We give our input to the Lindens several times a week during office hours" A valid point Red, but I'll tell you why I don't attend such office hours: because they are a blatantly useless waste of time. I've done my shift of providing feedback and trying to catch the attention of Lindens... as have many of us. What this amounts to (as I've learned over the past 6 years) is Linden Lab "asking" our opinions... then flat doing whatever they want to do anyway. Example: several years ago, Linden Lab put to a public vote: "Should we include voice on SL or not?" The vote... from their customers... was an overwhelming NO. Several valid reasons were cited: Such would alienate the deaf. It would make chat translation impossible for those of foreign langauge. It would impose on much of the nature of SL... people's voices constantly conflicting with our environments. Not satisfied with our vote, Linden Lab put it to another vote. That vote also resulted in a resounding NO. They "asked" us. The customers made our wishes known. What did Linden Lab do? We already know the answer. It's not a matter of whether voice is valuable or not. It's not whether it's useful or not. That's not the issue. The issue is that Linden Lab "asked" us to vote... and then flat ignored us and did what they wanted to do anyway. We saw them do the same thing with the OpenSpace sim fiasco. They ignored grid-wide customer outrage. It took 5,000+ sims closing down for them to get the clue-- then they went ahead and a year later hiked up the prices anyway. So now OpenSim is on the map and thriving. Buggy, laggy, but that's where the customers are heading. Have they changed their ways? They put a poll on their own site: What do you think of Viewer 2? 88% of the respondants stated disapproval. The blogs and forums were vehement. People yelled at LL that if they tried to force v2 on the grid, they would leave Second Life. Has Linden Lab listened... at all? They make these piddly changes, while leaving the major complaints unresolved. People tell them "return the Tools menu, return the Files menu... give us back our interface"... but they ignore us. The whole operation there is knee-jerk, arbitrary, half-baked, self-serving and narcissistic, has been for years... and they do not listen to their customers. That is how Linden Lab operates. So when they say, "Hey, here's our office hours..." I consider that just a bunch of bogus corporate propaganda. "Hey, come tell us what's on your mind so we can ignore that too." I appreciate and respect what you're saying and don't argue the fact that they do hold office hours. I have just found that to be a facade; the company does what it wants... and the wishes and best interests of its existing customers seems to be the last thing on its agenda. I think Montana pretty much hit the nail right on the head. Sad thing is... we've been telling LL the exact same thing for years. Montana's post is very well written... but it's an echo of those who have gone before. I and others have told them the same thing for years: Shore up the foundation. Stop playing with toys. Fix the bugs. Treat your customers with respect. "Abuse your customers, lose your customers." And yet, here we are, with Montana having to say the same thing again... because LL didn't listen the first few hundred times... and they're still playing with useless toys instead of doing what they need to do: fix the product.

BTW, as a follow-up here on a couple of issues: Views of this webpage: 11,448 (now are those unique views, or repeats as well?) Consider: 11,448 is a fraction of the supposed 750,000 "unique" users of Second Life. They can't even generate reasonable interest from their existing customers. How do they expect to catch the attention of new users? According to the last stats I saw, SL has some 30,000 sims. Is that not enough profit and research money to allow Linden Lab to buckle down and fix existing issues? Or are the string-pullers clamoring for more profit... no matter what the cost? Like Montana said, one has to wonder at a company that takes its resident count and sim count off the page. I mean, what are they hiding? Is that supposed to somehow engender trust in the current residency? Sure, I'm playing the Devil's Advocate here. That is too often my role with this company. But my group has dropped from eight to one sims on SL... and we're not alone. At the same time, we have fourteen regions elsewhere... and we're thriving there. So when exactly is Linden Lab going to read the writing on the wall and come to the realization, "Hey, you know what, maybe our current business plan isn't working after all." When a company is too paranoid / ashamed to put its user and sims stats out front for people to see... that just might be a clue that management needs to re-think its mode of operation.

Montana: "What richness? Gazillions of empty sims? Spammers and griefers you do zero about? Copyright and creation theft? The possibility of interacting with kiddies in illegal situations? Good luck to those new users trying to find the 2 special sims LL uses to make the front page videos, the REAL SL is somewhat different. Surely having a rich world to start with is somewhat more important than how you access it? Perhaps if you tried listening to and acting on your users' views you wouldn't be so desperate to attract new people to keep the VCs happy. If you'd done a lot of that you would never have had such a disatrous churn rate to start with. Although you no longer give us the numbers (which generally means things are worse), it must be more than 10% churn of total users per month now? I'd have thought it's a better thing to do to keep customers that you already have/had rather than keep losing them and having to find yet more suckers." I could not have said this better myself... so decided to echo the entire post. Very well stated... and very valid. I doubt LL will hear the peal of truth in those words... but at least they have been said. Again.

I've tried using Imprudence in numerous revisions. I don't know how it works on SL, but my experience using it with OpenSim is vast stretches of unrezzed builds, unrezzed ground, unrezzed avatars, and numerous bugs and glitches. Was not at all impressed. I use Hippo, and while it's not perfect, it does seem to be the most stable of the non-SL viewers. It's not as powerful and "kewl" as the other viewers... but I'll take stability over toys any day. Regarding this web-based viewer thing: I dislike the way Linden Lab has handled this (no respect for customers and zero foresight, as usual), and question its potential value compared with the obviously immense amount of time required to create it (while other essential projects are sitting on back burners). However... it is apparent this project is to serve one initial purpose: to attract new users and allow them to test Second Life right on their browsers, almost immediately, without having to load or install anything (always a red flag for any sensible new user). It shows new users SL is an actual platform, and minimizes their initial effort-investment... which is sensible. Today, people are becoming more apathetic, lazier, and there are far too many competitive distractions on the web. So I can understand why LL is doing this, and it makes a certain amount of sense. This viewer isn't intended to replace (at this time) the client-side viewer, and I'm not sure I even want it to (unless it performs a whole lot better, which is doubtful). I do question the platform it's built on (as in, is it any better than downloading a viewer?)... but there isn't a whole lot of choice out there aside from Flash and Java. The primary thing I question, above all (as already mentioned) is LL spending valuable coder time and investment messing with this project when (again, again, again Linden Lab) flippin chat doesn't work. I mean, what is wrong with this company? Forgive me for being very blunt, but are their managers and coders really so lame and incompetent they can't get simple CHAT to work... for years now? I mean, what kind of signal does that send to the community? Do they really expect to retain new users even if those people do decide to give SL a chance? Over the last 7 years, SL has lost approximately (and debatably) 20 million potential users... people who have tried the system and decided, "nah". I have to believe that is primarily because of poor system performance... which continues to this day. I've been on SL for quite some time, and I'm still continually frustrated at totally broke chat, excessive lag, and the fact that we can't get 30 avatars on a sim without lagging to a standstill. So that's "imo" in a nutshell. I can see the reason behind this project, I'm not saying it's a totally lame idea (it may be, who knows at this point). I am saying they implemented the beta very poorly, managed to tick off yet more customers, and the value of this project is questionable from the start. I do believe this will have near zero effectiveness in attaining the goal they're trying to achieve, namely, attracting new customers. I do know how they could attract new customers by the droves but hey, I haven't received any checks from LL lately. In fact, I don't even recall them asking our opinions in the last 2 years or so. Maybe not even before that. Unless of course you count this "beta"... in which case refer back to the "poorly implemented" part. ; )

I do have one question here that I might throw out for general feedback: I noticed this web-based viewer requires JAVA in order to run. If I'm not mistaken, in Windows 7, XP sp3, and other operating systems... they pretty much come with JAVA disabled by default and considered a severe security risk. So how valuable is a JAVA-based web viewer going to be? Do we really expect people to actually engage Java and risk their computer's security just to play a game? I guess my primary question is, how many active-Java installations are out there so that this project can work in the first place? It occurs to me that some folks may be "rejected"... because they have Java disabled on their system.

Follow up: in addition to failing to understand customer feelings though, is the already-stated very legitimate complaint: Philip Rosedale stated firmly they were going to stop messing with "new toys" and in 2010-2011 focus on the core foundation. Yet we still see them messing with new toys, don't we? And we don't see the core foundation being fixed. Chat is still borked, and chat is the core of this community. So when people gripe about a new "web based viewer" that has very questionable application, while chat has been broken for years... I'd say they have a fairly legitimate complaint. I'd also say that's a complaint we are going to continue to hear until / if Linden Lab starts living up to their word-- and fixes the core foundation problems. So long as they jerk around with new fancies that no one really wants or needs... they're going to continue to receive complaints. So buckle your seatbelt Ac14; it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

@AC14: That's better. That's simply stating your opinions, and whether I agree or disagree, that's fine. "constantly screaming about every single thing they do will not change anything, it will simply cause them to ignore it more." I don't think anyone is "constantly screaming about every single thing"... only the things they foul up. Which granted, these days... seems to be pretty close to every single thing. I can guarantee you one thing: NOT complaining when LL does something wrong won't accomplish anything either. And defending them when they mess up just enables them in further such corporate attitude. Let LL defend themselves, if they think they have legitimate defense. They're big boys. "However I also have an opinion on individuals who scream about things they do not seem to fully comprehend." Or maybe, on the other hand, it's you who is not comprehending (no insult intended, just making a point). That's kind of a subjective statement, isn't it? There are two sides to every coin. Perhaps it's you who is not seeing the other side. Or is this a matter of "freedom of speech"-- unless AC disagrees? Freedom of speech AC, means people do have a right to voice their opinions and feelings... both pro and con, and whether they agree with you... or not. If you get tired of reading their comments, then stop reading. Don't tell us we don't have a right to make them-- or that we "don't comprehend" just because we disagree with your opinion. From what I see most of the commenters here-- on both sides of the issue-- are comprehending pretty well. . "This BETA viewer project is designed to give people a taste of SL before they actually sign up. Its clear that this is a BETA TEST and they cannot support every person that wishes to use it." And that's fine. But when Linden Lab asks us, the existing residents, to help test an item, and that item continually rejects people without so much as a word why-- or fails to even inform them that they've been rejected-- and those customers are left scratching their heads... only to later find this blog which kinda tells what's going on but not much... they're going to be upset. As one user put it: "Stop wasting our time." Linden Lab should have planned this out and set it up a lot better. That's it in a nutshell. The bottom line thing here AC, is lack of communications and respect. This is a long-standing flaw in the Linden Lab management process. They could have simply said, "Thanks for applying to test this beta... we currently have the maximum number of testers we can handle. Please try again later." That's not so hard, is it? Far better than JOIN NOW!!!-- which just looks like another LL marketing gimmick (or total failed beta test). Failing to consider customer feelings and welfare is a repeated mode-of-operation for this company. So I don't really think you or anyone else should be surprised when people yell at them for being insensitive clods. When they stop being insensitive clods, when they start managing this company with the regular welfare of their customers in mind (you know, customers-- the ones who pay the bills)... I'm guessing a lot of the yelling will stop. ; )

"They could make a blog post about it being Torley's birthday and people would complain. Typical Lindens having birthdays while the lag still isn't fixed! " LOL, that's actually kinda funny. Totally irrelevant, but funny. ; ) (I'm regularly amused by people who come to these blogs and then complain about others complaining. LOL. I mean, no one sees the hilariousness of that?) If people are widespread complaining on these blogs... there just might be a reason for that. As in maybe, just maybe, Linden Lab isn't doing its job and isn't working in the best interest of its customers. Still, funny Torley comment. I'll applaud wry humor any day.

Ac14: "So apparently im trying to censor an incredibly biased and knee-jerk reaction?" No, you're being arrogant and trying to enforce your personal opinions on other users. If you have an opinion, state it. Do not presume to tell me... or anyone else... what to post or not post on these blogs. There is nothing "biased" or "knee jerk" about my reactions here Ac. I've been a hard-core user of SL for over 6 years and I flat know what goes on with this company and on the grid. I've experienced this company's failure to communicate properly with its customers as long as I've been a member. Linden Lab has released a web-based viewer that (according to tech reports) gobbles up bandwidth. When users try to check it out, instead of telling them "Sorry, the beta server is full" or "Can't access right now, please try again later"... they give some obscure "Join" message and just leave people hanging. That's the crux of this AC... once again failure to properly communicate with their customers. In addition, what good is it to pull in new users when their grid foundation is still flakey... after seven years online. They can't even get group chat to work.. Now tell me guy, what exactly is "biased" or "knee jerk" about that summary? Anything you see that's unfactual there? If not, then whose opinion is actually biased? I mean seriously, you're complaining about people complaining? LOL. If your impression is that "no matter what Linden Lab does" people still complain... maybe that's because they're not doing much that is in the best interest of their customers. Do you own sims AC or ever been a sim owner? Have you ever lost money and projects because of some LL knee-jerk whim decision? When you have... then come back and tell us how pro-LL you still are. ; ) Have you noticed I'm not the only person here talking about LL's failure to conduct this "test" properly? Did you miss Angel's post back there? Here it is, and echoes pretty much exactly what several other users here have said: "Please do not send me invites to test something that i am not truly invited to test. After 5-6 years years here of paying a monthly due I do not want my time wasted at all. I personally find it to be yet one more insult from LL. I pay my money and you all gladly get it each month.. lol as if LL cares...do not use my time yet again with another wasted promise of something better. This along with the many "stories" is beginning to make me wonder why I stay." Did you miss what Maniac stated? "And LL , please clear those things in the initial post. Many people will get offended from the rejection." Maybe you need to sit back AC, and listen to what other people are saying...whether you personally agree or not. That's how we learn and get a rounded viewpoint of an issue.