"Connections" - what's this, free ads?

Excuse me if I missed an announcement about this or another thread... I couldn't find any.

If you look on the left-hand bar of the Community page now, you'll see a section called "Connections", which has the old resident sites, mailing lists and newsletter pages on it, but also ones called "media", "music" and "fashion".

The media and music ones are combined links to the usual machinima and music projects that we all know and love, plus some information about making live music in SL - I'm more concerned about the "fashion" section, which appears to be advertising resident businesses. (No offence is meant to the ones that are there at the moment, by the way, I really am not implying anything on their part at all here.)

1. Firstly, while people do certainly like to buy clothes, there *are* quite a few other businesses in SL, you know. But more importantly...

2. Who picked the ones there at the moment, and who picks them in future? And on what criteria? All I can see is something saying "email Jesse Linden if you want to get on" but the original ones had to come from somewhere, and one presumes that Jesse will be picking and choosing from submissions as well. No lottery?

3. Was this advertised anywhere? Prok's blog post yesterday was the first I've heard of it, and I read the forums and Linden blog pretty frequently.

4. Doesn't this entirely go against LL's whole (stated) idea of how SL should progress? We've had all of the talk about how the forums and classifieds are closing as part of a move towards residents doing things for themselves, advertising on third party sites, making their own communities without interference etc, but here LL is promoting a section of it themselves, picked by no adequately explained criteria....

From the bottom of that page.

I'm not sure why this was done. Separating this from the resident run websites section seems odd. As LL moves away from centering community here on this site, I don't see any good reason to have done this.

What was wrong with just linking the resident run websites to specific categories there?

It would certainly be a lot more consistent with the stated aims, and probably considerably more useful.

Somebody put a link to this connections place so I can see what you're talking about.

coco

On the Fashion page, it shows very clearly in the middle:

Got a Second Life designer you would like to see featured here? Email your submissions to Jesse Linden

The Media section also contains this:

Got a submission for this site? Email Jesse Linden for more information

The only page that didn't have contact info is the Music page.

It figures that Prokofy would bitch about this, but I think all three pages are a great thing - those three areas represent a huge amount of creative activity going on in SL, and it should be spotlighted. I especially like the info on the music page, which answers a lot of common questions. There is nothing unfair about any of it - if you are a fashion designer or think someone should be included, contact Jessie. If you are doing machinima or other interactive media, contact Jessie. I would imagine you can contact Jessie about the music page as well if you would like to be included.

Well, no, I disagree. Not about the media and music pages, because there's a limited amount of machinima and music being made in SL anyway so a selection is hardly unjustified, and, as you say, the music page has helpful info on it.

It's the fashion page that bugs me. First of all - why fashion? People buy a lot of frocks and shoes in SL, certainly, but they also buy a lot of other things. And why were the particular three there chosen, and what are the criteria for others being chosen? There are millions of fashion designers out there.

What we have here is LL promoting certain people for no adequately explained reason, and a vague promise that you might be able to get on the list if you email Jesse. In the past, promotion by LL of resident businesses has been organised by lotteries - I think immediately of the lotteries for space at Busy Ben's and Luna's. These were announced beforehand and held openly, which is fair enough. Anyone, old, new, established, upcoming, has the same chance.

Since then we have LL explicitly stating that they want to move to a situation where residents organise their own advertising and promotion... but at the same time, a step backwards in terms of the transparency of LL promotion of resident enterprises. If they're going to promote businesses they should say how, when and why. If they're not, they shouldn't put anything up at all.

That's probably my fault, as I promote machinima in-world. I'm going to have all the talented machinimists e-mail Jesse now. There's more machinima out there than you think.

I think ordinal's comments were quite clear: why Fashion and why now?

Where's the "Weapons" link? Vehicles, pre-fabs, and gadgets, oh my! Is this Linden Lab's admission that they are really serving up an expensive broken 3D version of IRC where you can also play "Barbie"?

This development is in line with Cory's speech at the SLCC which focused heavily on external features to Second Life, web-based APIs. What product is being served here, a "limited by imagination" 3D environment or a virtual world that can only be extended through traditional Internet tools? Rather than adding tools to Classifieds (which carry a cost) they are bringing more parts of the "platform" out-world.

Are the Connections pages available to non-residents? If so, what are they promoting through in-world links? They are providing hosting space for the thumbnail images?

Ultimately Ordinal I can see one hidden reason for the choice of "Fashion": it is a first life/second life bridge that is hard to duplicate with any other Second Life "products" beyond architecture. Part of the "plan" people have told me about since my misinterpretation of the world I was sold through What is Second Life? is that Linden Lab hopes to use the system as an alternate to the 2D web. Fashion is an example of this, dressing your avatar in clothing for a pseudo-representation of its real life outcome before going off to purchase the real-world version.

As a way for people to break into a tough industry this is admirable. It is, however, a disservice to the larger Second Life community to single out one aspect and control its presentation through a new paradigm (e-mailing a Linden employee for approval). That I believe is the reason this issue is being raised, and the more people made aware of this the better.

You should get them to tag all their stuff "secondlife" as well. I have RSS feeds set up with YouTube, Google Video et al to search for that. (I post on Vimeo personally, it's so nice and shiny.)

I think per capita, the fashion industry (clothes, hair, shoes, skins, etc..) accounts for the largest volume of content being sold in SL. Gadgets and sex balls and McMansions and mini-Mini Coopers are all popular, yes, and there is a whole spectrum of content being created for SL, but they are dwarfed by the volume of fashion content creation. It is also an area where people repeatedly buy new content, especially women (or the men that play them in some cases). Spotlighting it makes sense to me. If you look at publications and blogs related to SL, nothing else matches the amount of coverage that fashion in SL gets - there are several publications dedicated to it. In many ways, this is just a mirror of RL. I definitely think they should probably add another section or two for other types of content.

As far as the criteria to be on the page, I don't know how they were chosen. You are right, the three featured places at the top are a bit chessy. The content below is very useful I think - the section just needs to become a bit more generalized. Instead of spotlighting a store, perhaps they should have a feature on a particular type of thing - hair, flexiprim clothes, skins, etc.. and cover a bunch of people at once.

It's true that fashion is a bridge topic - it's always the first thing that I think of when starting an MMO personally, "where can I get a better hairstyle than this?" People identify with their avatars, they're not just cursors in virtual space. What made SL different for me though was realising that playing internet dress-up was not the only thing that I was limited to - not only could I change what I looked like, but hell, I could change the world too.

I can see why fashion is something that is promoted, but I think it should be promoted as part of a whole sphere of Things To Do In SL, and also, the process of promoting a particular business should be an awful lot more transparent than... well, than the almost complete opacity that exists at the moment. (Surely this should merit at least an official blog post?)

The standard that most of them use is YouTube. While it is a good place for exposure, it doesn't allow us to download it for the Take5 Machinima Festival that happens monthly on Lukanida. We've been also directing them to upload to Blip.tv. Google Video is nice, but it only downloads in a proprietary format so again, it's unusable. I've not heard of Vimeo, but I will look into it now.

As for the tags, the majority DO tag their stuff "secondlife" and "machinima". There is also a Second Life group on YouTube.

EDIT: Vimeo's format seems kinda like a popularity contest, which isn't what it's all about.

Vimeo is more of a social site, like Flickr for video, hence all the tagging and cast posting and so on, but the interface is a joy compared to the alternatives, I find. It allows you to directly download the source file as well.

I must be missing something.

I didn't see any fashion things here, just a list of web sites.

coco

Oh wait, never mind I see them on the left.

Are all these selected places ones that use YouTube? (whatever that is?)

Or some odd thing like that, that connects them to the outside world?

coco

This page, and my business being on it were brought to my attention by a recent customer. I have no idea how my store got on this page. I am flattered for sure, but was utterly unaware of it. As far as I know, these were picked by Jesse Linden. Who by the way I had to email because the entry she did place for my business has incorrect info...such as attributing my designs to someone I don't even know.

I think their goal with this page is to encourage more content creators. But, that is just my guess. Clearly they have started a new trend by featuring individual business's work on the front page now, and this I suppose is the next step.

Not sure if it's a good or bad thing, myself, but I was certainly taken aback and flattered by it regardless.

I already sent an email to her about my store. Thanks for the heads up.