Just posted in HotLine...

Agreed - but not only that, it also gives a telling insight into Linden attitudes doesn't it?

Now what was that old Abba song? Something about money?

I thought that was a pretty crappy statement as well. Basically if you aren't rich enough to pay more for your ad then you don't really care about what you sell. Way To Go LL!!!

PR!

Professionalism!

Where is it? I don't know.

Comments have been made earlier today in another thread about "weak management" at LL.

I have never met Philip or the management team so I can't comment on that but I have worked at several places where "weak management" was the problem. What usually happened was that at some point they are convinced that things are "screwing up" and that the have to "get serious" about the business.

Then what happens is they hire a financial whiz (cause "serious" really means "more business-like" right? ), and all kinds of wacky idiotic decisions are made in regards squeezing more money out of the system while cutting back on actually producing more. You still have weak management, so things are still going to hell, but now they are going to hell wih a lot of nutty capitalist inspired, *bad* decisions being made on top of everything else.

It becomes a weak company chasing a non-existant buck and being sucked dry by it's investors, not a strong company.

This is because the new "serious business" team is essentially walking all over the weak management team (because they are stronger of course). I have seen this happen quite a few times in various forms and to varying degrees.

Does that sound familiar to anyone???

It didn't bother me at all. What is this mentality that everyone should have instant access to success and all the perks that come with it? SL is full of stories of people who came here with no existing skills who through a lot of effort (measured in months and years) have become highly successful designers, builders, scripters, and everything else, without spending any money, and without paying a lot of money to advertise or having 57 stores. It took me about a year to start making much L$ and before that I wouldn't have spent a lot of money for a classified (I still rarely ever advertise). I certaily wouldn't have cared if other people did. Jesse's statement isn't insulting. If you see someone's ad at the top of the list you can assume they really wanted to be at the top of the list. It doesn't say anything at all about people at the bottom of the list, and I wouldn't read anything into it beyond the fact that they didn't spend a lot of money on their ad, for whatever reason. Who cares? Should we not allow any businesses to become successful so that no one who isn't will feel left out? pfft. We ALL start at the bottom of the list.

I do have to disagree.. I don't know how things were back in 2003, but I'm sure there wasn't a classifieds menu in world.. And things have changed since I first got here, so I'm SURE the same is true for you..

The people coming in are a lot more likely to use the in world classifieds now that its there.. And I notice a SIGNIFICANT increase in my sales being on the list. But what this will do is put the big bussiness', that can afford to put the money up to be on the top of the list, and they'll probably buy out the bottom too, to be seen..

The end result I see is the big bussiness' and shops getting bigger, and the small bussiness and shops, getting smaller, or disapearing all together..

Its already at the point where you need a huge amount of land to run a successfull mall, back in 2004 I had about 2 3000sq m plots in different sims.. And I had a mall on each, and we were full nearly all the time, heck Anshe Cung even rented at one of them .. Now a days if I did that, I'd severly doubt I'd get any takers at all..

And its now going to be that if you don't have a hell of a lot of L$, you won't be able to run a successful shop or bussiness.. Or you'll have to rent from a mall with a high position on classifieds..

I don't see this doing anything benificial.. And don't see why they ignored what an awful lot of people said they wanted in the first place, rotation.. Everyone pays a set fee and they're organised by the time they were added, so everyone gets their time at the top.

If people throw up their hands, surrender, and vanish, that's their perrogative, and if something as silly as not being able to be at the top of the list in classifieds is enough to make them quit it's doubtful they'd ever have succeeded in the first place. I think you're being overly alarmist. You're right there were no classifieds way back when. There wasn't any way to advertise besides word of mouth and telehub billboards that were broken 75% of the time. Placing a billboard elsewhere on the grid would more than likely result in a pitchfork wielding mob battering down your door. Many people who are now "big business" got there without the aid of any advertising at all. There's always going to be someone more successful than you are, and always someone less. If that weren't true, what would there be to work for? What would be the point of trying to be successful if your reward was to end up exactly where you started?

Ya can't apply "back in the day" to now. Seems to me that "back in the day", there were fewer residents, fewer businesses and fewer people coming in to SL. Word of mouth advertising would have been far more effective in a situation like that.

In modern times (today), there is a lot more competition for people's attention and $L.

My point was that in my opinion it's far easier to find eyeballs for your stuff now than it was "back in the day." There are 90,000 of them now, and far more avenues to advertise than there used to be (as in "none".

Exactly, people are so much better with words than I am...

Its not that people will leave coz they're not at the top, it'd be because they aren't getting any sales.. If someone sets up a furniture shop, after this is implemented, the already prominent furniture shops will be above them in classifieds, and they won't get anything from being in there, with what they can afford to pay..

My objective with the mall story, was to show word of mouth was enough to get you filled up, or get customers, or whatever, back in early 2004..

Now adays you need to either already be well known, or do some serious advertising..

Anyone not happy with the chances please view my Alternative thread.

Do you have evidence of that or is that simply your assumption? By that logic I should be miles beyond any other skin maker in SL. After all I had about a six month head start on all of them. But guess what, there are other skin makers who arrived here long after I did that have surpassed me. Imagine that.

And SL was way more fun!

You mean surpassed you in sales I take it? Without advertising? It may well be possible for a new player to come in and exceed older players with advertising. But having been in the bussiness a long time, it gives anyone a great advantage..

I'd sooner buy from amazon than I would from a website I haven't seen or heard anything about before, even if it meant spending a bit more or getting a bit less, because I trust them, just like I trust people who've been around and in the bussiness a bit longer, more than a player thats turned up last week..

Well, I can't speak for the skin or clothing bussiness having never been in either..

But I can speak of what I've seen from my sales.. I haven't been around for a long time.. But I don't think my furniture is bad.. Without advertising I get, lets say a sale a day, and my stuff isn't expencive, from what I've seen..

As soon as I started advertising I was making enough to pay my rent, and have a little spending money left over (although very little)..

Lol Merwan I agree.. "Back in my day" you knew most people from the places you went, newbies had people jumping over themselves to help (even at the welcome area!! )..

Now adays I often get hold of newbies who said they hung around crowded areas for ages asking people for help and not getting any replies..

I don't doubt that at all.

These days it seems like people want it to be just like RL in many ways. Pay for play classifieds, RL economics, hands off attitude toward banning that jackass with the bush signs.

Personally, I don't want another RL.

People succeed or fail on the strength of their products, not their advertising. Advertising might get them noticed faster but if their products aren't very good it won't be of much benefit to them. Conversely if their products rock they're going to become known even if they'd rather not. People are so damn cynical these days.

Are you saying my furniture sucks?

I'm just speaking from personal experience and views, and its just my L$0.2 but I just think there are better ways to address the problems we have with the system..

hehe, well here's a couple additional points to ponder... variable pricing will be a far more effective money sink, since the richest will be spending the most. Secondly, LL should be devoting time to making Find more useful rather than endlessly overhauling classifides in a quest for the mythical even playing field.

Good points, I just hope its something they look at in the future..

I personally still can't believe they didn't see people disobaying them in the whole "No **** Ads please"..

Yes Chip, we all start at the bottom of the list. But does that really mean that only those at the top of the list care about their ads? Because that's what LL said in that statement. It's incorrect, and it should be changed.

Oh I agree that it definitely could have been worded better, but I assume it wasn't intended the way people are taking it. Lately people have a tendency to read conspiracy or ill will into anything LL says or does. I'm just trying to offer some perspective.

You'll be on the bottom if you don't pay. On the other hand, people can still run a search.

I.e., take a relatively popular thing like "Final Fantasy", the games. There's a mere three shops that come up in Find Places (not the classifieds, mind you, plain ol' junk-filled Find Places). Now, if I search for some other more popular term (skins, for example) I'll get a lot more, to be sure; you still have the curse of trying to hit on just the right keywords that has plagued both the Web at large and SL in particular for some time.

Granted, this was just as true with the old alpha-order system, and I still think "sort by creation date" is a much brighter idea, but... it's not the end of the world, is all.

Good points again.. If you're looking for something specific, fair enough..

But if you're in the furniture, or clothing, or anything less specific, and don't have cash to splash, you're not gonna have an easy ride in classifieds..

This is certainly true. Yes, this is a me-too post... it just seems odd, because now the forum classifieds are working that way, with the no-reply system, but the in-world ones aren't...

Well said.

Also, there is such a thing as 'negative advertising'.

In the sense that you can pay a great deal of money to educate the public about how *bad* of a product maker you are.

*drives off in Yugo while popping the tab on his New Coke*