Top Picks Replaced

***Top Picks has been replaced! We're trying something new. If you have a place, an object, a script or a service, you can feature it in Second Life on a new directory page called Featured. Located under Find, Featured lets you show off your latest PG creation, with a description, screenshot and landmark. Listings will be limited to 20, with two-week listing periods. To buy a space, just visit the following auction page on eBay.***

Uhhhh, no thanks. But I will take that plot of moonland.....

So that's just an advert then?

"This is not the best the world has to offer, but these are the people with the biggest wallets"

This is all totally and utterly screwed.

yes it's essentially like a billboard. i wish my business was old enough to afford one. but i'm saving up for a lot by the new welcome center.

The ebay thing has to be the most braindead thing I've seen in the many announcements tonight. Puhleeze! Like I want to go to your place because you bought a spot on Ebay? A more reasonable solution would be to list whoever had the most picks by other players as the top picks.

Wait a sec.... this is what went into the patch notes,

"- "Top Picks" has been replaced with "Featured" which is a list of places
determined by the residents of Second Life rather than Linden Lab
employees."

So if this E-bay thing is actually how they're doing it, that's a complete and total lie, a bald-faced lie. This isn't determined by the residents of Second Life at all, this has NOTHING to do with the residents at large, only how much money LL is getting paid.

What a bunch of greedy bastards. Who the hell owns LL now, and what did they do to whoever did all this work to create this world? They just got millions of dollars, I thought they said it was -already- profitable, so why is money their prime reason for instituting changes now?

If they wanted to do it with L$ bidding, they could at least claim it was to help the economy, but this is just total crap and it's going to hurt SL for the profit of the company.

Before this, I was willing to believe that LL does what it does because it enjoys this world and wants to see it develop. I don't believe that anymore.

This is just wrong!

Stromko, here is the link to the ebay bit.

/3/c7/32463/1.html#post336525

Wow, this is SO much better than Top Picks.

THis is worse than the original set up.

STUPID IDEA.

STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.

Linden Labs just took a ton of wrong turns today.

There will be no benefit to regular players when Top Picks begin Top Bidders. It is not a badge of quality, it ceases to hold any meaning whatsoever as far as the players are concerned, so I fail to see how this helps us.

LL is coming across kind of inconsistent I think. They're pumping out tons of bandwidth, I'm sure more than other MMOs, their minimum per-month payment is less than most MMOs, AND they're letting some people play for free.. yet they let people pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month to get in-game benefits like owning entire sims and whatnot.

They're either greedy bastards or the most benevolent communists to ever live.

Since our profile picks are limited, why don't they just show the 20 most "picked" places? That would be truly representative.

And, who knows, Marcos, maybe ARMORD will still be on the list.

Oh, and on a personal note, Marcos, is it possible for us both to retract our neg rate of each other before the price goes up?

On a side note, why Ebay? They don't like their own auction system? Or are they afraid things would be glaringly obvious with this junk polluting their own auctions?

My guess is they're trying to net the widest possible user-base, while making enough money from premium accounts to cover their bills and profit enough to keep the investors satisfied. You know, Standard Business 101.

"Loss Leaders" are common marketting tools for retailers and manufacturers around the world. The idea is simple: you lose a little bit of money on one item, in order to draw people in and make money off of them in another way.

Gaming-Consoles almost epitomize this, from a manufactured-goods standpoint. The PS2 and X-Box each sell for about $100 - $150 LESS than they cost to manufacture. In essence, the more they sell, the more Microsoft or Sony LOSE. But - the console makers know that people will purchase several games over the lifetime of the console... So they charge enough for each game to cover both the costs of developing the game AND to make some of their money back on the console itself. For the XBox, I believe the break-even point is somewhere around 4 or 5 games. This means that if Joe Blow gets an XBox and buys a half-dozen games over the 3 or 4 years he owns the console, MS has made money. If he never buys a game, MS has just lost a LOT of money. (BTW, this is one reason why Sony and MS crack down so hard on Console-Hackers. Turning one into a Linux-box or other experimental system virtulally guarantees no game sales to that person; and thus a loss of money on that customer).

The tricky part - and the one that nearly ALL online businesses have - is trying to balance your system to encourage ENOUGH of the "loss-leader" users to buy-in to the system at a higher level. If enough incentives aren't provided; or the system itself starts to have problems (inflation, bugs, griefers, etc) - then you cease to have a viable business-model. That is a VeryBadThing(tm)!

A stable and profitable company means a stable and long-running SecondLife... And I, for one, hope sincerely that this comes to pass!

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

P.S. Essence - my guess is that the real-world $ are easier to come by than an in-game auction that they have to convert to real-$ via OGM or similar device. And if they DID start selling L$ on the OGM - even for legitimate reasons - you *KNOW* that would cause a hell of a scandal!

bidding is up to $10.51 so far.

Indeed. So there is absolutely no chance of some noob with talent getting on there to showcase his stuff unless he forks out RL cash on it.

I can see this being a permanent list of the richest retailers who want to participate (I for one, would not. Not my thing). Whats the point in that when no one is going to have any money to spend?

And if, as was mentioned above, it is described as "a list of places determined by the residents of Second Life rather than Linden Lab employees." then this REALLY needs to be changed to reflect its just a commercial advertising list. As it is it makes it sound like its 'things we like', not 'people with bottomless wallets'. That's even more misleading than a non-updated Linden picks list.

IMO, this idea sucks more than the last one, but it really doesnt surprise me at all.

So EBAY is influencing LL after all. Interesting what 8 million will get ya.
Forsing your customer base to sign up for EBay accounts, SHAME ON YOU LL!

Um.... WB Catherine.... you lurker you.... o.O

Hugs you Willow these are tough times, had to speak up just had to.

C'mon, put the conspiracy theories down and save 'em for JFK.

eBay is being used because:

a) Auctions are the best way to maximize the dollar-amount for a given item - its a proven FACT.

b) LL needs a source outside of the game to deal with real US$ auction transactions.

c) eBay is huge, successful, and well-known. Its tied into PayPal, and tons of people already use it & have accounts there.

Folks, a LOT of SL's interesting things are passed along by word of mouth and Landmarks. These things will STILL be available to use as marketting/advertising tools.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

LL already has a working auctioning system that works well. The land auctions. So, choosing ebay just creates more hassle for the people by adding another method of payment instead of just adding the fee to the amount billed by LL on the credit card you signed up with.
So yes, this is ebay prying it's way into SL.

*meow*
Leopard Loveless

It is almost as if they forgot they had one! In addition, if they were looking for more $L sinks, this would be one way to do it!

Who is actually bidding!!! My gawd, don't encourage this!

"conspiracy theories" interesting choice of words there, noted.

There is an auction site on this web owned by LL that already deals with US$. There is no need for EBay's involvement, period.

I still think the players should be picking the top picks not who can win the highest RL$ bid.

Actually, assuming I was interested in the list at all - which I'm not.. I never looked at Top Picks and I'm even less likely to read the 'Featured AnsheCorp Top Ten' - that is a really valid point; I would NEVER sign up to an Ebay account, and I know a lot of people that feel the same way. So by taking it to Ebay they're excluding people who might just want to use the listing service.

Ya know, when I signed up to SL, you didnt have to use several 3rd party sites just to participate.