Top Picks Replaced

I guess apologies are in order - I thought the online Auction System with SL/LL only dealt in L$.

*shrug* Hey-Ho, if it took a little eBay action to secure $8M in financing and keep SL around for another year or two, I'm OK with it. Not happy or enthusiastic, but OK.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

Of all the changes LL is implimenting, this one is the only one that sadens me, it is a flaw, I think, it should be renamed to advertisements or not tied to money that isn't directly in the Linden economy.

True it's money coming in, but it should be renamed to advertisements or it's misleading.
Someone who doesn't know it's paid for will think it's still chosen by LL and not by a US treasury note.

I completely agree with Ice here.

Also, the release notes are misleading, as stated by Stromko:
This should at least be changed to tell people what 'Featured' really is. It is a paid ad.

Wow, I did not think they could top the short sightedness of the teen grid, but they have. I don't even know what to really say about this, except it is a horrible, pathetic idea. So much for talking of letting it be based on what users put in their profiles as picks. Tying this in a poorly rigged way to eBay (oh no, it's not related to your investors ) is just bizarre. I am normally not an alarmist at all about this kind of stuff, but lately the direction things are going is nothing short of disturbing. Rethink this stupid stupid idea.

Do USD land auctions ring a bell at all?

Catherine is right.

Actually the current highest bid is us$105

Alexa

I agree with this, and I am confused as to why LL would use eBay when they have their own native auction system.

It's a guarantee that those of us who blacklist ebay will never get a shot at the list.
US$8M can buy a lot of guarantees.

Yep, SL has gone billboard on its Top Picks. Cash-grab for greed. This idea is wasted on me.

Hmm well I heard about the "other" things.
But this change is far from good.
We all will most likely just ignore the featured list now.

I don't think a billboard sold to the highest bidder will in any way reflect the brightest or best content in SL. Nor will it reflect content some designer has come up with.

It will absolutely, always reflect the richest few members of SL society who will buy it for their own advertising campaigns.

Top picks never was any good, for me at least.
I never once saw anything I would have picked in there.
Now it's to be replaced with an equally useless list.

Like the useless dwell system where land owners payed people to come into to the game on their land. This new system does nothing except provide an expensive form of advertising. Anyone that uses it will be a mug in my book.

I agree. And if it goes for $100 US each time, it'll be the same old suspects on the page every time, so we'll all get bored of seeing the same thing...

I'm usually very optimistic about LL's changes, and will almost always give them the benefit of the doubt.

But this doesn't benefit the players at all, aside from a few top businesses. It's just advertising.

I agree, this is the only one that will damage SL. And before anyone mentions it, yes, I was pretty vocal about getting rid of Top Picks, I just think this is as bad, or worse.

The other things, *shrug*...

Stipend bonuses go down, so what? They did in 1.1 too, in 2003 I regularly made a weekly stipend of over 3000, now I get somewhere between 1000 and 2000 depending how social I am on a Monday evening... and next week, I'll get less. It'll hurt yes, in the short term, but it won't kill us.

Ratings cost $25 ... OK, insane, but it won't kill SL. It'll stop ratings parties. It will stop fly-by neg-raters, though not the determined griefer. The thing is that a single rate will be worth much more as a bonus modifier. It's based on the total number of ratings given, after all.

Event Support Cuts... People, we've been screaming for this for the last year. Don't think it's the end of the world just because they gave us what we asked for.

Anyway, I digress. The top-picks to paid advertising is bad. The fact that it's through eBay makes it 10 times worse. Don't expect to see Mochastyle on the list... (though it may be sponsoring an event near you soon)...

I suspect they are using Ebay because the owner is an investor to SL. Personally I think its a bad move and they should keep it in house. Specifically because Ebay is never forthcoming to its users about fraud they lack any real customer support.

pfft.

This is silly. Please tell me the list won't be called "Top Picks". It won't have anything to do with anyone's top picks. Perhaps "I Paid Top Dollar" would be better.

It's times like this I wish I were rich... 'My Ass' would soooooooo be on that list.

So we move from a stagnant, Linden picked list to whomever can afford the most amount of US$ cash? As I write this, a spot costs US$105....wtf?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8161034789

I'm not really worried about ARMORD being on the list of "Top Whatever". It was nice being on Top Picks, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

I'm sure if it were determined by people's picks, it'd be a bunch of clubs.

I just think this is a stupid, stupid replacement for Top Picks. Maybe they should call it Top Ads.



Sure, no problem.

Anything that gives SL success more of a tie to USD is a BAD thing.

I usually defend the Lindens and their decissions, but this is plain tacky.

I'd rather visit something that earned recognition (through top picks, word of mouth, or dwell) than something where the recognition was bought. I could reluctantly see this as an addition to Top Picks for someone who was desperate to get into the limelight, but it's a poor replacement.

Why stop with selling ad space there? Why doesn't LL start auctioning off mentions in the message of the day or perhaps little banner ads embedded into the program interface? How about letting those with enough money buy the right to have global pop-up announcements like the old hourly event announcements? That would be super!

Going to have to agree with most here. I'm fine with the other changes coming, but I think this idea is just wrong in so many ways.