Ebay and Commercialism

Regarding non-SL content or advertisers: We will NOT allow them.

Thanks for bringing up that point here. We are updating the eBay text right now to make that clear.

Sorry we didn't make this clear at the start - we reserve the right in the TOS to not allow external advertisement in Second Life, and we certainly wouldn't do it on these listings!

Again - this is an experiment. If folks don't like it, we can do something different - suggestions welcome. To reiterate the problem:

There are 500 simulators in SL, containing something like 4 million user-created objects. The way we had been doing Top Picks was to ask someone in the office each week to run around and update the list with the coolest stuff they had seen lately. This causes us to miss so much cool stuff (how can one person in an hour or so completely survey SL) that we felt the current system was unscalable.

We thought that selling the ads might give someone with really cool content that doesn't generate high enough dwell to get into popular places a fair way to get on this list for 2 weeks. We have a lot of people doing incredible work in SL that does not get into the top dwell rankings, and this is a way to fix that.

Please, make other suggestions. If you'd like to send them to me by mail, I'm [email]philip@lindenlab.com[/email]

HAHAHAHA i had totally forgotten about that Alexa... I thought they had just gone mad leaving secondlife.com to use a crappy ebay auction. Isn't that link itself an advertisement for ebay or am i missing something?

A a side note Phillip i hadn't even relized that the top picks were entirely done by Linden favoritism rather than any kind of pseudo-system like dwell. It amazes me that such a system would even exist in SL so im very glad your working away from it. I just wish you hadn't sold out to do it.

I don't think the idea of having EBay is what's in question here Philip, it's the idea that you at one time said EBay wouldn't become part of the SL process and suddenly that's happened. Even in an experimental process like this, it's not something that makes the customers feel good when they've been told one thing and yet it happens.

I think we all totally understand the need for using EBay in the process, as more time would be taken away from the process of working on SL and have to be poured into the Auction System; using EBay was an easy way to make this happen and not take away from SL development.

But again, to reiterate, the idea that you said, We won't do this, and then have it done, is what has people up in arms, not so much that you chose EBay to make the process happen.

I'd love to see a reference to this elusive 'X'. I never recall LL saying they won't let residents have advertisements.




Hopefully, that wasn't directed toward me, even though I've been pretty vocal toward Catherine. I've never skipped away from answering her when she posed a question. She has her opinions, which is fine, since we all do.

The Sponsored Links occupies the exact same slot in the game environment on the "Find" list as the Top Picks did. "The medium is the message."

I quite understand that the *mechanism* is now different -- anyone who wants to spend even more money on this game gets to buy a slot. Now, barring some paranoid idea that the official Lindens or putative rogue Lindens are shilling on ebay to put in their picks, this is just a market-based albeit distorted phenomena. We're likely to see purchased slots that aren't what YOU would consider the top pick but which now occupy what everyone got used to as the 'top pick' environment.

The same people who had the brains or the money to get themselves noticed by the Lindens in the old top picks are likely to be the same people to work the ebay system -- or at least an overlap. But frankly, now it's more democratic. A group can start a new project and plan as one of their marketing devices getting that slot on ebay, instead of hoping to get into that eye-of-a-needle called the incubator program or the old Linden-picked top picks.

The reason we aren't getting anywhere in this debate is you keep thinking we are clueless as to the differences in the MECHANISM and we think you aren't noticing the SAMENESS in the ENVIRONMENT. For example, the old Pan Am building in New York is now the Met Life building but people still call it the Pan Am building and some people could swear that the big Pan Am sign is still up there on the building.

Now, here's where we will really disagree. You say they picked the BEST of what "WE" had to offer. Um....well....I dunno. I don't think so. It kinda slayed me that Neverland wasn't on there for awhile, for example. I couldn't figure out their thinking on some of the picks. Now we can bypass all the feted inner elite and backroom watercooler informal discussions and simply BUY that slot. We have a chance at stardom now. If everybody looks at what people BUY (and they have to have a certain chutzpah already to do that), then it will stop being the top picks and become the laughinstock. Well, I'm going to test it out AND charge admission LOL.

You are missing something.

The guy is an *investor* in Ebay.. not the owner. I'm sure he's an investor in many other companies as well.

Juro, that wasn't directed towards anyone in particular. The idea that Catherine is berated for voicing her opinions is what upsets me most. Why is it that others can jabber all day long and when Catherine sounds a word or alarm, then everyone seems happy as a pig in the mud to start in on her as if she was the devil herself?

Now, if you have been in on the berating of her, then of course, it was directed towards you, otherwise, no, no one in particular was I speaking of.

Bob, I would agree *IF* they trashed the whole system and went with nothing but Ebay for ALL auctions, but they're not.

It would be simply an incredible waste of effort to have the code monkeys re-work the inhouse solution for an experiment. Ebay was the right choice for this experiment.

I think for the most part you and I agree here Juro. We both understand the need for what is being done, but the issue to be resolved is that Philip said, at least he's reportedly to have said, that EBAY won't be involved here.

Once you say that, you lock yourself into a position, and a bad one at that it turns out. When this new auction experiment was announced it should have been done by Philip, first starting with an apology about using EBAY and an explaination as to why the reversal was at hand. At that point, Philip would have been able to have openly acknowledge that he put himself in a bad position and apologized for having to reverse his early ideals.

This proves second life is very real the government raising prices for themselves so we spend more money on this game. I see Take Take Take so what are we getting in return......................................NOTHING. Im really tempted to cancel all my accounts on sl. This makes no sence at all I mean alot of people trying to make money on the game I read news articles just looking for one sucess story. WEll second life is taking that away too. What a FUN GAME NOW I will never ask my family or freinds to join. They are taking part of our pay outs on tuesdays but not lowering rates on land fees. THIS GAME JUST BECAME NOT FUN AT ALL. LINDENS ARE TAKING SO MUCH AWAY THIS IS NOT FAIR AT ALL YOU WILL SEE LESS OF ME ONLINE SORRY TO ALL MY FREINDS, BUT I AM REALLY DISAPPOINTED IN SECOND LIFE. THEY WANT TO TALKE AWAY OUR "FAKE" MONEY THAT WHEN WE SIGNED UP WERE PROMISED.

Not exactly...he's the founder of Ebay.

That's a bad analogy, as the building serves one purpose: to house office space. A better anaogy would be LL owns the PanAm building, closes it down and sells it off, getting out of the office space business altogether and goes over to Jersey to buy a factory that makes gummy candies. Not only is it a change of ENVIRONMENT, but also in the MECHANISM.

I get the idea, really I do.


That was the original intent of the Top Picks. It worked well when the world was small and there was much, much less content to dig through. The world is huge now and I would imagine with everything else going on, updating the Top Picks was low on LL's radar.

Damn it Son...

This is a business and money talks... Now unless your gonna fork over the money to setup the auction system in SL, hush. Master P.Linden has spoken and doesn't need radicals telling him his investors can't tweek the SL experience.

I think that the whole Ebay involvement was taken completely out of context. When we all learned about the common investor, people began to worry that Ebay would start to have some 'control' over the operations of SL. Philip put those to rest by saying Ebay would have no involvement with LL - on a *business* front.

I'm sure he's smacking his head now, knowing people would take his comment to such an extreme that using Ebay's service would generate so many flames.

Yes, founder and investor.... not 'owner' (save for stock).

Jauani, the Lindens went from maintaining the Pan Am building with Pan Am on it, then the used the same building to let Met Life put up its Met Life sign. Still an office building, still in the same spot. The masses (those who bothered) will look at the top picks space and find....purchased spots by the horrid fetid, etc. They will find themselves in a three-card monte game...but it won't last. Like I said, they will either become the laughingstock and everyone will point and say "yuck" and "look what money can buy" like they already say in SL (I will never forget the first thing I heard Maxx Monde tell me about the game, "Money and land can take the place of talent and skills" -- words I live by : )

...OR they will actually be roughly the same thing, because large groups like Bedazzled or whatever will be able to shell out the extra $10 or $20 or whatever -- the prices will likely settle down. Because....once you are on top picks and say 5000 people land on your lot...well...so...nu....what do you get? You get -- what is it, $100 LL in dwell extra? I mean, you definitely don't get back that US $10. So it's more just a feel-good and visibility exercise.

Tell you what Jauani. Instead of sniping in the forums, let's do something POSITIVE. Let's start OUR OWN top picks! This was something I used to do for weeks earlier in the game and everyone thought I was nuts at first because how the hell could I tell what was good or not -- remember when you helped me? -- but I persisted and many other people joined through Club Fame and we had a run for awhile trying to showcase good architecture. So let's do it! Let's pick the top 10 builds this week and showcase them with screenshots and landmarks on cubes or maybe little models of the buildings or some such. We can discuss some fast new sim where this could be laid out, it could even change every week. We could also do top fashion or top gadgets or whatever. I think the only solution to all the problems inherent in either Linden-picks or ebayed picks is WE HAVE TO DO IT OURSELVES. In time, it could become more established. It would even be good if there were a variety of "top picks" and even Zagat-type booklets to go with them.

Who the hell are we to make these picks, you ask? Well, nobody special, but we know what we like : ) And it could change every week. And it wouldn't be a contest with money, but just a pick, to help give visibilty to interesting builds.

AND here's a bonus. I will make a new alt for this purpose so it won't be associated with land sales or past negrate/forum issues. OK?

Jaunai?

Haha Juro your drawing lines to distinguish the difference between 'founder' and 'owner' where they don't exist. Regardless though the fact is Piere, founder of ebay, and Bill, who is now on the LL board from Benchmark, came in and now suddenly the in-house auction system is no longer good enough. Suddenly it 'only makes sense' that we re-route SL traffic to the ebay site for specific goods and services, allowing them both to profit mutually. This would have NEVER happened had the partnership never occured, and it disgusts me to see the lengths LL will go to destroy SL. Its obvious that they arn't excelling like they want to and are flailing in the dark for some sort of magical fix to the systematic problem of basic incompetency. Its not going to work.

Deklax, so, as LL admitted, the in-house auction system couldn't handle the auctions for the ads.

What would you suggest then? They spend thier man-hours re-coding it for this experimental (beta) program w/o knowing *if* they will keep it?

How about they actually try to develop a working system within the game/secondlife.com that can support their entire service? I am all for a change in top picks because they were blatant favoritism in the past and meant nothing more than the Lindens liked you. Obviously this is great for the established clubs but not everyone has the time to kiss ass. I don't think under any circumstances that system should be kept or returned to, ever. If they do just trash the 'beta test' then it will show how badly that project failed and how incompetent they are for having begun something like it. On the other hand if it succeeds using ebay I think they will have much less incentive to ever spend any time on it and it will become harder and harder to seperate the two.

In short, why shouldn't they?

The studies are out -- more and more individuals are spending time online (virtual worlds, gaming sites, and/or MMORG's) that the time spent watching TV is declining.

While I don't want to see commercialism in any of these areas, for many locations, it's already there in the form of other online ventures and/or real-life products.

It is only a matter of time until a marketing company comes up with a new way of introducing advertising in-game. It's going to happen.

What is happening with LL being "listed" on e-Bay is a great chance for free marketing -- many people who browse e-Bay might find the Top Picks interesting. Although, from reading the profile for the TopPicks, there aren't many good keywords listed atm, so the viewing might be a tad bit low.

If e-Bay had a 3D category, a crafting category, a social category (who's gonna bid for a date with Juro, auction closes in 10 minutes!) -- then listing LL might just be a wonderful way to get attention to the product.

On the flip side, putting LL in Match.com or Friends.com might be even a better solution to gain new subscribers. (Online dating services are one of the highest visited locations on the web for over the past year.)

The point is -- while LL is using e-Bay as a form of free advertisement atm, while LL advertises on other gaming locations -- it's only a matter time until the shoe is reversed and some advertiser comes knocking on LL's door.

Let's just hope that the marketing strategy for the very first advertisement in LL is done correctly, has a unique flavour along with a wonderful product, and makes 89% of the people happy.

Ebay's 2004-Q4 report claims 51.7 million active users and 348 million auction listings.

Although the one additional active user of LL generating twenty addtional listings fortnightly will contribute to eBay's bottom line, I'm not sure I understand why there would be significant concern of them profiting from us.

Given all the posts I see in the forums about LL resource management and priorities for non-buggy servers, cleaner logins, etc. I don't believe it bad if LL can profit from using an established third-party auction system if it makes easier their management decision to auction sponsored links.



Unless there are posts elsewhere which I'm unaware of, the documented statements about an LL connection to eBay and it's founder are in the forums under Linden Forums/Announcements in the transcripts of Phil's 10/27 and 10/28 Town Hall Meetings, in which several questions were asked on this subject.

To my eye, the relevant quote of what LL would/wouldn't do was a statement from Phil that they would not be "collaborating" with eBay, but would be with Mr. Omidyar and his personal investment group.

Placing several ads with eBay might arguably be regarded as "collaboration". My own view is that this is collaboration is the same sense that I have collaborated in the past with eBay for the common goal of my buying and selling used schoolbooks. I see no evidence that LL's auction listings in eBay represent anything substantially deeper -- i.e. "collaborative" as I understand the word -- than what's available to me or any of the other 51 million users of their service.