More clarification on top picks / sponsored

I'm reposting here what I added to the bottom of an earlier thread regarding these listings:

Regarding non-SL content or advertisers on the sponsored listings: We will NOT allow them.

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]

Thanks for the clarification Phil.

Yeah I can agree, I've explored many places I'm surprised no one has heard of when I brought it up.

Eddie

Ok, everybody show's over! Go home!

Phil...why didn't you have the "buy it now" option on the ebay slots?

No, no, see, selling the ads will give someone with a really cool wallet a way to get on the list for 2 weeks.

While I don't have a problem with this new system, I don't think it will accomplish what you want it to, Philip. It takes money now to get on the list, so the players that generate the most money will be most likely to win the slots.

I thought the original idea was to highlight things that don't make money or have high dwell, but that are cool or interesting. Things that make money or have high dwell don't NEED the notice. They are already quite obvious.

While something like this might be a good thing to add, I loses most of the good points that the Top Picks list provided.

I know that I was far more likely to visit a Linden-checked Top Picks location than one of the high-dwell places or huge mega-malls. It's the little places that don't have any other draw but neatness that *I* want to find and visit.

I think, in the end, the only true solution to the need is the creation of third-party directories. I think THAT would boom if we ever saw html-on-a-prim join the Second Life feature set.

That's life, bub. People with more cash have better cars too.

Thank you for the clarification, Phil. This helps dissuade my concerns.

-Ghoti

Tiger.. I have to say, I really like this advertising "Featured Listings" idea. I think it's a great way for SL residents to get some exposure for thier businesses. There could be some abuse, but LL will refine it as we go.

I do agree that I would like to see some sort of 'Top Picks' still around. Mabye they could figure out a way to implement a Top Picks v2.0 that is user selected, thus removing the administrative work for LL, but allowing us to have non-paid, non-advertising places to check out. Maybe we could each get one 'token' per month to vote for a cool place.

BRING BACK THE VOTE MACHINES FOR TOP PICKS! Only count unique votes from unique avatars every week. You can only give ONE vote per week to ONE location -- no more.

ONE VOTE PER WEEK FOR ONE LOCATION.

And I know that you guys know who's alts are whose, so only have ONE vote per HUMAN user.

Sounds like the smart move to me.

-Ghoti

Here is my 25 L on this matter...

There is NO way I am going to compete with someone else on E-Bay for a Top Picks Slot.

Period! End of story...

Considering that the add only runs for two weeks, that seems to be a horrible waste of money to me. I saw the bids on this last night... $105.00 USD and climbing? Yeah! Great deal! NOT!

The other problem with this is that if you read the information carefully, it appears that these slots are only open to PG content or simulators. Since I invested my time and money into purchasing a MATURE private island, I guess I do not even qualify to bid in the first place.

I believe the Lindens have made a horrible mistake.

In the mean time, I guess I will have to be satisfied with being posted on the popular places.

So the question is....

How will projects like Neverland and the Land of Oz be advertised now? Considering they were Linden sponsored in the first place, does that mean that the Lindens would need to bid on a spot so they could promote such creations? Or is that value passed along to the creators that put all their time and efforts into a creation of such magnatude?

Sad, sad, sad......

How about simply choosing the places appearing most often as people's picks, not counting alts?

I agree with Tiger that it's important to not just reward highlight businesses only, or rich players with fun projects. This means projects like Nowall/Backstage, the London/Neverland project, and other non-business/volunteer projects won't be on that list unless the creators spring for it without expecting a return.

I have nothing against business directories, I think we sorely need one. But this isn't it.

I think that one was an error. Currently, the highest bid is $25.01, with most of them still at a couple dollars.

This is a great question. The listing says it is for PG object/place/service only. However, I'll bet (Robin, could you clarify?) that *if* this experiment is successful the Lindens will bring the auctions in-house and offer the option for M object/place/service (s). There are simply too many M-rated objects/places/services to be ignored.

Neverland was given top billing in the 'Experience' section of the SL website, as I would imagine other Linden-sponsored projects would. That's some damn fine free advertising.

Sorry for the crosspost but I guess this belongs here now

I think they should be pulled from the picks list in people's profiles, which I think is a very underutilized feature. People would be able to basically "vote" for more than one place since we can have several picks in our profile. To encourage people to use or change their picks we could bring back a kind of voting booth that when clicked would automatically add the place they're at to their picks. If their picks list was full it would pop up a list asking which they want to delete or allowing them to cancel. It would also tell the owner the number of people who've used it. In order to keep the list from being too static, every day or week the top picks could come from a different demographic category, like account ages, country of origin, sex, SL income range, and whatever other demographic info is compiled about the user base. One day might show the top picks for women under 30. The next day might show top picks for people over 50. The next it might be newbies. The next might be oldbies. The next might be a random user's list. You get the idea. One of the nice things about it would be that it's not really open to gaming or favoritism and even lazy people can participate and even relatively unknown places would have a good chance of showing up. I always felt guilty that I was too lazy to fly around clicking vote boxes every day when we used to have them. With this I wouldn't ever have to change my picks if I didn't want to, and I could even vote for myself without being an ass I'm sure it wouldn't be trivial to implement but I think it would be cool, and since it would change often it would be fun to check it out every day.

*giddy gasp* Can we bring back voting stations??? *drools*

If you take the Ebay posting literally you cannot just show off your creations at the location. You have to sell them. It says on the Ebay page -

I think what they mean is they won't allow an SL resident to buy the ad and use it to sell non-SL stuff.

Maybe, but it is all in how you read it. If that is what they mean they need to say that.

Personally I would have preferred this and/or the voting booths over the whole auctioning the spots on ebay. At least there is a chance that someone creative will show up on the list, not someone that just had the money to buy their spot. I will repeat what I have said in other threads: I refuse to visit any of the spots listed on the Featured Links if they were chosen they way they are being chosen now. I have visited people's picks on their profile and the now defunct Top Picks, but now I will only visit the people's picks.

Attention monger that I am, even I'd be too embarrassed to buy myself a listing. On the other hand, I'm kinda curious about what will end up on the list. I babble (bloggle?) on about this some more in my blog (link below) if anyone is curious.



~Olympia