Billboards out of hand

Is it just me or is this billboard situation getting out of hand? My thanks for being a land owner of X amount of time is having a large billboard placed in front of my store/home obscuring my view and disallowing people to accurately make purchases at my location because they think they're at the wrong place. I find this situation is getting well out of control.

I see the metadverse signs around and frankly, they're the only intelligent signs I've seen, yet. They at least have had the courtesy to put their signs in high flight positions not right in front of builds. Thank you Metadverse for your consideration of other people's properties and I hope that you continue to look out for the rest of who are getting annoyed by these rash outrising of poor advertising. If you're all looking to advertise, try looking at locations near Telehubs. I have kept my builds away from Telehubs for this reason, but that's no longer the case.

Linden Labs, have you all put any thought into this situation? If not, could you? This could have an impact on the land sales and land retention. Nobody is going to want to build a house on a bay (like I have) only to have billboards appear all around obscuring the view.

Sounds like it's more about the one in front of your store than a game-wide problem.

I've seen very few billboards in-world. I'd actually like to see a lot more. Advertising is very crippled in this game. We need greater capacity for advertising. The Lindens could consider possibly zoning the billboards as to height or distance from the road. But how will they police this in a world of numerous people buying 16-64 m just for the purpose of billboards.

ugh
i get enough spam, banner ad, and popups... i hope sl keeps a low level of advertising in the future... or even less than it has now.

ew...

same here .Besides What people do with there land is there biz Until the TOS Is violated

It's interesting that you've come to the same conclusion as Prokofy, as you've just professed the antithesis of Prokofy's ideology.

I also happen to agree. I think restricting advertisement is as repugnant as condemning white cubes of death, lambasting frolicking gorillas, etc. We should be free to do what we want with our land, so long as the use isn't harassing.

A good compromise is that LL should provide us with more tools so we can zone and be in sims in a way that there are no billboards. Basically, tools which allow us to agree as communities to certain contracts (formal or informal) about what sort of content we want to be associated with.

I'm aware of your sentiments, StoneSelf, but they're just your sentiments, not everybody's. We haven't even established reliably that LL suffers from too many billboards. I know that in the 32 sims I visit regularly, I can think of only one annoying one that was preventing land sales all around it. I can think of one or two metaverse signs that were inside malls or by the road that seemed perfectly fine.

Metadverse is not the only company, and there should be more and there should be more billboards in a growing, open-ended world. It means that people who don't want to see a world like that might have to sequester themselves on private islands, I guess, because most people have adjusted to the idea that if you want a free market and the goods, services, and information it produces, you have to have at least some tolerance for advertising.

Again, until we have an in-game classifieds list, billboards represents at least a partial solution. I'm not at all sure they work very well since they depend on fly-ins and then follow-up from a spontaneous flyer, but they're worth testing.

It would be silly to allow billboards only at telehubs because obviously you can already see plenty of advertising and signs at telehubs, it's 1000 away where you want to bring in a flyer where you'd need one.

I think that when people find a white cube of death, a gorille, or an ugly sign near their land, where they have established a residential community, they have every right to protest it, discuss it, negrate it, do what they want *just as* those people who placed those items felt they had a right of eminent domain or even noblesse oblige for what they do. You may have failed to see that my "ideology" (which I'm not sure you know fully) cuts both ways -- gorilla-lovers can put King Kong in the bay, but residential home lovers who want the value of their home and land can also respond how they wish to, to this interruption of what they feel is the value of their land.

I think when the group tools work a little better people can work together to make sims prettier by planning where roads, signs, stores, homes, etc. can go on a single sim. The key to this development isn't about technical tools, however, it's about people, and their willingness to be better neighbours and listen to each other's concerns without insisting on "it's my land and I do WTF I want on it" as their main credo.

I really must side with the anti-billboard team here. I have huge, fugly signs in both of the sims I call home. Retailers need to understand that the single best place to advertise is in FIND. That is where 99% of residents look when they want something. A clearly written description of products/services and good pictures in Find are what drives people into stores.

What might be a cool idea is if listings in Find can show 4 or 5 pictures, so advertisers can show a store front and a few product samples.

Well, except that is NOT the single best place because often the search terms don't come up you put in because the retailers didn't think to put in those terms. Or you put in a term like "hair" and it comes out with 100s of things, some of which aren't hair but mainly a club that might only have a hair vendor or something in it, not realy the main hair store. Or whatever. It is a very clumsy, and frustrating experience to use FIND>

Sure, it's important to encourage better pictures, etc. but this is an immersive game. People fly around. They click on stuff. So billboards are good too.

What you are reacting to is your home sims and I fully, fully sympathize. I had 2 ugly rotating signs that competely devalued land I had, one even near a telehub, and made it impossible to rent, sell, or even just live in because the thing shed light and was just a huge eyesore. I TOTALLY sympathize with that plight. I don't know what to suggest except to try the usual menu of appealing to the person to be a better neighbour, then leading up to a negrate. I find that some people who have put ugly spinning signs in world to just sell some little thing are the people who just use this game as a depot and log in once a month just to extract the Linden dollars out of it and cash out, they don't even look at mail or even bother to see what their sign is next to in-world. I really hate that.

I'm just saying that this really nasty experience of being griefed by a sign is not the only prism through which to look at this problem. There is a role for billboards, but they need to be zoned and those putting them up need to have some sense of community pressure, if nothing else, that enables them to be prettier about placing them. The solution is not to ask the Lindens to ban all billboards which is what I heard some saying. Try to think of how when you ban all billboards from SL, you get rid of the uglies in front of you on your home sim, but you also deprive yourself of an ad for your own business in an area where people won't mind seeing billboards.

Random, I do agree that the current system of advertising for business is a mess. Like many, I've had that hair shopping experience of 100 places coming up in Find and being at a loss as to where to even start. It was the recommendations in a recent forum thread that narrowed that list down for me to the 10 or so places that are really worth shopping at.

There needs to be a better way for retailers and customers to find each other, but I don't see billboards as the answer. Ultimately, all roads lead back to the contentious arena of zoning and the discussion that we've not yet really embarked upon: what is the best way for businesses to advertise and grow their customer base? What is the best way for a consumer to find what they are looking for without having to wade through 100 listings? One suggestion would be for a way to take the concept of SL Exchange and the other off-world shopping systems and bring those in-world at specific locations. I'm sure others will come up with more suggestions.

Billboards are only a symptom of the real problem, which is bringing retailer and customer together. If we fix the real problem, the billboards cease to be a worthwhile advertising strategy.

Yes, I like this idea. I like the world to be immersive, and don't like having to flip pages out of SL into the Internet, because so often the game can't recover from flipping windows and freezes when you have SL minimized in a window, and try to go to SLEXchange or some other site like GOM.

I've been trying to take things like Timeless Prototype's Graffiti Board which has room for pictures, texts objects and make it a kind of interactive display in a store. I haven't figured out how to use it all but it seems it has possibilities. Of course, you can use the various TV or Picture Showers out there too. The vendors themselves provide product display but they often lag, disappear, function slowly, chat at you too much, etc.

Billboards in RL occur because roads were built and a national parks system was developed after WWII in the US. So if they ever get the roads between sims working right the idea of having billboards along the roads will catch on and there will be a lot of interest in this, and the aesthetic camp cannot be expected to prevail when people will want this capacity. Then the Lindens might have to think of renting or selling or giving away in a lottery Luna-type commercial property. Ditto their railroad in the new continent. They've slowed everything down by not putting out telehubs but putting up an intriguing new railroad that opens up the possibility of billboard advertising. Some people are already grabbing slices of land along this railroad with this idea in mind. I personally don't have a problem with it per se -- if it is down by the road, if it is not blocking a view corridor, how could house owners complain?

I don't feel it is justified to ban all billboards just because a few people find them unsightly right in front of their homes, because the placers of the billboards are inconsiderate. If everyone is going to have this insistence on "I get to do WTF I want on my own land" then they have to respect that for the ugly billboard placer too -- but then I'm not a subscriber to the total WTF-I-want school of thought in a community on a sim.

Instead of facing the consequences of the results of their "I get to do WTF i want on my own land" philosophy coming home to roost, they want to ban all advertising or hobble it severely.

One thing I can see about this discussion is that there are a variety of viewpoints, a variety of interest groups at play, and it has to be looked at from all sides and not with one side prevailing.

i'm just saying i don't like advertising. the internet has enough pork by products and mystery meats.maybe a better find feature and point-to-point teleportation would eliminate the need for billboards

I'd think twice about supporting p2p teleportation if it means devaluing telehub land and devaluing all the work that many people have put into building malls and stores at them. I think even if you do have p2p

The Internet isn't all pork by-products, Stoneself, but is the medium by which you are playing this very game or inhabiting this very metaverse. And somebody has to pay that metaverse's bills. One of the ways the bills get paid is by having advertising.

eh... ll has done lotsa things like this. if the majority of people want p2p, then ll should consider it. why benefit just a few business avatars?yeah, but here i pay to get onto sl. i really don't want a proliferation of pork-by-products.

I think not only does LL see the advantages of "benefiting just a few business avatars" (hmm, nice way of depersonalizing human beings whose views you don't like, eh?) -- in fact, you'll find there are way more than "just a few business avatars" but quite a lot of them, probably more than you'd imagine from the world you are sitting in, which is only one world among the many diverse worlds in the metaverse.



I think SL is more non-pork that pork, but to realize that, you need to get out more.

that's quite an accusation.oh there are lotsa business folk. but there are more non-business folk.i think there is more non-pork than pork, too. i just don't want the amount of pork to increase.

Yes, it's quite the accusation and you need to think about how you chose your words about your fellow human beings. You disparage people as running collective business avatars that might be shared among say 3 people or 10 people but what of it? They provide a service, and yes, there is a human being behind them.

And a few business avatars are people running businesses without sharing the avatar, so to describe them perjoratively as "business avatars" really sucks, like they are just grasping and greeding business-driven people.

May I suggest that your views and perceptions and statements are driven by a world view of a certain type. As are anyone's. You're no different. Your world view is showing. Be mindful of that.

I think your real issue is that you don't want the amount of PROK to increase oops I mean PORK, SO easy to make typos hmmm?

I am not one who objects to the use of forum alts. I think they perform the valuable function of protecting the in-game character from being abused by those who take issue with views expressed in forum, and are of irrational, vindictive, or aggressive bent.

Even inside the forums, a change of alt can make it possible to escape at least for a little while, from any troll who might follow you around deliberately trying to cap everything you say. I have used them for both purposes.

But I do think that as a matter of etiquette, there are things one should not do. Surely one should only use one alt in each thread? Swapping alts, with only one other post separating them, for instance, would seem to show real disrespect for other posters.

Pointing no fingers at anyone specific, of course. Just a random thought that came into my head.

i'm not disparging anyone. stop putting words in my mouth. i happen to be a business avatar in sl. so are most of my friends. "business avatar" isn't perjorative. hmm...it's not all about you.

just say no to more advertising in sl. that how i feel.

StoneSelf, try to keep track of the circular logic and discrepancies in your own posts, please.




This comment suggests that a) you can predict what LL will do, and that you influence it b) that you are in a majority that wants p2p, and not in a minority that wants telehubs (so you perceive it, but it is not properly tested as a professional opinion poll) and c) that "just a few business avatars" was not you, but "those other people I don't like."

"Why benefit just a few business avatars" is a phrase that sounds like a snarky rhetorical question to which you've got the answer already: "Don't benefit a few business avatars." And it also is proof that you don't consider yourself a business avatar, i.e. that small group of people that you do not think should be benefited.



So now you circle around, when caught, and suddenly say "I'm a business avatar, too."

So I can only come back to you and say, "Why benefit a few business avatars," Stoneself? Why benefit just THOSE FEW who are YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS lol.

You said so yourself.

See, two can play at forum gotcha and word-mangling.

you have failed to understand my motives.i hold very nuanced positions.i benefit from many things that i don't consider fair or necessarily in the best interest of the majority. i'm a complex person.uh... ok

i can be a business person and against telehubs and against more advertising. being one thing doesn't restrict my choices in other areas.

* * *

anyhow i hope sl keeps the low level of advertising it has... or has even less.

B]I HOPE SL INCREASES ITS CAPACITY FOR ADVERTISING[/B]

So there, bigger letters, bolder font, heh, more persuasive, eh? Whatever. If you need to have the last word, have it, but it won't take away the pressure of millions of people who'd like to have a metaverse that isn't a communist utopian theme park but is a free, liberal, open market-based economy with the free flow of goods, services, and information. That kind of system tends to serve humanity better than the closed systems.




This is a great line, and I guess I'll learn to trot it out when accused of hypocrisy and internal contradictions, too.



Oh? Like you know me and understand my motives? HARDLY.



Oh, I quite understand how you mean you can be for business, and for your own business, and your little friends' businesses, but against something that might benefit others in business in SL who aren't you or your friends. Oh, I quite understand that bit very well. That's something I often report on, and complain about it. You can call this phenom by different names -- state capitalism, communist commerce, chaibolism, guildism, whatever, the idea is that the state has a loyal class of businessmen who get the privilege of having their businesses, often at the public expense and not for the public weal, and who, if they remain loyal, get increasing privileges.

I loathe that system in RL, as do many who have fled places where they have that, because it's unjust, and it also tends toward corruption because it has no accountability. SO I'd hate to see it established here -- a small, tightly-knit artisan class loyal to the government who thrive on a finely-tuned ladder of privileges and apprenticing. I personally think that whatever benefits might have accrued for building the initial core of the metaverse with that kind of guild system, it doesn't serve you well as you expand out the metaverse and make it a larger home for all kinds of people with all kinds of values and means of commerce.

Please keep discussions to the topic at hand and do not resort to personal attacks or name-calling to 'prove' your point. I would like to remind everyone of the Forum Guidelines, specifically this section: "Please challenge opinions, state your own and enjoy the discussion, but do not cross the line into personal attacks and insults because you will risk having your forum privileges suspended or banned."

Further inflammatory off-topic posts will result in this thread being closed and those who are attacking one another being disciplined appropriately.

I agree with this.

Apart from the fact that we are talking about a problem that does not actaully exist yet, I think the billboards are a reaction to the (deep breath...)

awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, ...

"Find" feature.

Try looking for somethign simple even like"skins" and you will find a few places, but nothign like all of them or even the best ones. It has no intelligence built into it and seems to rely solely on what people *happen* to put in their description.

A good example is there is a club called "Tiger Lily's Nightclub," and you can enter "Tiger" "Lily" "Tiger Lily" and even "Tiger Lily's" and not get a hit. Only if you remember the full name and the exact spelling can you even find it.

This is *not* the fault of the nightclub, (it is a wonderful place)

IMO you should not need a computing science degree to list your attraction so that the find picks it up properly. Never having listed anything I am not sure of the process, but it seems to me that a few interactive questions and a bit of basic smarts would suffice to tease the necessary info out of the person making the listing.

I don't usually like to be this negative, but truly I find the "find" more of a hinderance than a help.

Other than finding people I stopped using it after the first week and pretty much *all* the places I know about have come to me through word of mouth, not the find feature.

information is fine. advertising is annoying.
then there is the fact that a lot of advertising is dysinformation.

the balance between community and the individual is difficult one. i happen to dislike advertising. i don't really expect that to change because i said anything. but if it will change things, then i will speak up.

just bolding the stuff i think is most on topic.

less advertising. fewer billboards. less spam.