LL acquisition of XStreetSL - good thing?

LL has purchased XStreetSL, planning to integrate it into SL. If I understand the posts correctly, they've also bought OnRez and will shut it down.

Do you think this is a good thing?

NO.

First of all, that OnRez was bought, only to be shut down later, signals LL's intent to remove any competition from this venture.

Second, LL will increase the fees XStreet users currently pay to sell stuff on the service, I'll bet dollars to donuts. Colossus Linden said:



Third, and this is the part that really gets me, is that LL, who collects money from me for premium membership and tier already, now wants money for selling items *I* create on *thier* grid.

XStreet and OnRez benefit us greatly, without LL's involvement. This move is beneficial to NO ONE except Linden Lab.

well, we don't know the answer to your question yet. they only just acquired it yesterday and haven't had the opportunity to better it - or screw it up.

after a few months, please re-ask.

I have to disagree. I can't base whether or not this is a good thing on how well, or badly, LL implements their acquisition. It's a bad idea for LL to be involved in merchandising of resident product, IMHO, and this has nothing to do with how well they run the thing.

if they run it well, or better, why would it then be a bad thing?

Actually, 3ring, while your point is valid, it's overstated. We do have good reasons to object a-priori, on principle.

Such as, the principle of free-enterprise. The principle of having alternatives (as shopper or merchant, or for exchanging money). The principle of not letting the government (LL) have a direct interest (profit) in industry (the exchange, in this case) -- because the government will be tempted to do things that are good for that industry's profits rather than for its constituents.

But you're right, we'll have an even clearer picture later. That does not mean that it's not worth asking now.

While I doubt I'll be affected by this much personally, I'm very concerned that LL would corner what should be a separate industry for SL.

"Your world. Your imagination. Our profit."

I'm not against LL profiting, of course. I just don't want to see them taking over independent profitable industries.

What's next: are they going to outlaw independent exchanges, or regulate them into impossibillity?

Hostility against competition, conflicts of interest, and LL does not have a pristine record for running efficient systems anyway. LL shouldn't be in the business of marketing resident content. They should be in the business of maintaining and improving the grid.

Okay, I'll consider this my initial action prior to going into "wait and see mode."

My first response is not good. In fact, it's pretty pessimistic, because of LL's prior track record with GOM, among other things. I just see this as yet another way for LL to take my money, while taking what was once excellent service and lowering it to their standards.

I'm not as worried about Onrez, but then I didn't do as much with Onrez as I did with XStreet. XStreet was my one-stop-get-the-heck-away-from-LL's-crap place. I could sell items there and I could sell my L$ there and have it in my Paypal in less than 10 minutes. I also used it to search for items before I visited in world. The in world search tools leave ALOT to be desired. The fees I could deal with, because hey, they weren't LL. They were a separate company and had a right to make a profit.

With LL taking over, I'm not to thrilled with the commission for my sales via the XStreet. I already pay LL plenty of scratch and feel this is just asking for too much. I don't mind if they keep the fees for their L$ exchange, because the Lindex has fees too. Nor would I mind if they charged fees for the frills that XStreet offers for listing items, because of the in world ads I think they just need to get rid of the commission part now.

If they keep the excellent service, the Paypal mass pay and remove the commission fees for items, they'll prove my initial reaction wrong. And I'd be glad to revise my opinion at any time.

What's GOM?

It's a service; so I see no problem paying for the service.

My objection is that this service shouldn't be monopolized by LL.

If SL allows free competition and doesn't take measures to discourge it, then my main objection goes away. Of course, I'll have the nuisance of setting up shop in a new exchange -- but that's just bizness.

The ideal situation for businesses like exchanges is for there to be a small number of market leaders (so that you don't have to list your product with dozens of them to be noticed, the way it is with Yellow Pages today in the US), and with plenty of boutique services catering to special needs. The small number of market leaders compete with each other so they're forced to continuously improve their services in order to compete. Without a competitor, the SL Exchange will be whatever LL wants it to be, and they'll only spend money on improving it if there's a business case for doing so.

What profitable business will they take over next? Xcite? (grins)

It's pretty obvious to me what happened.

LL worked out a deal to buy Onrez from Electric Sheep who didn't really do anything with it much anymore. They then went to XStreet, and said somthing along these lines:

"Sell to us, become part of our team, or we will go with Onrez's platform and compete with you." The sort of offer it's very ill advised to refuse.

So is it bad, sure. Will LL do something good with it, maybe. Was it needed, no.

I'm on record as the only one so far who thinks this has the probability of being a very good thing.

1) In-world Search is crap. The results are gamed by bots and you have to actually TP to a store to see if they have anything you want to buy at a price you want to pay.

2) With a web-based shopping system you can do detailed searches, sort your results and see pictures of the items for sale without having to TP to an in-world store, wait 5 minutes while everything rezzes, and only then discover that the merchandise is rubbish - and overpriced rubbish at that.

3) Find something you like on the web interface and need a better look? Then you can TP to the store KNOWING that there is something there you are interested in.

4) I've read Gwyneth Llewelyn's suggestion that in the long term this will kill land value because people will stop having in-world stores. I'm not sure I believe this to be true - a whole lot of purchases are "impulse" buys and sellers who don't have an in-world store are going to lose those impulse buys. Some stores may indeed pull out of having an in-world presence, but I think many will still see the value in providing a "brick and morter" shop as a way to help capture both upsell and impulse buyers.

5) Little known content creators will finally have the same shot at sales and attention as the big guys. Someone searching for skins at a price point of $1000L is going to be able to see every skin available at that price without TPing to 40 stores, half of which gamed their way into the results with traffic bots.

in that case i wish Xstreet would have said..go right ahead cause..
an owned LL onrez would not stand a chance against Xstreet.
LL is buying them up because change is coming.

There's nothing on your list that couldn't be done already, at XStreet. So explain why LL taking it over and exerting their gift for slanting things toward their friends and buddies is good. Do you really think LL will be highlighting little known creators? It's going to be Rezzible and whatever other ass kisser of the day LL is gushing over. The little guy is quite contrary will be squeezed out.

And no, Land sales wont' be tanking.

Because it needs to be incorporated into the SL viewer.
LL won't need to be highlighting anything, whoever pays for advertising is still going to hit the front page and anyone with a listing is still going to come in the search results.

From reading the Knowledge Base that was provided as a link within the blog, this is one of the things that concerns me:



I personally haven't had great results with the "professionals that support the Second Life world."

I really hope that's true. But Showcase set a very bad example of what LL is capable of doing.

Here you are gonna need this..i'm on my second jar already

LL is becoming WalMart

GameingOpenMarket.com

It was the only (for a while there) place where you could sell your L$ for USD. From what I understand, LL offered to buy them out and I believe they refused and LL decided to create their LindeX instead.

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2005/09/going_going_gom.html


Yeah... this be why I'm not to thrilled with the whole thing.

You may be right.

However, regardless of whether LL's integration of Xstreet goes well or ill, I think it's only natural that residents who were basically happy with these services are upset. After all, one of them is being axed and the other is being repurposed as an augmentation of LL's none-too-popular search engine.

Plus, those who used Xstreet's currency market will, I'm sure, be very sorry to see its swift transactions go the ponderous way of the Lindex.

I imagine (indeed, I hope) no one at LL is surprised by the negative outpouring on their thread.
.

/me hands you a smiley sticker

My take on whether it's "good or bad" is simply to say who cares? Now before you take that the wrong way, hear me out. I don't mean no one should care about the subject itself, or about the folks who are probably losing jobs (happens with every buyout). What I mean is, as a business owner, I don't believe it's productive to focus on whether it was good or bad of Company X, be it LL or anyone else, to have have done a thing, after they've already done it. It doesn't matter whether the change was good or bad; it simply IS. That's the reality of the situation.

Now, I realize a lot of people come here just to complain, so for them, maybe there's merit in it. But me, I'd rather think about how to embrace the change (ANY change), in order to make it work form me as well as possible. To pine for what might have been had a change not happened accomplishes nothing.

The question we should be asking is what's the best way for all of us to proceed from here. For me, that means business as usual. That's it.

Change is inevitable. Evolution happens. Those who panic in the face of change, and refuse to acclimate, disappear. Those who face change head on, and actively adapt, prosper. That's how it's been since the dawn of time, and it's how it will always be. There's no point in complaining about it. Accept it or perish. It's that simple.


Oh, and Raud, it's interesting that you brought up GOM. That's a perfect example of the exact opposite of what I'm talking about. They made the colossal mistake of refusing even to try to adapt, so of course they're no longer in business. As soon as LL announced they'd be opening up a service that would compete with them, GOM decided the sky was falling, and they promptly folded up their tents and went home. In doing so, they missed out on the tremendous opportunity such competition could have meant for them.

If you've got brain one in your head as a business person, you embrace competition. You never run from it. Competition is what drives any and every industry to succeed. If your business happens to be doing well just because you happen to be the only game in town, that's not really success. If you're doing well because you're better at what you do than your competitors are, only then have you actually accomplished anything.

Clearly GOM didn't have the stomach to try to be the BETTER. They just wanted to be the ONLY. And when that was no longer a reality, which was 100% inevitable, they simply quit. I was incredibly disappointed in them at the time. I thought they were better than that. I really did.

I'd be willing to bet anything that had GOM the wisdom to stick it out, they'd be beating the pants off Lindex right now. They already had a several year headstart on LL, in terms of customer base (most of whom probably would have stuck with them), and of experience in their particular arena. Had they put those factors to good use, there's absolutely no reason they couldn't have prospered right along side Lindex.

If they weren't planning to compete, then at the very least, they should have accepted whatever buyout offer was first proposed (assuming there actually was one). At least they would have walked away with SOMETHING instead of nothing.

I don't think I'll ever understand why anyone would just up and quit the way GOM did, without even trying to compete first. It was disgraceful, really.

This is awful for several reasons.

1) The third parties succeeded because of competition, or the credible threat of new competition should they not do a good job.

2) I never used OnRez. I do know that XStreetSL, as a company, always acted with far more professionalism than Linden Lab has ever demonstrated.

3) Linden Lab's priority with its investment capital should be fixing all the grid problems that prevent Second Life from being anything more than a joke when it comes to use as a virtual marketplace.

I have not been much of a consumer in Second Life for a long time, because I got burned out of my money early in the quagmire that is Second Life. However, when I absolutely wanted something, XStreetSl was at least one place I could go and shop with a little confidence and efficiency. Now that option is gone for me.

I shouldn't cry over it. My money is better off staying in my pockets anyway.

It's about as close as I will get to one I guess. Thanks.

so does this mean waiting for days to withdraw $US? No more INSTANT withdrawals to Paypal?