LL acquisition of XStreetSL - good thing?

lol

Oddly enough, this is one area I *don't* mind. XStreet is a way to sell stuff without having to buy land or rent prims. I think there SHOULD be a charge for this service. Whether LL or some third party owner gets it is irrelevant, from the merchant's perspective.

I'm more worried that they'll mess up real estate sales, or the open forums on XStreet, or the Search features, or (worst) the $L exchange and the ability to work quickly with PayPal, in and out.

Days? No. Over a _week_ is typical for LL's PayPal processing rate, so you can expect to wait weeks once they completely merge functions.

Of course, they might surprise us all and retain the Xstreet-SL PayPal processing method that works far better than their own method... But then, this is LL we are talking about, and their track record in making wise decisions isn't very good.

That depends on our friends at the FBI, who are very interested in the probability of money laundering through money exchanges.....

Will we all have accounts on this new thingie by virtue of our SL accounts do you think, or will this still be a stand alone service requiring a new signup, which frankly I am not interested in bothering with.

The reduction in competition is not a good thing. Xstreet will no longer have competition from OnRez, and the Lindex will no longer have competition from Xstreet's Currency Exchange. (I've always used Xstreet for cashing out.) While I agree with you, 3Ring, that we'll have to wait and see what LL may accomplish as a result of the acquisition, the lack of competition was enough to persuade me to choose "more bad than good" in the poll.

When LL made the purchase, I wonder if M Linden got a popup from Xstreet telling him he'd better not be in busy mode.

On thought that ocurred to me, and it may not be relevant in this case, is whether LL is attempting to move towards a 'There' model where all in-world content has to be approved by the game company (in this case, LL) before being allowed out on the market? Certainly having a lock on the the main outlet for in-world content places LL in the position where they could enforce such a stranglehold if they so desired.

If such a move were to happen then LL's acquisition of X-Street would be come to be seen as a very bad move indeed for content creators.

Further thought: Is this a preliminary move towards LL blocking smaller content creators and only allowing the big players to sell content? If so I can only see that it will add to the exoduse from SL towards the new independent grids.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for us, as service users, to convey to LL, the providers of a service we use, that we think they're making a terrible choice.

The hope is that they get a clue. I realize it's a pretty thin hope.

But it's also foolish to merely sit and take whatever they dish out to us, not complain or discuss their actions and the results, and let LL do whatever they want without providing feedback.

I agree with you that deciding what to do, now that they've made a choice, is a legitimate question. Feel free to start a thread on it.

I would imagine that it would be just like the Shop feature in the OnRez viewer that directly integrates with the viewer and your SL account. How selling would be handled is a different question, but I'd guess buying would be set up to be so easy that, well, a noob could do it.

It seems logical to me that LL bought XStreet for the catalog functionality and OnRez for the viewer integration.

I voted "Pie, anyone?" because LL is going to do what they want, good bad or indifferent.

I still stand by what I said in the official forum LL is supposedly reading though:

HANDS OFF.

It was independent, and it will NOT serve the interests of the SL residents as they're so proudly trumpeting, if it DOESN'T remain independent of Linden Lab. Period.

The correct way to fix that is to improve inworld search.

I agree -- this won't have any impact on land value.

That's already possible today. The only difference would be an in-world interface to this website. A minor advantage, at the cost of a monopoly.

I suppose the worst case scenario would be that LL screw up so badly another entrepreneur steps up to the plate and re-invents the ' X-Street/OnRez' web-based shop wheel and picks up from where LL crashed. Whether anyone would be so inclined to do so in the current economic climate is another matter altogether.

That pretty much covered my thoughts on the subject!

I was hoping someone would re-invent, but not when LL Crashes, but now. How about LL getting direct competition from another site like these? I'm sure they would try to buy that as well...

I seriously doubt we have to worry about that.

First, I'll admit that I would have thought the chances of SL buying XStreet were low. So I'm obviously don't have my finger on the pulse here.

However, there's simply no gain by suppressing small content creators. It's terrible PR, and the small creators don't amount to much in terms of revenue anyway, so why do something that would be very unpopular, with no serious benefit?

It would be nice if SL had some competition, but currently it's the only game where content creation is allowed and (to some extent) protected. (By "protected", I mean protected as intellectual property, so that you can profit from what you create.)

I think it would be great if someone jumps into the vacuum that just got created. It certainly would be possible to create a site that has all the benefits that both OnRez and XStreet had (technically). The first big question is whether LL would do anything to prevent that. The second big question is whether enough merchants would bother with it.

If they process money transactions faster, chances are good.

Working against them, merchants don't want the hassle of maintaining yet another outlet.

In any case, I'd like to see it.

The rumor is to try and bring in more money, in future they will only allow premium accounts to sell on xstreetsl. plus raising commissions and charging for listings and image uploads.

As a vendor and customer on both XLStreet and Onrez, a number of things struck me:

1. While OnRez was clearly dying due to lack of features (searches are particularly bad), a number of large vendors (like Simone) are exclusively using OnRez. I noticed LL made no mention of providing any mechanism to help them migrate over to XLStreet. What a mess that will be.

2. OnRez has never charged commissions for sales so I never figured out what their business model was until now. Build a platform then sell it to LL.

3. If XLStreet is integrated with the SL Viewer and you don't have to create a new and separate account to use it, I can only see sales using that venue going up -- assuming LL doesn't totally screw up the commission system. If I mention SLExchange / XLStreet now to someone, they either don't know about it or they do but won't bother to setup an account. If your SL account IS your XLStreet account, then it probably opens your offline market by a factor of what, 10's?? 100's??.

4. I finally closed my in-world store earlier this month. Too much maintenance and rent and not enough sales. Since all my stuff is in packages (clothing mostly), having the actual item out on display isn't really possible or necessary. Soooo, I think this will definitely reduce the value of commercial property for certain kinds of goods.

5. The one thing I hope this doesn't affect is the ability to sell things in-world directly without paying a commission to LL. If LL figures out how to charge on every sale, we're doomed since they will have taken their eyes completely off the user experience.

I voted for 1/2 good - 1/2 bad BTW.

Yeah, I never used OnRez because every time I tried (as a customer) I hated the search experience. But I do understand it had a great distribution method. I saw a post where someone had written a similar feature (as a script) for SLX boxes. Not quite the same thing, but allowed you to use vendors inworld that sold inventory in your SLX box, so you didn't have to update both. Never looked into that myself.

Good point; I might see my XStreet sales increase as a result. I'm still against the change, on principle.

I share your hope. Fortunately, our chances are good that LL won't take a tax on use of the "Buy" right-click option or the "Pay" button. Imagine the uproar over that!

While I'm clearly against the change, I encourage those who see it as neutral or positive to vote and be counted.

Exactly. LL did what any other business does, acquired an asset they felt would enhance their profits. Now it's up to them to adequately provide this service to their customers or else risk having someone else swoop in with a better product.

Sheesh! you people can be so skittish.

And will they proceed with Xstreet's plans to allow sales to other grids besides just SL? I'm sure that idea was totally killed in very unambiguous terms the instant they bought them.

So we absolutely need somebody else to step up to the plate and offer the same services in multiple grids the way that Xstreet planned to before LL took them over. Right fast too, I understand a competing grid which I won't name due to moderation is going to actually have a real economy in February.....

Which one?

Sony's Real Life?

Blue Mars? (When is that one going to come out?)

See, surviving as a business counts for LL and Second Life too. It doesn't benefit LL to put out a lousy product. They aren't the only game in town.

Let the process work itself out and see what happens.

To welcome this change is the intellectual equivalent of wishing the service at your neighborhood barbershop could be improved so that it offers the same level of courtesy, flexibility, care, and personal service as the Department of Motor Vehicles.


Centralization of powers is never good. Loss of competition/options is never good.

... also we can expect the XStreet forums to be governed with the same taboos applied here. Thus we've just lost one of our primary forums where we could speak openly and freely about SL matters.

To rail against this change is the intellectual equivalent of wishing away the rain because you had a picnic planned.

Businesses do what is in their perceived best interest.

Customers get to choose where to spend their money.

Our power exists in the pocketbook, not the boardroom.

You seem to be confused about that.