OK...Your turn..."Honest" Solutions for Business Owners

OK - totally understood.....glad we got that cleared up.

As far as being on topic....I agree...don't think we left it....it all comes out in the wash...someone will pick something up......but for a second there, I thought we veered off into analyzing/critiquing my business decisions/choices/policies, rather than helping Honeybear or any other mall or store owner come up with solutions to get traffic and shoppers. Just a brief second.

This is were we differ....you assume that people on these forums forced LL's hand and had to listen to its customer base regarding Ad Farms & doughnout land cutting. To begin with i might have been in agreement....then i took a look at what has happened over the last year since M.Linden's arrival. (bear in mind i worked at the same Organic Inc company for 2 years as the current CEO and read enough of his emails to shape my own alternative opinion)

M.Linden was brought in to take SL to the next level, to give it credibility to the outside world...hence why he wants RL businesses (mid-size I would guess) and Educators in here......part of that process is to clean up the grid....many would call it sanitization. If you look at Mainland alone since he arrived....i would suggest that its all one big road map to achieve his goals for LL!

- Culling of Ad farms
- Policy against small parcel cutting, doughnut cutting, rotating signs
- Moles laying down more public roads
- Nice controlled areas like Bay City, Nauticulus, Blake Sea
- Now they zoning Adult content

- next up will be traffic Bots. LL will get around this by changing the empahasis
on how "Place Search" will list i.e change or delete About land "traffic" numbers.
That in itself will mean 95+% bots logging off...just leaving the ones for genuine purposes such "Models", Land Bots" and Group inviters left on the grid.

You might feel that we should take some credit for enforcing change.....I don't!

Just so you know, it wasn't WHAT you said, it was how you said it. I can take constructive criticisms but perhaps that could have been IM'd or PM'd instead of criticizing me in public.

phil linden? is this your alt?!?

Whatcha do is put different ads with different search terms on different microparcels for the same shop. Then put a visitor counter there. Pretty soon you can see what keywords are working by changing things around and seeing who lands where.

Quoting Rene, forgive me I'm too lazy to quote the fancy way so back to thread style:

>>"M.Linden was brought in to take SL to the next level, to give it credibility to the outside world...hence why he wants RL businesses (mid-size I would guess) and Educators in here......part of that process is to clean up the grid....many would call it sanitization. If you look at Mainland alone since he arrived....i would suggest that its all one big road map to achieve his goals for LL!"

Personally I agree that the overall direction has to be toward the mainstream. To put it awfully: eventually 8mm film has to transition from porn to family home movies; it was the same with the VCR and the greater internet and so forth. Just kinda how tech goes.

Here's the issue, though. Las Vegas: City of Sin, noticed that it was 99% family arrivals and made the dangerous mistake of trying to market to families in the past. Bad. Marketing. Move. Of. The. Century! What they got was Las Vegas: Pointlessly Distant Desert Destination. After losing a lot of money they went back to marketing sin. Well, guess what ~ the families came back! Yeah, marketing is perverse like that.

I don't see anyone ever cleaning up the grid's image, save by populist groundswell. In other words, when so many people are working, going to school, whatever here that the word on the street is that the grid is *not* very vice related.

Feel free to differ all you want.

I was there for the last year and half with regards to the Adfarm/extortionist situation. I know what when down, how it went down, and why it went down.

M Linden had little to nothing to do with it, other than presenting a slide at a conference referencing it. The problem LONG predated his arrival, as did the efforts at working towards a solution. At best, he gave his blessing towards Jack continuing to deal with it.



I am sure some people would like to think that, but the truth of the matter is that many of the "sanitization" efforts you attribute to him below were in planning before he even arrived. Yeah, he might have added his personal spin to them during their implementation, but he certainly wasn't their source.

I do, however, think he had plenty of involvement in the OpenSpace debacle.



Little to nothing to do with M; predated him by months (the problem and activities by residents to get LL to do something about it took years, PRIOR to his arrival).



Little to nothing to do with him; it is a follow-on policy to adfarming tasked of the Concierge staff by the same residents who brought the adfarm problem to their attention (via repeated and relentless pursuit).



LDPW was planned and implemented months before M took over. He had nothing to do with its inception or activities.



Bay City was planned and built months before M took over. He had nothing to do with its inception or implementation, either. If he had anything to do with Nautilus or the Blake Sea, it was at a rubber-stamping level to continue what was already planned before he arrived. The Blake Sea deal might have had his thumbprints on it; I don't know anything about it from other "sources".



Yeah, that would probably be about par for something he would be involved with. It smells of the same ham-fisted approach taken with the OpenSpace debacle.



The current expectation (from those who participate regularly at Jack Linden's Office Hour), is that they will implement a similar policy as with landcutting. That will be to outlaw bot farms in regions, and talk with bot runners directly to get them to comply. Bots and traffic gaming have long been a sore spot, and while M may have had some input into it, the gears of progress have ground slowly towards resolving this issue, like all LL initiatives.



You might feel that we shouldn't, but I *KNOW* for a FACT we have.

yes, basically it was all talk and no action until m.linden came along.

Oh, just to add a clarification..

It wasn't just people on "these forums" that brought about change with respect to adfarming/extortion/landcutting, but people meeting with Lindens inworld, during office hours, town halls, IMs, emails, blogs, etc. Pretty much every possible communication avenue was explored. However, many of the same people in these forums also used those other avenues as well.

yes, outlaw bots on the mainland while allowing them on estates, thus creating an even larger barrier for newer creators to overcome. widen the chasm for the smaller stores to cross.
thats the linden way.

maybe they should just do away with traffic altogether?

That's basically what happens when people abuse the system. LL gets to come in and steamroll over the problem. I would rather people learn not to cheat, but eventually, like all communities and governments, people will overstep the bounds of "fair play", and the government comes by and takes their toys away or just breaks them.

Maybe they will make it surgical enough to just stop the abuse everywhere. Who knows? I would guess that this rule would extend to Private Estates as well, but who knows? Well, we all will, in a very short time. Jack was due to blog on it "middle of this week".



That was our suggestion, since it is a meaningless statistic at this point.

Thats what i believe too.

Look how long ad farming and other problems have been around....sure they talk....but things only got done when M.Linden arrived here and with urgency!

Back on topic:
In general I seldom rent in malls. In the past I did give it a few shots and never had much success. Still, I do have 3 rentals going at the moment:

#1 is in a very high traffic location, the only rental up to now that makes its rent by sales. Plus it it great for my branding as it is a very popular sim.
#2 is at a club that is furnished with my stuff. So if people like the stuff, they can check my rental shop and take a landmark there to my main store. No clue yet if it works.
#3 was offered free of rent for the first month, so I thought to give it a shot

Important things to me:
- an overall open and nice looking built.
- no blue pop-ups, but clickable landmark and notecard givers.
- high traffic, meaning as many events as possible.
- free tryout period if possible.
- Absolutely no bots/camping/BIABS

On the main "Honest" Solutions and Mall topic:

A good thing about the eclectic mix that can be found in malls is that it can put something in front of us that we would not have been searching for.
For me, that would be something innovative or quirky - as opposed to yet another item of fashion.

I can see that for a newbie, a mall could be very useful as it puts a variety in front of them in the one place.
When I joined just over two years ago, Yadni's Yunkyard was the classic destination for new people.

Although my shopping outings are very specific and structured theses days, I can understand that many might like to have the mall environment.
It could be that the views expressed here are not representative of the SL shoppers and cultures from all over the planet.



Leading into the 'representative' thing:

I know for a fact that at least one well-known Linden does not read even the Linden sections unless they are directly involved in the particular topic. I'd guess that very few few if any Lindens are reading this or any other RA threads.

However, RA threads do have an effect on the Lindens. It's an indirect one but a strong one.
The people posting here are representative of the kind of people who makes noises.
Cyn Linden used the (awful) "thought leaders" emerging thing in the Blog posting that kicked of the Adult Continent debates. "Though voices" would be a less pretentious way of putting it.

Discussions here have a good chance of being refined, improved upon and summarised in Linden fora. People have an opportunity here to spend some time reflecting on what others are saying.

For example, the Office Hours that I've attended over time have tended to shamble along. One needs to have developed some good sound bites in order to wake things up.
The Forums are a sandbox. They are not the store.

/me thanks you

If anyone feels up to a field trip today, I *think* I got the pop up stopped at the mall, but couldn't test it.

So, if someone is inworld and has never been to the mall, I'd appreciate you using the TP in my classified ad and landing there to see if you get a blue popup. You *will* get a little bit of chat spam, greeting you. Please let me know!

I'm not allowed to post in this thread so I can't tell you that I took an alt over and received the chat message, but no blue popup. Sorry, Babybear, I'd like to report that, but I'm not allowed to

LOL Phil...thank you

But having been there in the past 24 hours, I'm not sure you would have anyway

My alt has never been there before - Wicked Leigh.

Ah...excellent then! LM giver set out, blue popup removed...one less thing for people to gripe about

grins wickedly

/me waves coyly at her near relation, never having been one to worry about virtual incest

I visited HoneyBear's mall yesterday, and it is very nice. Low key, calm, almost a serene place.

Thanks, Love. Seriously, with a stressful full-time job and two hours of drive-time each day, I like "calm and serene" in my SL

hehe. That was the reason for the name, but I like my 4times Nitely and 3toed Frog better.

I was in your store once before I met you Phil. When I saw 4times Nitely (my husband's name is Nitely too), I laughed and commented to him "yeah, there's some wishful thinking!"