Good Bye SIM 2-0

SIM 2-0 was a very nice project, and i arrived too late.

The idea was offer free land to people who can create interesting propposals. Yes, free 2000 sqm for experiment.

The costs were covered by sponsors of private companies and they only asked to show advertisement of the sponsor, very simple, no ad farm, no tricks.

Every month they eliminated the less popular plots and offer the free spaces to new candidates.

I was one of the candidates waiting for the new plots of January.

But a few days ago, Dekka sent me a message telling me that the project was cancelled because the sponsor was not satisfied with the experiment.

So sad.

I guess why we can't see more of this kind of projects in SL.

I know that some big companies sponsor some particular islands, but nothing opened to everybody, if i'm wrong i would like to know about the cases that you know.

Yes, it's very sad. I was one of those fortunate enough to be granted land in the last round, and it encouraged me to learn more about building in a short space of time than almost anything else could have done. The team - Tom, Miki and Dekka - worked hard to make the concept attractive and viable, and I only hope that another sponsor will come along who can see the potential of resident-created content used in this way.

External sponsors have been pulling out of SL in several places The problem is that SL isn't a world where you can just put up a billboard and have people see it, and it definately isn't a world where you can put up Billboard Island and have people go to that. There are ways to advertise successfully, but external companies don't want to take the time and trouble to learn them. And I think the traffic-based search proves that ranking by popularity never works, because what the mass market wants is clubs and free L$.

I also wonder if there is a general flavour, recently, of discouraging public building. The loss of Burning Life - which was a Linden-run event along exactly the same lines - is the most obvious example I can think of. I suspect they're trying to encourage consumption rather than creation right now.