What can LL do to help small business owners?

I think the biggest boost our service provider could do (not that we need to look to them, necessarily, for help) is simply not get involved when someone really takes off with a moneymaking idea.

This hasn't really been tested yet, either, though there have been signs. Unless someone has found a way to make 5 or 10 million USD annual on the grid and we just don't know about it. 5 to 10 million annual is still small business, really.

Taking over Gaming Open Market and SLExchange / SLBoutique seemed a bit shortsighted to me ~ great revenue for our service provider in the short run, but a bad indicator for the overall economy in the long run.

I think if our service provider simply excelled at providing grid services and nothing more, that's the best possible world.

Showcase/Classifieds sorted by price, etc.

Although sorting Classifieds by alpha certainly wouldn't help - that was how they were originally sorted, and all that happened was that every business renamed itself to AAAAAAA to get at the top of the list. Then someone hacked the client to add invalid characters to the start of the name which were sorted before any typable character.. it became a mess.

Don't be silly. I don't think there's a single maker of decent Viverrid avatars currently in business. There's no mongooses, civets, fossas, genets, or meerkats on the market. The only reason I've got a meerkat avatar is I got one before Luskwood Bunkies closed down. There's also no tenrecs, yapoks, luwaks, binturongs, kinkajous, wombats, numbats, blackbucks, kudus, pretty-faced wallabies, white-sided dolphins, or naked mole rats!



It's COMPLETELY compatible with Linden Lab's real business. Which is probably the most important reason of all.

Classifieds are impartial. The more you pay, the higher you rank. It couldn't be any other way. They don't favour anyone.

The Showcase isn't something that I know much about. *IF* LL is in the habit of putting larger businesses there and leaving small ones out of it altogether, then ok, I'll accept it. But that's just one little thing. Nobody looks at it, do they?

That's true. And maybe if a new business started creating them they'd do well. But what if 10 new businesses started creating them? Simply because of the way choice works, not all 10 would succeed, even if all their products were brilliant.



No, it isn't. In fact, from LL's point of view, it's better for lots of small businesses to come onto the scene and then fail - LL can pocket the tier, and when they're gone, can recycle the land. Which is why it's best for LL, for SL to encourage small business while not actually supporting it - which is what it actually does, as Phil observed. In fact, having more successful small businesses would very probably not really affect LL's income, because chances are it would just mean that the consumer dollar was being spread more thinly - even these small businesses can't really change the very nature of the SL experience, and that's more likely to determine how much a consumer is willing to pay in than the quality of any particular product.

They have the effect of favouring bigger businesses who can afford more. Whether or not the intent to favour these businesses was in LL's head or not at the moment they made the decision is irrelevant - the ultimate effect in reality is that bigger businesses are favoured.

Ceera touched upon it in her post, but the message of the day advertising for larger estates was clearly designed to help those larger estates. You can't pay for that sort of advertising, it's simply not available, LL chose to promote large business via its message of the day.

More recently we had the fashion look book where a big fashion agency were given not only MOTD advertising, users were emailed and they had a special microsite created, again, you can't buy that sort of advertising, it's LL helping a business.

There's more than ten species that haven't been made... more than ten dozen. With the amount of overlap you see in the avatar market, ten companies wouldn't make a dent in them.
So? That's the nature of business. Most small businesses fail, but in the process they improve the variety of products for as long as they're around... and in some cases (for example, Kythin Perth or Wingless Emoto) they release them full perm, and even start up a new business on the ashes of the old.

Helping small business doesn't ensure that they survive, it simply increases the size of the ecosystem they come and go in.

The effect favours those who can spend the most, which is likely to be the larger businesses, but that's not LL favouring larger businesses - it's just a standard advertising system.

I haven't been aware of those.

Well, I think LL should tell the small businesses that they're paying tier and all the other money, while they will permanently lose, but that's ok - because products other than theirs will become better someday. I think that if they don't tell them that, then they might well be taking that tier dishonestly.



LL had no obligation to choose to use a standard system.

Of course not, but that doesn't make any difference. They chose a system of advertising - classifieds - to allow those who want to advertise to do so. It's perfectly neutral and there was no reason not to implement it.

I think you need to visit the real world, that's what I think.

*plonk*

Can you give an example of an operating system in which the maximum amount of money does not buy the largest Ad?

I have to admit....I came to SL for some fantasy. Certainly, getting the largest and most prominent ad without spending some dough would contribute to that fantasy.....but I can accept that it isn't going to happen.

If God were a business selling subscriptions to the real world, to people who had a separate and complete life without him, he would be cheating his customers.

So the next step is to make there BE no "largest and most prominent ad".

That's going off-topic but since you're doing that, I see no reason whatsoever why LL should make any attempt to even things out for the various sizes of business. In fact, I see good reasons for them *not* to make any attempt to even things out. Someone already posted that LL should simply provide the system and not get involved with in-world business, and I agree with that. But the main reason I see why LL should not involve themselves is when I ask the questions, why are small businesses small businesses, and why are large businesses large businesses. I'll answe those questions myself...

Perhaps the biggest single reason why small businesses remain small is because the owners don't put the time and effort into them that the owners of larger businesses have. Many small businesses are just hobbies - something to do in SL - while larger businesses tend to be serious ones. If those things are so, then why should the owner of the system (LL) do anything to help those who won't help themselves and, in so doing, penalise those who *do* put the time and effort in? That's not a criticism of small business owners. There is nothing wrong at all in treating the business as just a hobby - something to do in SL.

Exactly.



You start taking away the traditional methods of expanding a business, and you take away the drive that makes a business successful.....and that takes away the superior product and services that everyone is moaning and groaning about, that they want in SL.

The answer is because it's looking at that time and effort in isolation, rather than as part of a feedback loop. If they were getting all of the same reward - not just in terms of money, but also engagement and self-satisfaction - that the big businesses are getting, THEN would they put in the same amount of time and effort? That's a very different question.



In the real world, everyone used to moan and groan that things were bad. Now, even people who are unemployed in developed countries can eat good food, have a sound roof over their heads, and watch televised entertainment for every waking hour. Yet, they do not seem to be happy about it. In fact, statistically, they are more miserable than ever. Could it be that perhaps, that type of development of economic efficiency was the wrong idea all along? Shouldn't we learn from that when we build a new world?

The popularity of the chatting and dancing experience will probably not change because the clothes become better looking.

Heh you should be at Jack Linden's office hour, there's lots going on that people aren't aware of.

That's silly. They were ALL getting the same rewards. They were ALL even. Larger businesses were small - remember? But the owners chose to put time and effort in, even though they weren't getting the rewards of a bigger business. They had desires, and they put the effort into realising them. And guess what, the time and effort payed off - they became larger businesses.

How many times do we read statements in this forum, by small business owners, that they are happy if they make tier? The businesses are hobbies. They enjoy that hobby because they enjoy making things. Sure, they'd love it if they suddenyl started to make serious money, but they haven't put the dedication into achieving that.

There are, or were, people in this forum who have stated that the time when new people could make serious money in SL is gone. It hasn't, and I've always said that it hasn't.

Now tell me this, Yumi. Given that any assistance that LL might give to help small businesses, other than doing things to greatly increase the number of real people using SL, must necessarily impact negatively on larger businesses because the pie will be sliced into more portions, why should LL cause such a negative impact on larger businesses? What justifiable reasons could there be for doing that?

I don't do surverys and I don't do office hours. The onl;y office hour that I attended was concerning search, and those were a total waste of time - nothing came of any of it. To be honest, I have so little respect for the LL powers (not most of the Lindens - just the powers) that I have absolutely no interest in using my time in office hours.

They're not getting the same rewards. A small business might get a pleasing reward and then become a big business, but that big business then remains and competes with new small businesses in the same field, who - as a result - get less reward than the big business did when it was small.



Please don't get me wrong - I'm not denying that businesses do exist, that are small and happy that way, and run purely on a hobby basis. I'm just saying we shouldn't just automatically assume that this applies to any random business we know nothing about, just because we see that it is small. Of course the SL business climate looks rosy if you completely omit the possibility of involuntary failure!



Because the benefit - in terms of retention and enjoyment of SL by all users - of having a large range of quality content but a locked-down economy, may actually be LESS than the benefit of having an open system in which a wide range of people can make valuable contributions and succeed (ideally without having to bump up against an 80%-90% random chance of failure)

The point is that all SL businesses started small. They were all small at some stage of their incarnation, therefore, they were all even - at different times, but even just the same.

The reason why small businesses stay small, when the owners want them to be big, is generally because the owners don't put the effort in that large business owners do and did. There is nothing to prevent people competing in almost any field, and succeeding in making a large, successful business - even in female clothing. If people aren't committed enough to put the effort into it, then they'll stay small, and rightly so. There is no reason in the world for LL to level the playing field, simply because many business owners prefer not to put the time and effort into it.

So you're saying that large businesses should be intentionally handicapped, so that the retention rate improves? I'm not going to get into that because I think it's ludicrous.

Yumi. I don't know much about you but I do know a few things from what you told me. I know you created some nice gadgets quite a long time ago, but other gadget makers surpassed yours and yours stopped selling. You chose not to improve yours to compete with the others, so it remained or became a small business, and you reached the point of closing down altogether. With the best will in the world, you don't deserve to be a big gadget business because you chose not to compete with the new gadgets that surpassed yours, and I see no reason for LL to intervene on your behalf (you being a small business, that is) by doing things to level the playing field. To my way of thinking, SL is simply a world in which businesses can flourish or fail according to the skill/expertise/drive/commitment of the owners. It's just like RL in that respect and I see no reason for it to be any different.

I would wager that if you leveled out the playing field (and not sure how you would ultimately do that - something would always give someone else an advantage, no matter how you regulated it).....that you would take away the enjoyment of a large number of business owners. A good majority do so with the intent and drive that they are going to make a go of it, monetarily, with a carrot dangling in front of them, for a larger piece of the pie. Take away that carrot, and you've got a watered down version that won't appeal much to an entrepreneur style. I think you would realize a huge loss if you ran those people off.

If you're going to even out the playing field on business to make it "fair" for everyone.....then go ahead and even it out on romance......you've probably got about a 95% failure rate there.

While you're at it....put a cap on what size home you can purchase, and what size lot you can purchase. Mansions no longer allowed....and no one can purchase more than a 4096.....just to keep it all Fair. And no more than 50 articles of clothing in your inventory. Fashionistas are not welcome....that is not Fair to the noobs with only jeans and t-shirts. In fact....allow only the 7 or 8 avs that Linden offers a choice of, and make do with only the clothing you are provided in inventory. Skin makers and clothing designers not allowed. Keep the playing field level.