Xstreet SL and OnRez to Join Linden Lab!

Yes! I agree wholeheartedly! I rarely use Xstreet because it is not user friendly like Onrez is.

+1 to all the folks who recognized the high quality of customer support that the Xstreet SL team provides.

here's a quote from the original blog post:

<snip>
We’d especially like to welcome Apotheus Silverman and the Xstreet SL team. Apotheus and key members of his team will be joining Linden Lab to integrate the Xstreet SL platform deeply into Second Life. This new team will shape our future plans and will continue to provide the high standard of service and support that Xstreet SL customers have come to expect.
</snip>

Support is one of the key reasons that we are happy that the XStreet team is joining the lab. And since the marketplace is a new area that we are investing in, it's highly unlikely that we'd limit support.

XStreetSL.com is the name now.

Logically, there should be a link on secondlife.com, if LL is up to speed, since it's already a part of Linden Lab.

slexchange.com still works.

What about the withdraw to PayPal options..will it be LL's 'needs a credit card to validate Paypal account' or XStreets 'needs a bank account to validate'...cause i know many many many people who can only get a Debit Card nowadays...credit crunch anyone?

And why does LL delay transfers to PayPal?

Hey Meat Carver,

We'd prefer to let shoppers and merchants move their own Linden Dollars around if possible, hence we haven't automatically transferred them for anyone. If we get to February 11th and find that some people have not transferred their Linden Dollars, then we intend to transfer them to associated Second Life accounts for them. That being said, I don't want any merchants or shoppers to read this and not move their Linden Dollars themselves. I can not predict at this time what trouble that we may run into in attempting this, so it is safer and easier for you to move your Linden Dollar balance on your own ahead of time. If everyone does so, it will save us a lot of time and we can dedicate that time to getting you new features and better service instead.

We set a timeline for withdrawing funds. We could have halted sales and new item listings immediately, but didn't see a problem with allowing business to continue in the meantime. So, there is no gap because we decided to leave the site usable as long as possible. What we'd really prefer is that shoppers and merchants move to and start learning to use Xstreet as soon as possible and start giving us good feedback about their challenges in using a new system.

We do hope that consolidation of the two services will make management by vendors and searching by shoppers much simpler in the long run and we do apologize for the inconvenience it poses to some now.

Thanks for the input,
--Colossus

I'm actually one of the few people who support this... as I believe it will lead to greater exposure of my products especially for all those leads I lost when All Search was introduced.

The FAQ said there are no curent plans to shutter the XstreetSL Linden Exchange - does this include the paypal withdrawals?

OK just wanted to make sure since I never cashed out on SL....I have only used paypal for auctions on Ebay....

HAHA HAHAHAHA and heres your other quote "... and they will be able to receive support for Xstreet purchases by contacting the same professionals that support the Second Life world"
The same professionals who delay 12 days plus before even activating a support ticket?
The same professional response to ARs.. a simple 'received' email with no answer, no indication of what action was taken... and usually no results?

What do you anticipate that this will do to the community and interaction between residents that may meet each other while shopping? Where is the social networking? Where is the virtual world going when we send people out of it rather than to locations within it?

Obviously LL plans to push this strongly as the premier way to shop because they want that coin on every object sold in SL. This commission can be raised at any time of course, and because it will be the premier way to purchase goods, merchants will have no choice but to accept it.

Why would a merchant want to pay land use fees or rent on a region or a parcel if no one will be shopping inworld? They must concede instead that LL will be taking a commission on everything they sell and they will surely factor that cost against the cost of owning land for a shop. Certainly builders will need parcels but why should a scripter or clothing maker want to pay commissions AND also pay for a parcel? You MIGHT argue that people just love that inworld shopping experience but with LL pushing against that experience in order to pull commissions, the web will be where everyone looks to shop.

The virtual world thus becomes less three dimensional all the time. 2D is the new 3D.

Just adding another voice to the several who have already asked about this.

I know what you mean. I used to use PayPal with Ebay, but stopped using Ebay once their fees became downright crazy.

If the transfer was that expensive, I would go broke doing it.

Torrin

If you do plan to integrate xstreet search into the browser/inworld search I would just like to mention how important the ability to view multiple, decent sized images of a product are to me both as a shopper and a merchant. I hope that will continue to be a supported feature in all incarnations of an xstreet search.

Im just curious if they will slowly move to a premium account only system for merchants, or premium only service for certain support. Im curious about long term.

I'm really sad to hear this is true. When Linden Lab starts regulating the business of Second Life Residents, nothing good can come from it. Looks like someone needs to step up and create a new shopping site to compete with LL now.

Why is it that Lindens can answer other questions, but are apparently refusing to answer whether this will impact XStreetSL's smooth PayPal transfer?

If the answer is "We don't currently have an answer", I guess that will have to suffice for now, but refusing to answer the question is causing anxiety, and combined with LL's past history of refusing to answer tough questions until the reply can be appropriately massaged leads quite naturally to suspicions that we won't like the answer.


.

Ya true Linden Lab does not have proffessional support.. hell Kmarts support is better.
I think Apez is gona grow REALLY fast as everyone leaves slx because most merchants dont trust LL for dang good reason

Besides the purpose of integration services, why was this done?

This money could have been used to get more fixes done to the system which I believe is more important then buying side shops here and their.

Second, my biggest concern is I get a better rate buying L$ from xstreet then buying from LL. Does this mean with this idea of "integration", that we lose the advantage of the slightly better L$ per USD?

I'm just saying, i think theirs more to this then benefiting the user with integration.

GO LL PROFITS! GO!

Tis the most disappointing news in sometime! Isnt there some monopoly law that can be used to undo this?

The good thing is, that it's now LL's responsibility if things do not get delivered. In the past they might have said they are not involved in transactions between residents .. but now they are!

(And yes, I know they will do nothing at all like they did in the past .. but one may dream!)

One of the reasons I will regret Shoponrez was the possibility to register an account with one login/password and then add avatars to this account so that you can buy stuffs and then choose the avatar you want to give them to. Will I find this one day in XStreet SL ?

And there website is more pleasant and easy to use than the one of Xstreet SL. I hope you will use their ideas.

At the end, I'm not sure that it is such a good news


Thank you...

this is really just absolutely fabulous *sarcasm*

Xstreet SL has never worked for me that is why I was thankful for OnRez. Now it looks like I'm grid hopping if I need to find something in a hurry. ¬_¬
thank you lindens you made my SL difficult once again.

I am afraid that will be pointless. I have a feeling this is one step taken of many. Next will communication between SL and the outworld be closed for anything else than what is LL controlled. (except email). But just a feeling. I dont see why LL would by XStreet just to let someone else create a new version of it.

I would also like the vendor packs to be incorporated. That is one feature I think is excellent, and I am currently using it. It's easy and simple to use. I can have multiple vendors out, and instead of going to each individual one to update them I can just do it straight from the website.

I am a merchant on both XstreetSL and Onrez. The features I like from OnRez that I'd like to see on XStreet are the OnREz wallet , I have mine rezzed on my land, its easy to add money when needed, and I dont have to find a terminal, and the item entry format. I like the tabulated pages for each item, the ability to view and edit two or more items at once on the same web page so I can copy/paste between them, and the fact that OnRez uses colors that are easier on the eyes than XStreets drab black and white. I would like to see these features incorporated into XStreetSL. Also although I do not use the onrez vendors, I like the concept and its nie to now that if i did want to use it it would be there. I think i'd use it if the vendors had more models for variety (I like low prim with lots of display panels). so I'd like to see the vendors use with XStreet and improved.

What's the commission rate Linden Lab will be charging? Will there be additional fees to upload pictures into the Linden Lab/SLEX system?

Hey Nimue Jewell,

I expect that there will be a whole host of ways that we'll want to integrate Xstreet into Second Life, though I can't give you a timeline on any of them. We'll definitely want to introduce a product search and make it easier to create accounts, list items and buy goods. As we flesh these ideas out, we'll let our users know.

Thanks
--Colossus