Google just GOM'd Housingmaps.com and how this pertains to SL

http://www.shimonsandler.com/?p=126

Indeed, I'm sure google thought about doing this before housingmaps.com .. but lets face it: once housingmaps proved how popular and profitable it was, they no doubt hiked up the priority on that particular project.

And no doubt SL thinks about doing a *lot of things* but when they become obviously compelling, profitable and popular ... well, they no doubt get hiked up in priority.

What's the takeway here?

Do not build something that will be very popular or profitable with the hopes of it continuing to be so into the future, because most likely if it is significantly popular/profitable then LL will likely GOM you. It's most obvious strategy

Don't believe me?

Where do you think THIS is headed:

http://secondlife.com/community/classifieds.php

Ummmm... thats just business. You have a profitable company? Expect competition. Nobody has a monopoly.

Who is next? My predictions here:

/108/75/98558/1.html

As much as I'm afraid to say it, Jamie's right. This is simple capitalism... competition is good for the citizens of second life, and if a Linden run operation is better and smoother than a Resident run busniess, then so be it! Nothing is stopping the resident run business from simply improving their services so it is better than LL's service.

And nothing is stopping LL from banning the proprietors of that resident run business once it shows signs of becoming more popular than LL's service.

And nothing is stopping me from warning people not to try to do anything that LL might take over.

Don't be their chumps by proving out ideas for them.

You know it.

LL Should not compete with resident run services. GOM is a prime example. The lindex is most certainly not better than gom was. They could have created their own hooks into the world and made better atms but they didn't.

The real issue with GOM vs Lindex is that the Lindex is run by people who can create money. As far as we know, that hasn't happened yet. but they've also said that they may do it at some future date should it become necessary.

Oh there's no law that says the Lindens shouldn't compete, or that they shouldn't use the fact that they have absolute control over the world to assist their version of a service. It's their world and their choice (imagination?). However, since LL supplies no predifined goals and residents have to create their own, LL should leave everything but the technical aspects of the game to residents. When you close down a path of play, such as currency trading/speculation/and the backend work (website, database, etc) that goes into it then you've just broken the game for any people who were "playing" with that aspect.

The arguement seems to be that by starting a Linden service, they are not closing down opportunities for any resident run services of the same type. If you mean are they dissallowing or handycaping the resident run services than you're right. But even if a resident run service can run exactly as before, the fact that a Linden run service with potentially more power/influence/abilities, even if those abilities aren't realized, effectively ruins resident related services.

It's simply a choice LL has: Do we establish more control, or leave open more paths of play. So far, they've opted for control.

The arguments in favor of that have merrit. If you have control over the L exchange rate and readily available statistics on the trading of it, you can potentially use that to make the game available and more fun for a wider audience.

The arguments for not grabbing so much control also have merrit. By allowing residents to take on a roll in the game that serves a real purpose you can also make the game more fun for a wider audience. Also, by not controlling it themselves LL would essentially be offloading some of their work. It's another feature they don't have to support.

If I were making decisions for LL I would have worked to keep as many services as possible resident run. But I'm not .

I can figure out meaning from context, but waht does "GOM" stand for?

GOM stands for the Gaming Open Market, which was arguably the better L for RL currency trading site available before the LindeX came to be.

GOM had some troubles of its own before the Lindex happened. However the lindex was the last straw for GOM. They decided to bow out rather than try to compete with an official service. Which is sad because GOMs inworld atms were better, and it site provided more information and more flexible trading.

If LL chooses to compete with any resident LL will not always win, but yes they have the advantage. I do not wish to compete with LL either. I just wish they would tell us what they are planning down the road so I do not continue to waste my time on pipe dreams either.

Cat

Precisely Martin .. but they won't. Why not? Because that will scare off the chumps who will prove it out for them.

yes, it's not that someone couldn't compete with an LL service, it's that they really shouldn't have to because it changes perceptions and the reality of the situation into something that's no longer very appealling.

As for why they don't tell people their plans way ahead of time... hehe, I really don't think they plan very far ahead of time .

Oh I definatly agree there with both of ya.

You guys are thinking way too much. It boils down to one symbol for LL (and its a nobrainer)

$

You are certainly free to your opinion when you say that the LindeX is "most definitely" not better than gom. But an opinion is all it is.

Setting all opinions aside...

...the LindeX serves a sole purpose in that it provides a convenient avenue whereby resident's, namely new residents, can purchase lindens. Not only does it accomplish this purpose extremely well, but it accomplishes it to the tune of...oh, say ...six to nine million plus lindens per day.

So no matter how you phrase it...the LindeX is certainly accomplishing its objective, and it is "certainly" better than gom was in this regard.

...And thats not an opinion.

The proof is in the numbers.

What most people who discredit the LindeX, and LL for implementing the Lindex, don't realize is that the LindeX leaves much to be desired by design.

LL did not want to compete with GOM, they simply wanted to create a venue to facilitate the purchase of linden for players. If LL had wanted to compete with GOM, they would have implemented all of the features GOM had, and more than likely done it better.

The sad part is, that I firmly believe that GOM could have still survived, and probably been more profitable now, than they were then. But they didn't even bother to put forth the effort of letting it play out.

So who is to blame?

You can't have it both ways. You can't say the LindeX falls short of GOM, when they never intended to be GOM, yet chastise LL for implementing a bare bones Linden Exchange by design, because they wanted to leave the implementation of a true, and fully serviceable, Linden Market Exchange to residents.

Indeed. The currency exchange on SLEX is existence proof of this thesis.

Contrary to what people may claim, registering with GOM was *not* a significant barrier to new users purchasing L$. Before we closed down, something like a third of all users who registered a SL account also registered a GOM account. And about a third of all economic activity in SL was funded by a purchase through GOM. It took nearly two months for LindeX to reach the level of daily trade volume GOM was experiencing. Those numbers are reliable, and based directly on the economic stats LL used to post.

A new user could go from cash in their PayPal account to L$ in their avatar's possession in less than five minutes. When, that is, LL wasn't busy breaking the XML-RPC code and buggering up script timing.

Even ignoring those points, however, the cost of LL implementing LindeX was the destabilization of the L$ exchange rate due to LL only implementing *half* a market, and the chilling effect the move has had on innovation. I'm sure I'm not the only one with good ideas that aren't being developed simply because I don't want my hard work appropriated by someone else.

Of course, if the energy put into bitching about LL was put into say -- another GOM with better features, imagine what that would've been like!

But, I guess, complaining is easier. Too bad, I liked GOM. I still think it was stupid you guys folded. If you don't have it in you to compete, I guess that is that.

Sad, eh?

Better features like the ability to improve LL's infrastructure so it doesn't break our ATMs every couple of weeks? Or maybe a feature where we could prevent them from arbitrarily banning us? Or a feature where, if the asset server dies and our L$ balance is reset, we don't get stuck holding the bag for all our user's deposits? Those sound like the kinds of features we could have added? You might say the ATMs were poorly coded, but they worked flawlessly for over a year prior to last August's update. You might think they wouldn't just ban us, but honestly, I don't trust them *not* to. You might think they would be able to recover customer balances from backup, but I don't trust that they would. And I'm not about to place any more of my real-world eggs into *their* broken basket.

In this case, complaining *is* easier than our original plan of convincing LL to implement a sensible API through which anyone could have run an exchange. You've been around long enough, but it appears that you haven't had enough professional dealings with them to realize what their philosophy is -- "why do it right when you can do it now?".

Have you ever tried to deal with someone unwilling (or unable) to come up with a reasonable rebuttal to a well thought out proposal from people experienced in the field (remember, we're talking about a software architect and a financial engineer, not two chumps fresh off the turnip truck), and who then chooses to shut down communications with an accusation of "stonewalling"? Sorry, but once it became apparent that they were uninterested in developing things *properly*, supporting their business became unacceptable to us.

Of course you would have preferred we stay open -- you weren't the one whose ATMs were bleeding L$ (which, of course, we had to purchase ourselves to cover client deposits) due to the myriad of LSL bugs and the new "improved" script scheduler. It's easy for you to judge when you have nothing invested in the project.

So, what is preferrable? Continue paying a company with which you have had a fundamental disagreement, who was unwilling to listen to the voices of experience, and whose broken tech and lack of customer service has cost you real dollars, or close up shop and move on to other things? Believe me, once my pre-paid year's worth of stipend has been cashed out, I'll be converting to basic or cancelling my account. I haven't decided which yet, but I certainly won't be developing *anything* I don't care if I lose.

Wow, way to prok-out.

But sure, there are limitations and problems using LSL. It didn't stop you guys from operating before. You just stopped the operation.

So, lets not re-hash it all. The simple thing is, public perception of you guys are:

1) You ran a service that truly rocked.

2) You stopped.

3) We don't like that you stopped.

That's about it, and dude, you never said jack about the ATMs bleeding cash, that I recall, ever. Other than specific compromising events.

Anyway, not like you're going to try again, so whatever.

Ricky, you had your reasons for doing what you did, but to be honest, these sound like excuses in an attempt to justify the end result. I find it very hard to believe, particularly given the lack of features that the LindeX offers, that LL was ever intending to compete with GOM in any way.

You can blame it on the myriad of excuses that you delineated in your first paragraph, but the bottom line is that this is LL's system. As such, your task, as the subordinate system, was to continually tweak your system to conform to theirs, and not expect them to submit to your demands/request and expect them to ultimately change their system to conform to yours.

Ironically, the only entity that benefitted from your demise, was not LL, but the SLex. They picked up the pieces when you abandoned ship, and lo and behold, they aren't doing so badly now, are they?

Answer me this...

Why isn't LL going after the SLex as they did with GOM, if their intention was to stifle competition?

stifle competition? not really.

grab the low hanging fruit? prolly.

If only a happy medium could be found. "do it better and soon" perhaps.

LL's got the home team advantage, they'd be fools not to use it.

Of course, they'd be fools to abuse it too.

The problem is agreeing on the difference.

I don't remember what goms traffic volume per day was but I'm pretty sure it was comparable.

As for giving new players an easy place to buy L. They didn't have to start their own service for that . They should have given GOM and IGE and anyone else who requested it, exposure and easy access. For instance a page written in to the search screen, easily accessible by clicking your balance, showing exchanges. Each exchange listing would include some basic stats including volume traded, user rating, and maybe high and low trades of the day. To be listed an exchange site would have to implement a standard method for doing transactions, and returning stats. An interface LL could supply or spec out.

That's supporting user services, in my opinion much preferable to competing.

As far as the lindex not being as robust as it could be to avoid competing... I understand teh reasoning, but I don't think it's the reason. I think LL just has so much on their plate that as long as the lindex works it's a low priority to make it work well.

and yes I can have it both ways, because there is a perception that goes with something "official".