Why all the 16m billboards?

While we're down, I thought I'd ask.

Just why do people put up those annoying bilboards on 16m land plots? Do they actually bring in buisness in a virtual world that has the Search function?

Aside from being majorly annoying to anyone living in the area (and used by some "questionable" parties using them to possibly "extort" persons into selling land, do they really have a fuction?

~Jessy

my understanding is they are an anacronism. a hold over to the days when you could not teleport just anywhere but instead had to fly from telehubs to your destination. billboards along the flightpaths made sense then. now? probbaly more just a waste of money.

Well, some of those folks have gotten 20,000 L$ / m2 for such plots. So yeah it's probably extortion - and while they're at it, they might as well advertise their shop.

Which probably sells freebies from the library but, hey, free market, right?

I bought a couple of those one day, shopping around for
the cheap ones.
I had just a bit of room under tier left. I was thinking I might
try to do some adverts on them. Yet now that I have been here
this long I decided not to be one of the people doing that.

They are ugly and there are people who do use these sort of plots to bully people into either selling their land or buying the tiny plot.

Another thing that can be done with them is a tp spot with a sensor on it that sniffs land price settings.

I think they can anyway.

I stash servers on them for vendors, note card kiosks, etc, but that generally takes up my 3 prims.

I've had these a few times near my land and I don't think its very fair that the owners try to sell these plots for $L10,000

So what I do is cover them with boxes linked to a master prim on my own land.
Its also good to make your boxes 90% opaque so people can just see the ads but never click on them.

I boycott any business that I see advertising on a 16M sized plot.

Not sure if this is wrong, but is does not sound right.

I do too! they are a huge eye sore in Second Life

Well, yeah, I usually do, which is why I wondered if legit buisnesses use them. I mean, if someone puts up a billboard that doesn't offend the people around (perhaps by asking first) then I guess it might work.

I personally put up a wall that is phantom, pictured from my side, but clear from any other. It costs me prims though Just because I don't want to look at ugly signs.

And yeah, I IMed/Notecarded the owner. No response. Gee imagine that. Land not for sale though, in my case. Not extortion, just p*sspoor buisness tactics imo.

Though I'm pretty sure my "word of mouth" saying what a sleaze this person is to put up signs to ruin a residential area view has hurt the sign owner's buisness more than helping it. Prolly not noticable but... *shrugs*

Oh, and the covering of the signs with root prims on your own land? Bad. Violates CC for sure. Highly advise agasint it.

~Jessy

I've moved location since

It always seems to be the same ads to me - that one of a lavendar thong or the guy from hong kong

I also do not shop at those types of shops, our tenants association has a list of "REcommended shops" that are high quality, great service and do not engage is stupid antics

I boycott any business in SL AND in RL that use billboards. People that build or use billboards to advertise are asshats.

Gee, imagine that ... and I wouldn't expect to hear back from them either. These people are only concerned about one thing and I'm sorry to say that it is not you.

And very good point about "word of mouth". Word of mouth in SL can be *FAR* more valuable to a business then a few sleazy obstructive signs.

As much as I like the idea of being able to divide land as freely as possible, these micro plots really make things ugly.

Given the way the tier system is structured, 512 meters is the basic unit of land. Half a unit, (256) or at best a quarter unit (12 should probably be the smallest parcel allowed.

I'd like to see it so that any plot which is less than the basic 512 block should not be able to be resold, and any land less than 512 contiguous sm should revert back to Linden land after 48 hours, or automatically join back onto the plot from which it was cut.

There are so many once-wonderful pieces of land which are, quite literally, ruined because of people who cut 16sm pieces out of them. The primary use of these 16sm are billboards which ruin the landscape by not only creating land less than 512 but by making land ugly with billboards or uneven plots, scanner and snooping devices (such as chat logging and avatar key collecting), and land extortion.

I doubt many would be willing to give up their 16sm plots though, they would rather keep them in the name of potential personal greed. Most notoriously, annoying casino marketers and former land scanners.

Umm...that's just wrong.

In fact if it isn't it SHOULD be a bannable offense to have anything of yours hanging over someone else's land.

You really need to look closely at your own sense of ethics...you're missing something.

Sorry but i wont pay $L10,000 to an extortionist for a 16mtr (3 prim) plot so my neighbours and I can enjoy our land without lag inducing, ugly ads - which amounts to nothing more than spam and grief.

I would't have any problem paying them a few hundred $L, maybe even a thousand for that 16mtr, but being told $L10,000 is the non negotiable price is far more ethically unsound as far as I'm concerned.

I know it is a bannable offence to cover that ugly lag-inducing griefspam but if it happens on my doorstep its a risk I'm willing to take when the owner refuses any kind of offer.

I have Hong Kong guy next to me, I did a parcel swap with him to put him on the edge of the sim, in a far less visible spot than right next to my house. This kind of crap should be against the TOS, especially if you own land on 2 or more sides of the person. Or, at least, it should be legal to cover their crap with your own prims if you adjoin their parcel.

I'd considered buying out one huge obelisk in the sky but you know, they'll only move 10 meters along to the next bit of saleable land and set up the same thing again. There's always too much floating rubbish anyway. I actually wonder how some of these things are just three prims!

What kind of crap? Residents using land for commercial purposes? Or if you're talking about land extortion than sure, I'll second that, it shouldn't be allowed. Though, if so, I'm confused why you're mentioning my builds as I've never sold, for any amount, any of my micro-land parcels only swapped hundreds of them. Remember we even had a nice conversation were you offered to buy my land (5,000L$ I believe it was, way to encourage extortion), I declined and offered you that swap. Thanks for rewarding my willingness to offer a compromise by calling my build and services crap.

Legal or not it didn't stop you from covering my land completley with your objects. Such a blatent TOS violation from a SL Mentor.

I'm on two sides of this billboard, can I put up some equally tall prims on the two sides of this 16m2 plot, on my land though to block the view? Or is this considered rude?

Sometimes you need to sell small plots - my partner and I had plots next to each other in the same sim, but other plots elsewhere. We swapped those two, but because we have different tiers, he needed to drop some land off his before taking mine. It was snatched by He Who Shall Not Be Named before we knew about the scam, and sadly, I bought it back, not knowing. But still, I don't agree that small plots shouldn't be bought and sold.

If someone in my sim now sold a tiny plot, I'd snap it up - I still have a fair bit of land allocation left, but not enough for the full plots that are sold here, and I'd relish the extra prims. I'm sure I can't be the only one - so 'no' to the minimum size idea!

I simply boycot the places that have billboards on the small plots. It's one thing to have a billboard on your land that the shop is on.. it's an eyesore elsewhere.

Yes, but what about the places that have them next to their land and can do nothing about it?