Resident Auction Tools Built Into Client-UI

Thread topic: Upgrade Client-UI By Adding Auction Tools

It continues to be my belief that if LL were to build auction tools into the Client software it would be of tremendous value - both for us inWorld, and to LL's business development of SL. This innovative approach would help LL capture more market share and would attract new players.

At a minimum I would like to see two types of Client-UI auction tools:

1) All members have ability to auction inventory objects that they own.

2) Premium members have the ability to auction owned land.

Please stay on topic, and please be civil.

Could you explain why? They're fairly sweeping statements that I actually see no evidence for in your post. Why would being able to run auctions help LL capture more market share and attract new customers? I don't see the cause and effect here.

1) Eh, I'm not big on this idea.

2) Yes, but I think *anyone* who can buy land should be able to auction it as well. Originaly if I'm not mistaken, LL intended to allow users to auction land through the auction pages they used, however this plan seemed to go away sadly. If this is implemented THE NAME OF THE AUCTIONER should be given.

Actually, not to rain on your idea, but auctions make a market more illiquid (because of the auction time and the lack of purchase immediacy) at the cost of reaching a more fair price point.

In other words, people are less likely to buy if they think it's going to take 7 days (or 3 days or whatever) before they can get delivery of goods.

Ebay is trying very hard to move away from auctions - fixed price is your default option when trying to sell.

That assumes auctions are the only choice, blaze. What if we had both methods simultaneously? Then one could choose to make the tradeoff between latency and price point.

I love the idea of having the auctions myself.

~Ulrika~

I think not having to leave SL to go to the web in order to participate in auctions would be great, and I think having the ability for land owners to put their land up for auction that way would also be great. I wouldn't extend it beyond land though, since I think it would make it nearly impossible for people to divine what any particular content is actually worth in terms of fair market value.

Also, I don't think you'd find that this would really do away with land barons.

It would just give an opportunity for Land Barons to employ trickier tactics, such as auction sniping.

What I like about this idea is that it would meet a market need by providing many small lots, which would be available for L$ at auction.

Right now LL releases way too many large tracts of land for big US$ and L$, pricing out 95% of all those who are interested in purchasing land. The result is that the large tracts of land are snapped up below market value by big spenders, subdivided, and sold in small lots at market value for a tidy profit.

From a market perspective it's hard to argue with this. It removes inefficiencies from the market (middleman handling and overhead). It increases supply. It threatens land-baron hegemony. Why would one not want this?

~Ulrika~