Commercializm Poll

I'm on vacation.

I have a feeling that people are going to come up with some really cool uses for this that will far outweigh potential bad uses. You'll probably end up pleasantly surprised

Kind of ironic with the stolen copyrighted song playing on your web site, n'est-ce pas? Thankfully there is a way to report that too.

Well Chip I certainly hope your right for me its a new toy to push the limits with.

Cat

The possibilities of it bringing new levels of interactivity to SL are exciting, especially if there are some hooks built in for a web page to interact in a secure way with SL. On a basic level, I am looking forward to the dynamic retrieval of images without having to use video - but on other levels, the possibilities are endless and far outweigh any negatives. We could be blanketed with advertisements in SL right now - giant walls of textures advertising things, but we're not. The gloom and doom predictions put forth are nothing more than FUD, and I am glad they have not derailed this important evolution of SL.

I think it's good that Catherine is venting her concerns about the over-commercialization of SL and people who ridicule her aren't feeling the pulse of many others who feel as she do. In fact, many of them don't mind advertising as such, but they want it to be more discrete and less in-your-face, not like those stupid AOL CDs everywhere and Roadrunner ads.

I think there is a terrible lack of capacity for advertising in SL for SL's own businesses. FINDPLACES is inadequate, billboards often cause more trouble with people than they are worth, forums classifies are quickly overrun by others also trying to post in this limited place. Maybe some day they'll have some kind of internal SL tv with video ad spots on it or more capacity for easily-managed billboards running across sims or things like ads on the side of trains or billboards in the welcome area. Right now, even the telehub ads don't work right.

I find it annoying that you cannot send out mass mailings. I wish you could opt in to receive them. I don't mind getting "junk mail" from others and frankly I don't understand why I can't make offers or send prospectuses to others. It's annoying, the degree of hysteria around this -- people are trying to pre-empt a flood of spam in advance, and then stepping on freedom of information and the free flow of information across frontiers as a result.

Having ads on textures everywhere may not be such a joy, I have a huge sky-wide ad like that in Ross now, not everyone wants to look at stuff like that but I think we do need more outlets for advertising in SL.

The attitude the Lindens have to RL companies outside asking to buy ad space seems od to me. In TSO, the McDonald's thing was a joke. Few people bought it, and those who did found that it didn't fill your hunger needs and it sat gathering cobwebs in the corner. It did not transform the game. If LL found it could survive by selling some of these ad spots they should, it's a natural.

As for companies starting lots, that's another thread which I will start.

Being an internet user since the early 90s too (after the mailbox times), I'd like to diagree with that statement - WWW has become definitely easier to acess, but the useability is steadily decreasing. While, for example, 1993 or 1994, it took a long time to find some information on WWW or FTP sites, I ended up with information at some point - today, after surviving numerous jumping and flashing objects on the screen, I end up with more or profanity and copy-from-a-copy-from-a-copy information. To get real information, it takes as much time as it used to be, only today, I need a rest for eyes and mind after finding it.

Commercialism at any price isnt't the solution, and the number of people who avoid the "simple browsing around" and only accesses ever the same pages is increasing a great deal - as soon as the number of people BEING on the web outnumbers the number of people COMING to the web, many, many developers and companies will start to rub their eyes and wonder why their cacophony of sound, colors and attempts to enforce and con for consumation won't find the response they hoped for.

Yes, indeed, I can put my name under that too.

Hardly the end of SL. The end of a particular SL Era? Perhaps.

Like it or not, capitalism does have its place in SL and the greater Internet. It is a force of which to deny its importance seems naiive to me.

To each their own, Hammerund I personally love shopping at Amazon and reading reader reviews. I love buying my movie tickets online and not having to wait in line at the box office. I love google. I love reading gamespot, new scientist, washington post, NYT, google news, and generally having access to news from all over the world in many different perspectives. I love buying music online and being able to hear sound samples. I love how the databases learn my tastes and after a while show me new things I actually like. I love being able to order my groceries online and have them delivered when I'm on a tight deadline and don't want to take the time to go to the store. I love getting peer to peer help and developer support and updates for the numerous software packages I use. I could go on and on and on. None of those things would be on the web if not for companies taking a commercial interest in it. I do not in any way miss the days of having little to browse but bad homepages. Go back to 1990 and see how much you miss. Me, I'll stay in the here and now and enjoy the many excellent commercial services I make use of on a daily basis.

You know maybe, just maybe, there is a slight possibility, that maybe there are some non-Americans who would actually NOT be hideously distressed to have to view an American bald eagle (an endangered species, and definitely not "creepy" or an American flag.

I mean, for cryin out loud. Are you a U.S. citizen? Cause with citizens like this, who needs enemies.

Is this the way you react to the flags of other countries? If it isn't, then stop reacting to ours that way. And while you're at it, don't assume you speak for everyone else in other countries.

coco

You can read my morals by my saying people break laws everyday, and people should complain to the content creator? hrm, I would comment on your lack of reading skills, but that would further the flame you started by saying "you have the morals of a guttersnipe".

lol. play nice, don't assume you know anyone's morals.

I am often misquoted, misunderstood, and in general ppl take bits of what I say and run with it. So let me make this as clear as I can:

IMO

RL commercialism doesn't belong in SL

SL commercialism of products, services and such does belong in SL.

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As I read threw this forum today I see that line is now being blurred with the introduction of HTML webs on prims.

There are defiantly good and bad points to this new ability coming in 1.7.

Good: more creativity, pushing more limits.
Bad: could easily introduce RL commercialism in SL.

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IMO I think it is naive for ppl to proclaim that RL commercialism is just part of the natural process of SL. I think those ppl live in the same box they always have. That type of thinking would not make SL a "Metaverse" it would just make it another form of marketing rl goods and services to the masses. I don't find anything about that innovative.

I have a firm belief that we have no way of knowing where we are going, until we understand where we have been:

A Brief History of the Internet

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What will SL evolve into? It is a controlled environment that will be decided by those who have paid LL a fee to be a part of it. It doesn't matter if that was a one time fee or 2k per month. I still firmly believe that we have the ability to shape this world.

For those who are telling you "this is how it will be get used to it" remember that is their vision they do not speak for all of us in SL. No more than I speak for all of those in SL.

SL is not the internet, SL is a game/ a virtual world/ on the internet.

This is just one persons honest opinions.

Cat

I agree with that, mostly. I wouldn't mind seeing RL products being sold in SL as long as they're things like an SL residents artwork, cafe press stuff, and things along those lines. I definitely wouldn't want to see Nike setting up shop in SL.

I think we have to be very careful there. Fine lines are often crossed. If its a sl product kewl. I could see a graphic artist putting their artwork on cafepress t shirts and selling them. I don't have a problem with that.

I do however have a problem with a sl resident trying to market any goods that have zero to do with sl. For example: Jack owns a body shop, jack makes cars in sl. Jack feels its ok to offer his web called "jacks rl body shop" web on a prim.

IMO that just makes sl nothing more than an extension of the www. Where I believe it can be something much much greater, than something that simplistic.

Actually that wouldn't bother me either really. I'm a big fan of entrepenuers, in first life or second. As long as the tie in to their RL business was subtle and not a giant billboard advertising a RL business. If the person owned a franchise for a major corporation that would be different.

I understand your point.

But the ability to do and find "more," is really more contingent on the larger size of the web today and the greater participation of various communities. I dont see how the commercialisation of the web has contributed to this really at all.
Or at least not in any constructive way.

One can find any *product* (or product information or sales information) in a blink of an eye on todays Internet, but the non-commercial information content is still quite low AFAIK. YOu can look up "factoids" and get information (about on the level of a cheap encyclopaedia of days gone by), but not much more.

My point was before the commericialisation, it was about freedom of information. People used to talk about digitising the worlds libraries and putting them online and having open access to all kinds of information sources. This was the real "information revolution", a revolution that has been largely forgotten.

Now, years later, *some* of this has happened, but mostly under commercial control, stifled by copyright concerns and slowed to a crawl by the fact that there is no profit to be made in digitising information. Now its all about what can be *sold* not what can be learned, or what benefits society as a whole.

When I look up something nowadays, I mostly recieve hits that are lists of databases, mostly with empty placeholders liking to where the *product* would have been that might have matched my search, if they had it, (but they dont). Try looking up *anythng* that just happens to have the same name as the latest floor cleaner and yo will see what I mean.

Additionaly, search sites are getting dumber and dumber. For most, it is difficult even find the "advanced" options, and often the program compltely disregards your entry and performs the basic "dumb" search anyway, (without asking!), cause of course no one really wants to think about what they are looking for, do they? Is there even anywhere left that takes a regular expression in quotes and *actually* searches for that string instead of ignoring punctuation and expanding the reference? Google doesnt..

Finaly, regardless of whether you agree with any of my comments here, I think I am also not alone in finding large portions of the Internet offensive. From the copious American flag-waving sites, to the corporate wastelands and 24/7 porno sites.

I cannot understand how the Lindens, (who try not to interfere in matters of taste and dont have the personel to deal with current complaints anyway), cant see that having web pages on the sides of buildings is not going to generate a veritable blizzard of personal outrages.

It is possible that it might even swamp the abuse reporting system to the extent that Prok will get his way, and the whole thing will have to be scrapped as un-enforceable.

I am willing to entertain the idea that i am going overboard in my rejection of the web in SL, and am (possibly), guilty of engaging in a little hyperole.

I have thought of some concrete consequences though that *might* happen:

If you can have a web-page on your building with a link to the site that sells your clothes (and this seems not only possible but realtively trivial to do), then why use any other method?

Possible consequence 1:

All those vendors and quirky sales machines and the people that make them are history. This might be a good thing, but a big part of the SL experience just vanished.

Possible consequence 2:
Why wait for half an hour at pixeldolls for the clothes to res, when you can flip out of the program, go to the website, and get the clothes delivered to you "in-game" before the pictures on the wall res? Do you even need something called a "store" in tha situation.

These are just a couple of silly small things that follow as likely results of one aspect of the web on a prim idea. It has the potential to completely change the shopping experience.

Ther are others i can think of but it's all specualtion. I just think that bringing this in without really thinking aobut it is a bad idea. I dont hink anyone has really thought through the consequences of it is all.

i guess i should apologize now for offending you. but so far i've had nothing but positive comments from people who have visited and have not heard a single complaint.

tbh, being able to interact in this way appears to be exactly what you seem to want: "something much much greater". it's certainly more than i can do with a simple website. but i'm truly sorry you have a problem with what i've been doing since i arrived in SL. i had no idea i was affecting your gameplay.

Well i have penchant for hyperbole it is true.

I did say "as we know it" which is a good cover for almost anything.

Your selling RL merchandise in SL?

You are right.
Apologies for speaking for others.
It was an unecessary add-in to the post.

Like a lot of folks my personal opinions get inthe way of a good discussion sometimes.



For the record:
- not US citizen (one of those horrible immigrants you hear about lately)
- yes, I find the US flag offensive
- no, not many other flags I can think of other than the Nazi one

I have American friends, and am not predjudiced about individuals etc.,
Like a lot of people however, I find the rabid flag-waving of many American based websites to be beyond the pale.

If these folks only knew how many people avoid those sites, or purposely make their purchases elsewhere when they see all the Flags and Eagles and so forth, they would be shocked.

I guess one thing I am having a very hard time grasping is;

"Why would anyone see a need to put rl mechandise web on a prim?"

Wouldn't it be easier for me to just shut down sl and go to your web site, there by not needing sl at all?

Isn't SL then just being used as a new marketing tool in that case?

I find no value in seeing rl websites on prims scattered threwout SL.

A sea of web sites, I find no more value in that than the existing www.

No I do not understand the mindset of those that do find that of value in SL.

Why bother having a store in sl at just buy a 512 plot rez your prim 10x1x10 and walk away.

Odd.

What about it Baba. The context of which I was speaking was with rl merchandise on those sl prims. Not *edited for clarity: just ANY content.

* I think Baba removed that post?