SL CSI Promo...will the grid survive Oct 24th?

You need to separate SL as we see it here, from SL the whole notion. This will stay in some form, but the CSI thing is a model of where future worlds lead people who don't want this.



Well she hasn't got right to reply here so you make a fair point but she can handle being called batshit crazy.

If you have been using the ESC viewer for a couple of months now, perhaps you or some of the dev team could clear up a few questions (apologies if some of them have been answered already; I haven't finished reading the thread yet):

1. How do the LL classifieds appear on it? How do the LL places appear on it? (Classifeds being the $50 and up things; places been the $30 charge to list.)

2. Are they the same as they appear on the regular viewer, or are those of us paying mucho Lindens for our ads basically not going to reach the people using the ESC viewer?

3. The button that says "shopping" - what does that do? Does it link directly to OnRez?

4. If so, doesn't that rather imply that OnRez *IS* the "shopping" in SL?

5. If so, does it go to the web page, or exactly where? Will my items on OnRez have as much of a chance of showing up as they do to anyone who logs onto the OnRez web page? Or is it different somehow?

6. How does the SheepBot info figure into this? Will the items the Sheepbot scanned (long ago now) eventually be part of the data included? If so, will it be included in "shopping," or "search" or exactly where?

7. If thousands of people are going to come into SL from this television show, use this viewer, consider it normal and continue using it, what can I do, as a shop owner, to maximize the chances that I will be found in whatever you are using for search?

I look forward to your answers, so I might understand this more thoroughly, as my business depends on these sorts of things.

coco

Or, Coco, you could wait one week and try it with an alt account yourself.

In before the lock....

Coco, I'd be more than happy to answer your questions (and I'm sure you'll like the answers), but I just need to make sure it's ok for me to talk about it fist. I'm sure you can understand that. Worst case scenario, you can check it out for yourself next week. If I can answer sooner though, I will.

What I'll say in the mean time is there's no need to panic. The whole idea behind OnRez is to make Second Life easier for people to use. That means all of Second Life, including the things you asked about. Nerfing or interfering with existing features is not on the agenda.




By the way, regarding what you said in your post about not hoping for the corporate stuff, let me just offer my personal opinion on that really quickly. While you certainly have a right to want YOUR second life to be purely your world and your imagination, don't forget that others have that same right, and some of them happen to run corporations.

The folks at CBS are really pretty amazing. They definitely "get it". I think you'll like their world(s) and their imagination, but if you don't, you're free to steer clear of it. Nothing they, or anyone else, do in SL has to affect your life (first or second) in any way if you don't want it to.

Thanks, Chosen.

Sooner would be better than later.

You are about to deliver thousands of potential customers (presumably). Those of us with businesses in Second Life could use a heads-up on how to be included in this, rather than having to wait until they all get here to find out how it works, and position ourselves accordingly as best we can.

coco

As for your comment on my comment, I'm sure the people at CBS are totally and awesomely amazing. I'm a CBS fan, and I'm a CSI fan.

I already like their worlds and their imagination. I have no need, or desire, to steer clear of either.

But everything they and every other large corporate entity does in SL will affect my second life, whether I want it to or not.

coco

While thousands of people will very likely play CSI's game and thus stress the overall grid around Oct 24th, I question how many of them will opt to join SL for real. I bet that most never leave CSI's sequestered "game" sim(s).

Someday there may be a totally separate grid for entertainment industry games and machinima-making, which could be based on LL's grid toolset. I could really see a different permissions system, viewer, and built-in tools being required. I could very much see using completely different load-balancing algorithms as well. And, as coco points out, there is no shortage of money to create all that.

Firstly, last weeks CSI:NY attracted all of 9,873,000 real time viewers. That's less than half of your quote. In fact, no show at all attracted over 14mil. And was ranked 13th for last week's episode.



A key component you also failed to mention is that the games on the site are at leisure. Not during episodes or directly after. During, most people are watching and after is pretty late for a lot of US viewers. The demographic of CSI:NY also coincidentally goes to bed right after the show.



Not exactly. Starting up is still VERY laggy, for which someone with a mere curiousity will likely not sit through. Additionally, even if we took your comparitive load of 19,000 people joining simultaneously, unless they have 190 sims - most won't get in and will give up during the time it's running. Another thing to add, almost everyone I know that joins now doesn't think this game is way cool. They are here for money or as alts - the difficulties getting in, staying in, shopping, etc. is a huge turn off for A LOT of computer players. Almost all I see now are die hard.

Fact is, there are publications and shows that have covered SL that reach a substantial amount of people, and frankly - that's not exactly pulling in by the thousands. Hell, Business Week's distribution for 1 mag is more than a TV show could reach. CNN has covered SL. That channel reaches the world over in many countries.

More people are gonna think it's a hassle to come to Second Life than will join it.

All I see out of this is a bunch of unncessary accounts created (whether it's 10 or 100,000) that take up asset server space, which is a precious commodity to SL.

I hear you but this is CSI in SL!

Well, it turns out they are getting a special viewer and ready made avatars for this event.

Although I am a long time political activist of the liberal persuasion I am also a lover of the enthusiastic brave souls who have a vision and do something about it. And that includes people in all walks of life.

I had a great experience once when I was on a logging truck blockade. Every morning we would leave our camp at the break of dawn and stand in front of the logging trucks thundering down the dirt road straight at us. Fortunately, they stopped.

Every morning, the logger's families would stand beside the road and jeer at us.

One morning a catchy tune hit the radio waves and we all started dancing..all of us, loggers, tree huggers..truck drivers...together. Once the song was over with a wave and a smile, we returned to our democratic right to protest whatever.

Corps are entities sure but don't lose sight of the people in them or that it is the people in them that can change them. So I'm glad of any group that "gets" SL. I think SL will change them more then they will change SL.

I think the big concern is that when corporations get involved Second Life will really BECOME the 3D web,

Complete with Pop Up ads, targeted "emails", half the things you click on will lead you to a shopping site .. Etc.

A viewer that advertises as a second life portal and has a "Shopping" button that leads to their Third Party SL sales site .. thats part of that.

EVENTUALLY these ads will transcend SL products and move onto ads for all sorts of Real Life things.

Many of us who prefer the Virtual World of Second Life are resistant to that sort of thing.

But the 3D web Idea includes all this. Its the virtual world that tends to have a Fourth Wall effect, there is no Fourth Wall in the 3D web of the future.

If were lucky, maybe there will still be one in parts of second life.

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If the 3D web/ Corporate sponsored thing works out SL will be far more economically successful of course.

If it doesn't, what we will have left is a virtual world that lost a lot of its "soul"

Better start culling bot numbers before the rush

Well, we got there via different routes, but essentially we agree: the CSI:NY episode will most likely result in some number of thousands of very short-term accounts. As I said in a later post, I am not at all sure that many will ever join SL for real - they'll come look at the CSI game, nothing more.

However, I'm not sure I agree that a bunch of game accounts joining is that much of a burden on the asset server. I think that may be what LL means when they talk about it scaling very well "horizontally". Plus, these game accounts would probably be very limited - all sharing a very small number of avatars and possessions ... I bet that the CSI:NY game doesn't involve them doing shopping etc. on the grid we know and love, snd if not, their inventories will likely be very small.

Even so, I am sure that you are right, in that their user experience will be just about as laggy as our usual experience. This has been talked about by those who've tried it as the main problem with the I Am Legend fps game. Tho I'm sure CBS's game will probably be much simpler.

As people have said, things like this are SL's best and worst advertisement.

Basically all the crap we got into SL to get away from. I'm hoping to protect my little corner and keep it an Artist Colony. I can see what you mean and I wouldn't like it either.

OK, I've posted a long response to the OnRez blog here:

http://blog.onrez.com/2007/10/18/viewer-clarifications-big-picture/


I wanted to answer Coco's questions as well:

LL's classifieds show up in search just as they do now. We aren't launching yet with our search, as noted in the above linked blog post. I know some people are fighting any new search other than Linden Labs (who has direct access to your data), but I find the current search to be completely un-useful. The bots are not the problem -- they are *extremely* low impact and low lag -- we've had Linden Lab confirm this, and they only automate what someone could do by flying around writing things down and sticking them up on a blog (and yes, people do that!). However, I'll stop here before we dive into the usual platformist versus immersionist debate.

The money you paid for LL classifieds WILL reach users of the OnRez Viewer. However, I've tried to be straight-talking in expressing my opinion that I don't view this as an eternal entitlement, just as the NYTimes doesn't honor NYPost classifieds. It's a moot point right now though. There's only one classifieds system in the viewer and it is from LL. As I noted in the blog post, as we add more features, whether we co-exist or replace existing ones is really going to be decided on a case by case basis. If we provide low value, people won't use our viewer.

The Shop button goes to Shop OnRez -- it's the same service, just in a web browser inside the Viewer.

The search bots do not figure into this at all. I know there are some people out there dissatisfied with our search efforts and I can say I am not entirely satisfied either. We're still exploring the technology.

How to maximize your chances of being seen by these new visitors to SL? I wish I had more to offer. You have your items listed on Shop OnRez so yes, when people click on the Shop button they can search and/or browse your goods (we need to offer the ability to feature your listings but we have not finished that yet). You can also wrestle with the current LL search services as you do already. I hope if you ask me this question in a year, we'll long have had a host of better tools at our and your disposal to answer that question.

Finally, per all the notes about "BigCo" influence on us, I don't really believe I'll sway people's opinions but I'll put the truth out there on the table. The OnRez group within ESC is separate from the consulting business. The consulting division's customers are big companies and brands, and yes there are touch points like CSI fans using our OnRez viewer, but my customers are not those companies. My customers are the present and future residents of Second Life (and other virtual worlds as they open up). I wish I could tell you all the things big brands have asked for that we've said no to for Shop OnRez, because it wouldn't be equal opporunity to residents and entrepreneurs.

Anyway, more of my thoughts (ya'll have made me wordy) are in that blog post, and I hope you all like the new viewer. It is a bit of a weird adjustment at first for the longtime SL user -- certainly has been for me -- but as you would expect I'm now a convert to our viewer.

OK, I've posted a long response to the OnRez blog here:

http://blog.onrez.com/2007/10/18/viewer-clarifications-big-picture/


I wanted to answer Coco's questions as well:

LL's classifieds show up in search just as they do now. We aren't launching yet with our search, as noted in the above linked blog post. I know some people are fighting any new search other than Linden Labs (who has direct access to your data), but I find the current search to be completely un-useful. The bots are not the problem -- they are *extremely* low impact and low lag -- we've had Linden Lab confirm this, and they only automate what someone could do by flying around writing things down and sticking them up on a blog (and yes, people do that!). However, I'll stop here before we dive into the usual platformist versus immersionist debate.

The money you paid for LL classifieds WILL reach users of the OnRez Viewer. However, I've tried to be straight-talking in expressing my opinion that I don't view this as an eternal entitlement, just as the NYTimes doesn't honor NYPost classifieds. It's a moot point right now though. There's only one classifieds system in the viewer and it is from LL. As I noted in the blog post, as we add more features, whether we co-exist or replace existing ones is really going to be decided on a case by case basis. If we provide low value, people won't use our viewer.

The Shop button goes to Shop OnRez -- it's the same service, just in a web browser inside the Viewer.

The search bots do not figure into this at all. I know there are some people out there dissatisfied with our search efforts and I can say I am not entirely satisfied either. We're still exploring the technology.

How to maximize your chances of being seen by these new visitors to SL? I wish I had more to offer. You have your items listed on Shop OnRez so yes, when people click on the Shop button they can search and/or browse your goods (we need to offer the ability to feature your listings but we have not finished that yet). You can also wrestle with the current LL search services as you do already. I hope if you ask me this question in a year, we'll long have had a host of better tools at our and your disposal to answer that question.

Finally, per all the notes about "BigCo" influence on us, I don't really believe I'll sway people's opinions but I'll put the truth out there on the table. The OnRez group within ESC is separate from the consulting business. The consulting division's customers are big companies and brands, and yes there are touch points like CSI fans using our OnRez viewer, but my customers are not those companies. My customers are the present and future residents of Second Life (and other virtual worlds as they open up). I wish I could tell you all the things big brands have asked for that we've said no to for Shop OnRez, because it wouldn't be equal opporunity to residents and entrepreneurs.

Anyway, more of my thoughts (ya'll have made me wordy) are in that blog post, and I hope you all like the new viewer. It is a bit of a weird adjustment at first for the longtime SL user -- certainly has been for me -- but as you would expect I'm now a convert to our viewer.

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Update -- just saw this and had to share:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfXb6zb6Upc

LOLOLOL - Just went to watch the youtube video, it was SOOOO funnny...
It was absolutely corny, totally awful and hilarious because of it.

"are YOU ready to join the team??!" - what a scream!

Seriously though - if that's what the tv prog is like, I pray none of my RL friends see it, we're going to have to do a darn site better than that to get real people interested in SL.



Really started my day well, thanks a lot you guys (no offence!)

Uh, do what? I never said thousands would show up at all. I said based on your assertion and real times numbers. Unlike sensation, I provided a fact and can back it up.

I personally don't see an increase over maybe 1,000 game users, if that. Simply for the reasons I stated. I don't see people leaving their TV's in the middle of a show to come run to Second Life, and back and forth. Most will yawn if it's mentioned to log on. I'd say that's a large majority of why people won't come. Another reason - sheer computer ignorance. My mom (only 45) couldn't dare install SL and get going in it especially for this type of style they want to bring in, let alone participate, but is a huge CSI follower. I'm not saying she's the standard for ALL. Of course there are 45 year olds who can do it - but not many compared to say... 25 year olds.

Then aside from all that, how many people have a computer that can even RUN SL? There are so many tweaks to settings to let it run on lower comps.

The rest will decide it's not worth the hassle.

THEN you add in another level - if they are adding these extra accounts that will not participate in the main world and vice versa, you'll have even more normal SL users who could care less about CSI trying to get into all that. I don't seem them offering 2 different account types from one page. That's another bit of confusion.

Simply put, there's too much in poor design, thought, and marketing into this for it to really be popular, revolutionary, or even work.

I mostly want to express thanks to Forseti for the post; it goes a long way in dispelling some of the "bat" stuff that's been accumulating around this topic. Some musings on this part: It's good to see that ESC understands the barrier to their own entry here: a crippled viewer--one that excludes from search content that's available elsewhere--is just not going to be viable. There's a very real business opportunity here, but the competition is much more "Google vs Yahoo!" than "the Times vs the Post."

Here's what I mean: If at some point, the OnRez viewer were to contain only its own paid content, people won't use it. This is not "old media" where consumers would have to scour both the Times and the Post to see the union of all classified content. Rather, within days of a proprietary browser offering any substantially disjoint set of content, an open source viewer will simply pool that content into a combined search universe. (The proprietary browser enterprise would be helpless--or at least foolish--to try to protect itself with old-media IP claims over that content: nobody would pay to advertise in one (closed) channel if their copy were to be artificially excluded from another (open) channel.)

So the business opportunity here is to beat the LL viewer (and the SLX viewer, the Qie viewer, the Bat viewer...) at their own game by offering the most value-added Search functionality, carefully augmented with on-point paid advertising, exactly following the Google strategy for 2D web search. That field is wide-open at the moment--a veritable arbitrage opportunity for the first-mover.

Translation:

Its our viewer and we'll do what we want to.

You would do to, if it belonged to you.




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They are of course completely entitled to make their own viewer and advertise it and on it as they wish.

If they don't want to link to the LL classifieds, they certainly don't have to.

I don't get the Google paid ads on Ask.com, etc.


Just another example of how Second Life is starting to look more and more like the internet. And to me, lose some of its charm.

I agre with you 100%. I don't like the real world moving into SL like this, as it takes away from what I like about SL.

"If you have enough monkeys banging randomly on typewriters, they will eventually type the works of William Shakespeare".
(Shakespeare being the bot in this case, and the monkeys the alleged prim-by-prim blog posting people)

That quoted statement has as much basis in reality as yours. If I put a specific prim on a specific parcel, it takes your bot a day to discover it and publish it. It would take you as a person many months to do the same thing just for one single prim and there's no guarantee you'd even succeed.

Two different newspapers don't compare to two different viewers.

Having a closed-source viewer also gives you the benefit of profitting from the open-source community while hoarding up any improvements you make yourself.

All you're doing is taking the regular SL viewer and covering up parts of it up. In your newspaper example: you're taking the other newspaper's content, putting your own name on it and covering up the classifieds that paid the staff at the NY Post to create that content with other ads that only profit you.

um yeah, back on topic...?

am i to understand that regular sl people can't get to this csi playspace thing? that there's no online or in-world information source for this 'event'? you know.... like, for people who don't have tvs? (yeah, well, but looking for forensic clues sounds like it might be fun!)

so this tv show star guy you're supposed to meet when you log in -- who's playing him? is it a bot, or a buncha guys they hired? ;) and who's playing these people you interview and stuff? more bots or some real actors (or rpers)?