Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

or given enough time to shut down SL for whatever the new big thing is on the horizon.

I dont think they even really know what they are doing 5+ years out. But they see numbers slipping and huge resident unhappiness. Frankly its easier to milk us for wht they can get as long as they can then say heck with it.

When has LL ever done anything sensible like fix things so that it is GOOD experience for residents and they WANT to stay happily?


EDIT
It just how it feels to me I have nothing to back it up beyond a total disregard of resident voices (after those voices were asked for) and an ever increasing set of charges to those same residents (using the excuse that WE wanted it).

Linden Lab's management is so bad at running Second Life, the best thing they could do is sell it to someone competent. They achieved the big explosion in customer base and media exposure two years ago, and have squandered it ever since. Right now, the only thing of value left with the company is whatever goodwill and name recognition comes from the "Second Life" brand name.

Maybe that is why the BBC article stung Linden Lab so badly that they had to respond on the blog (something I don't remember them aver doing before). It erodes the value of the brand name. If they had their eyes on a reliable income stream, or foresaw successful fruition of a project soon, then one bad article is just one article in the ebb and flow of PR.

I avoid the FLog like the plague so I hadn't seen that they responded. I guess I am going to have to force myself to go hunt that down.

It was posted in its entirety here in Resident Answers.

/327/6c/351491/1.html

ok yeah I did read that. Seemed like alot of corporate number spin to me but then again I am pretty jaded by Lindenspeak.

ty for posting the link.

Speaking of numbers...I believe that now days the more you sink a corporation in massive debt and destroy it the bigger your take home pay and yearly bonuses if you're the CEO or one of the other top gnats.

A la GOvernmnet Motors or Enron huh?

or any corp bank hehehehee

They use the google search appliance, which is a paid solution.

Yes, Google Search Appliance. I actually find the "All" in-world search works better than Xstreet's, even though it's keyword gamed and otherwise SEO'd by Picks-link fakery, etc., *however* it only really works for products rezzed on parcels with "Show in Search" turned on, and when the search terms I use are specific enough to not match parcel names and descriptions (which are where a lot of the gaming happens).

(Aside: I *really* wish there were a way to do a text search *within* the Search results window, so I can quickly find the specific match in a big listing. For now, I scroll down to the bottom, grab the URL, paste it in a real browser, and search there. For PG-only items, you can get the same effect directly on search.secondlife.com.)

LL's commerce team is making a huge fundamental mistake by maintaining--even increasing--the distinction between in-world and web commercial content and search. I really can't imagine what the hell they're thinking.

Speaking of in-world, I'm thinking there may be a silver lining here, but it will take a bit of thought. With the need for a new distribution system for freebies, solutions could take in-world locations of free-to-copy or L$0 items, as well as the items themselves, and thereby act as an incentive to exploring. (This is all easily gamed, too, of course, and could become a huge task to police scam listings and items, if it ever gets even a bit popular. Getting a scalable solution to different manifestations of that problem is what LL keeps sidestepping with each of its commerce and search decisions, since forever.)

The web (aka All) search runs on Google Appliance but the reason it performs so poorly is because it's designed to index pages of human readable *text*, not pages of 20 keywords followed by a listing of prim names.

If they used GSA on XStreetSL that probably would be a dramatic improvement since most listings have some coherent human-readable text (along with bunches of metadata such as price, category, etc that LL can make available to GSA for even better search results).

Until LL links in-world search to XStreetSL like listings it won't matter what search engine is used: there's simply not enough information to work with.

Umm, Linden Lab *bought* a Google search appliance for Search/All.

That's a really good point, there's a lot more room for your description on Xstreet.

Like geo-caching?

Then why do they keep allowing new NPIOF accounts? If they just required payment information on startup... they wouldn't need to shut down existing NPIOFs... they'd get people over that psychological barrier quicker and they'd get more people actually buying stuff.

well said.

As a member of this unbeloved "hobbyist faction", I just took the consequence: removed all my stuff here, withdrew all the Lindens, and for sure the sales admin will soon see a dramatical change of my transactions as a customer (which I am, a small and unimportant one perhaps, but...)

You "Lindens" should know why. I'll better spend my money where I and my kind are still appreciated.

My guess is that because it keeps the 'number of residents' stat high, clouds the bot issue and NPIOFs who are real people do spend in world. They also see them as a 'try before you buy' to get tier paying residents. That was certainly the case with me. I came out of curiosity and then subscribed in order to buy land.

I predict the next Xgreed announcement will be to require 'payment info used' in order to cover listing fees. This will effectively remove all NPIOF alt and dead accounts from Xgreed. Further clearing of the riff raff element to make it a more professional merchant site.


For in-world freebie distribution how about exploiting the 'hunt' mechanism? The hunts used now get hordes of residents jumping from merchant to merchant on the lookout for promotional freebies.

A never ending freebie hunt ring linking freebie only distribution sites would get both new residents and old time explorers out and about in world.

Rime

Yep. Indeed, freebie hunting could be the next big in-world sport!

Btw, in case it's not obvious, I whole-heartedly support the merger of in-world and web commerce Search, and posted (much too many) words to that effect on one of the Flogorum threads earlier today.

Different than current hunts, though? That could be interesting.



I'd like to hear more about this. (I only rarely go on the blogs.)

The exodus continues...

I know others are tracking the big picture but I took a snapshot of listings last evening and another this morning.

In the last 12 hours the net change in number of listings is -12,675

Rime

I have to wonder if that includes items that are inactive or not.

If you're sales are pretty good on XStreet, you should not de-list....the chances are that your sales might even increase from their present levels. If you're making that sort of money on Xstreet already....it suggests your products are popular and of good quality.

I suffer from "piss-me-off-I-boycott syndrome". Very few things in life piss me off. For some reason this one did royally. I'm going to give the other selling sites a shot. As long as I manage to pay my tier, I'm not worried about sales.

Normally i would say "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know"....but the way things have developed of late, i wouldn't mind taking a chance with the devil i don't know! (i.e a competent company buying it from LL)

I'm on one of those other alternatives already (about 6 weeks ago)....their problem is general consumer awareness within SL. It will be a while till they're fully recognised as a viable alternative. It's still a good idea to list though! Unfortunately they are competing against LL's official shopping site which will be promoted to death in-world and via Dashboard.

If all the participating Merchants of these 3rd party sites place display boards linked to the "alternatives sites" somewhere in their Mainshop...it will greatly help improve awareness. It has to be done on a massive scale though.