How long will Wallace Linden Last?

Maybe someday they will get the point that if all your customers think you're an ass, you're not likely to get tons of new customers.

They talk about the existing customers and the new ones they want to reach out to. I think LL still doesn't understand that we know more of those new ones than they do.

I know it's (mostly) in fun... but Wallace probably doesn't know the regular voices around here, so can't tell what's good natured roasting from actual blast... especially after the initial tension. we gotta give him a second to get up to speed ya know

plus that way if I DO have a desire to be insulting, I know it won't be taken as a joke... :: Looks around :: what... I'm just saying

Apparently, I, the 'fanboy', was the cause of Prok getting smacked. After browsing Proks blog, I feel compelled to state that I didn't complain to LL about anything nor did I speak to LL (or anybody!) about WallaceGate, except what's still on the blog and here in the forums. Really. Believe me or don't believe me but that's the whole story. Anything else in the prokblog is BS.

Aside from being convinced that Prok is a bit detached from reality and probably in need of professional help (which I say seriously, not as a joke) or at least a long vacation, I have no desire to get Prok banned from anywhere. We're all (in theory) adults here and being called a fanboy is something I suspect I will survive. I'm fine with people having opinions I don't agree with. I'm fine with insane people being around, as long as they're not hurting others.

What I'm not so fine with is people making stuff up about others and not taking responsibility for their actions. Prok has been warned many, many times about his behaviour. IMO, you don't get to play both the 'free speech' card and the 'but I have RL$ in SL!" card. If you ignore the repeated warnings from LL, you don't get to complain when they get tired of warnings and escalate.

If I were to be granted a wish, it would be that somehow, someway, Mark Kingdon could magically be induced to genuinely consider the idea you've posted here.

It is so very fundamental. So basic. So true.

Why is it so hard for the current LL leadership to understand this!?!?

Because it requires them to admit their whole business plan was wrong and they just wasted hundreds of thousands if not a million dollars on it. No head of any business the size of LL wants to admit that they screwed up with that much capital.

Or at least, that's what I've seen.

Yes. That makes too much sense.

But you know, if LL wants to take the ostrich as their inspiration, they can join the ranks of buggy-whip, typewriter, and key-punch machine manufacturers who were ALSO reluctant to admit that their business plans could use some revamping.

Prok doesn't appear to be permabanned.

No, apparently not. And (she said somewhat reluctantly), this is a good thing.

Free speech: It lets you know who the nutbars are.

Ah. I knew it had a use . . .

Ostrich? I thought they were trying to emulate the politicians. Well, true, both bury their heads.. but it's WHERE they bury them that distinguishes an ostrich from a politician.

Headuphisass Linden endorses this post.

Okay, you made me laugh.


Actually my analogies to 'companies that went out of business' were not ideal, as I was naming companies that made products that are inherently outdated. (Though the analogies worked in the 'refusing to change company goals that can't lead to success' sense.)

LL has a product that is definitely NOT inherently outdated.

The problem is with their choice of target customer.

And a sub-problem is that they seem to be, by habit, disinclined to leave off with the grand vague dreams and put in the hard work of actually thinking through the practicalities and consequences of their blue-sky fantasies.

For instance, take M's Blog message of just a couple of weeks ago, in which he envisioned SL being used by a shopper looking for a dining room table.

Within minutes, people posted to show how this idea simply failed to make sense.

Clearly he hadn't thought it through. And this sort of 'Dream Big!....but don't examine the ideas too closely' culture has led LL to make costly mistakes through inattention to the basics of their business (namely, their current customers and the customers they could reasonably expect to get with minimal effort.)

That is not to say that it won't be possible to shop for a dining-room table via SL in the future. But we're talking a future that is so far off that LL will probably be dust and SL will be owned by a company that knows what it's doing.

But yes, right now, M and his crew should be focusing on things that aren't far-reaching-out-on-a-branch-over-a-huge-farking-cliff. He should be pushing grid stability, existing resident experience, as well as new resident experience. He should be pushing any new shiny that is set to come out this year... not "maybes" that might come out in the next 10 years, if LL lives that long as a company. He should be explaining completely any "bad" things that are going to be happening this year, such as the fees for XStreet.

As it is, all he's doing is making LL look like daydreaming slackers who have no idea what SL is let alone how to make it work.

Exactly. (In fact I've often wondered what it is they DO do with their time instead of attending to their current business---is there a golf course nearby? Are they soap opera addicts? Or what?)

Take the 'shopping for a dining-room table' thing.

M. said the SL application would be: the shopper is in the bricks-and-mortar store, and takes a snapshot of the table, which somehow gets projected into their SL Inventory, and from the shopper's phone the table is placed inside his/her parcel, on which stands a replica of their real-life house. So in this way the shopper can see 'how the table would look'.

Anyone who thought this through---which I maintain M never did*---would see several problems:

***First, the number and extent of technical advances that would have to occur to make this possible. Among them: A snapshot turned into a 3D virtual object--and somehow automatically sized to fit correctly into a virtual house; a way to move this 3D snapshot into SL; a hand-held application that would let people get inworld (and move things in and out of Inventory, and around inworld); a hand-held that would have quality (in the 'projected on the wall of the store' that M specified) that would make looking at the projection to determine 'how the table would look in my dining room' a worthwhile thing to do.

***Second--and by far most important: THIS IS NOT WHAT ANYONE WOULD WANT.

Here's what a shopper might want:

To be able to sit in front of the computer, and enter SL (or whatever VW company comes out on top), and go to various virtual stores and see PHOTO-REALISTIC 3D depictions of their dining room tables, and in each case, be able to superimpose these depictions on a photo-realistic depiction of the shopper's dining room. And then to touch a button and buy.



How could anyone think the 'go to the physical stores and somehow see the table inside SL, on their phone as projected onto the store wall' is the killer ap? The answer is: only someone who hasn't thought it through could come up with such a boner.




*My guess would be that someone mentioned the idea in a meeting and M said Eureka! What a great thing to mention in my Blog entry!...and nowhere along the line did M, or anyone else, apply any actual thought beyond that.

Or someone said, "Hey, you know what would be great? To be able to go shopping within SL for RL stuff!"

Well, it's certainly not a bad idea in itself. It's quite an excellent idea. But it requires common sense as well as industrious perseverance to flesh it out into a genuine business goal.

Some of those things appear to be in rather shorter supply than would be ideal.

It's actually not a horrible idea, as long as it doesn't block people from what they're doing today.

Go to Dell island, poke around at the different bits you want and end up with a url that takes you to that customized box on their web site. Or, eventually, if you want, pay for it in SL and it shows up on your doorstep in 5-7 business days.

Or go to Ikea island, plug in the measurements for your place and be able to check out different (/me winces as she prepares to use a marketing word) solutions that fit. Actually be able to see what it's gonna look like in your place, before coming up with the cash.

LL obviously wants to enable and encourage this sorta thing. I don't have any problem with that as long as, again, it doesn't prevent me from doing my thing.

The problem is, going into broken record mode here, is that if LL totally alienates me then I go into RL Ikea and they try to pimp Ikea island, guess what sorta feedback I'm gonna give the yellow-shirt.

I was poking fun at the fact that was what was probably said at a Linden meeting and M decided to take it off into the wild blue yonder M probably just took a reasonable suggestion and blew it into this highly grandiose scheme that has nothing to do with reality.

A while back I had a tenant who linked their SL lingerie to their RL lingerie store, they were thrilled to bits when they made their first Rl sale via the SL link. I don't know how they're doing today as they left my island and moved to a bigger plot but at the time things were going well for them. The RL link is feasible, it's how you do it and how engage with Second Life.

yep. The original use case for avatar shopping. It turns out it is pretty valid for selling underwear but not much else where 2D web is more appropriate.

Unfortunately, it doesn't keep them out of public office.

I disagree, somewhat. People buy things sight unseen off the web, and a model of the item would be nice to have. But with SL being skewed in terms of camera angle and avatar height, models of furniture and other prim items made to scale might be more damaging. But if skewed to fit the average avatar and camera angle, it would be just fine.

If I were an architect, this would be a nifty way to have people walk through custom made plans.

It doesn't always work though; I've been trying to hook up any SL latex catsuit maker, with my RL buddies who are, actually, really, latex catsuit makers. This, I have to tell you, does not go well - I guess the issue is that it's not unusual to see lingerie in someone's bottom drawer, whereas rubber catsuits are a whole different matter...

Problem is a lot of people don't want to reveal their rl identities. And that is pretty much a necessity since contracts and NDAs have to be signed. Otherwise the styles will never make it to SL (and vice versa).

Then there is the whole issue of making stuff in SL that faithfully represents the rl product. It would be one heck of a lot easier with bondage equipment. Collars, etc.

But then the customers probably won't want to reveal their rl to sl association. There are ways to make some hookups happen. But you have to forget about direct interaction. I.e.; if someone wants to buy ad space for fetish wear with a url giver then by all means send them my way. I'm not the only one that would put up a kiosk that would successfully mask the who in SL from the who in RL.

And then a lot of people that wish for the lifestyle irl probably can't for numerous reasons.

"Honey you want me to do WHAT?!?!? Wear this and do WHAT to YOU?!?!?!??!?"