Day: December 3, 2010

And another thing…

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’m posting this as a kind-of addendum to my last on the announcements from LL relating to Classifieds and paid ads, but also as a separate entry as it harkens back to the other current Big Thing  – the arrival of teens.

In the e-mail from “The Linden Advertising Team” (is this Nelson again?) is a little passage that may yet be a time bomb (and which explains why this announcement went out in a “no reply” e-mail, rather than in a comment-enabled blog post):

Maturity Changes: Previously, advertisers declared the maturity level of their ads. However, to prepare for teens coming to the main grid, we will be using the maturity system used for Search that is based on two factors:

  • Parcel maturity level
  • Content of the ads themselves

Advertisers’ declared maturity will still be visible in Viewer 2, but will be informational only and not affect the actual maturity rating for each listing. We are targeting these changes for the week of Dec 13th

So, in other words, those operating on Adult lands will not be able to advertise in Classifieds even if their ads conform to PG/G OR M guidelines – or if they do, they cannot SET LOCATION to provide a direct Teleport to their store / location (which teens cannot get to even if they do read the ad).

Now, given there have already been “improvements” to search covering the arrival of teens and it has been indicated that teens will only be able to search at the PG /G level – and while appreciating these safeguards do not cover every eventuality, this move is going to be seen by many in the Adult community as punitive against them. Rather than a better search engine and better policing on their part, LL have opted for a solution that may well inconvenience them the least – but could further marginalise a section of their mainstream user community.

Again, I have nothing major against teens entering the Main Grid; yes, some of the actions LL have taken have caused eyebrows to rise – but I still haven’t felt it’s going to be the God-awful disaster some have been predicting. That said, this decision does come across as unreasonable.

My real issue with the whole teen thing is more to do with the fact that it appears that some in Linden Land believe that teens are the new saviours of Second Life; that there are vast hordes of teenagers out there, champing at the bit to get into this virtual playground, and thus revive its fortunes if just a few “minor” things are nipped and tweaked.

Those of us who have been here long enough will remember something similar back in 2007 /08, when LL seemed to believe that if they just did *this* and *that* – and to hell with what the users felt – then Big Business (which sniffed around the edges of SL in 2006/07) would flood into the grid and take them to The Next Level.

And we all know how that one worked out, don’t we?

Does LL want our business?

Posted on by Inara Pey

You know, there are times when one has to ask exactly what they’re all smoking up in the Executive Suite at Battery Street, or what precisely is going into the coffee break brownies.

Two recent announcement from LL have me scratching my head. The first is that they are now offering some for of “advanced” Classified advertising system that allows, quote :allows the purchase of targeted display ads on Linden Lab web properties such as the Marketplace

Operated by GlamAdapt, this system requires and up-front payment in USD to have an advert or media stream appear on SL Marketplace web pages. What the payment might be, is somewhat unclear. The cost is broken down in terms of CPM – the cost of ad impressions per month, and so range from $9.00 to L$90 a month.  Now does a click count when someone hits the advert (as is the standard) or simply when someone opens the page and the advert is displayed (which is the implication here). The former is fine, but the latter? It’s also unclear whether sale tax is applicable on the fees – I’d be surprised if not – as you need to sign-up in order to get a breakdown of costs per advert time – and frankly, I’m not prepared to do so.

The second is and e-mail to residents advising us that as from the 13th December, in-world classifieds are to be limited to 256 characters in order To maximize relevancy, new characters limits will help you choose only the most relevant descriptive keywords.

I have a three-word response to this claim from Nelson Linden: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

As Ciaran Laval (damn you man, for posting ahead of me! 🙂 ) states, 256 characters is an idiotically tiny amount when trying to write a cohesive advert. Far from discouraging keyword gaming, it’s liable to encourage it, as people forego ad writing and try to jockey keywords in their favour.

And that is a further rub: those of us that have always played by the rules with regards to Profile classified are the ones that have borne the brunt of LL’s misplaced “war on keywords” over the last 12 months – and this isn’t going to help.

The biggest insult over both of these moves is that it really does come across as a royal slap in the face for merchants. Office Hours meeting, blog post replies, the Commerce Round Table, forum discussion posts, the JIRA – all are awash with issues and complaints – 90%+ perfectly valid about the manner in which SL search has been repeatedly bugger up by Linden Lab.

And their solution is to a) make people pay for the privilege of having *some* hope of decent in-yer-face advertising, and b) further cripple people’s ability to usefully advertise using the in-world tools.

Now, to be sure, the GlamAdapt thing *might* be aimed at external advertisers (and if so, are LL hoping to suddenly find themselves with the likes of Amazon, Nike, etc. advertising on their Markeplace – and indeed, even *cough* IMVU, who are particularly aggressive in their web marketing!?), but posting it for current merchants while continuing to even the impression they actually don’t care about search, and that 12 months down the line a fix is still “coming”. While the change to classifieds just appears to be about a change for the sake of it, with absolutely no regard (again) for the existing damage to search or anything else.

This is the kind of behaviour that, as I discussed earlier, tends to leave people with a distinct impression that LL is the enemy within.