Month: December 2010

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.

Casper the friendly Vending System

Posted on by Inara Pey

Further to the commentary on the closure of Apez, the hoped-for deal with CasperVend appears to be going ahead. Today a Notecard with circulated by CasperVend to all Apez customer, outlining a means to migrate to their vending service.

The Migration kit itself is located on SL Marketplace. It appears to eliminate some of the work required in setting-up vending systems, etc., completely from scratch, although from the outline description there is still a fair amount of work to be done.

I have no exposure to CasperVend (I use a combination of VendBob rezzing vendors and Hippo systems), but this life raft would appear welcome, even if those taking it are faced with a 1% increase in payable commissions or to pay for a “replacement” system.

Kudos to the folks at CasperVend for making the offer.

There are still concerns surrounding Apez I would hope Cenji (or someone will) fix, including:

  • What is happening with the refund of all deposits, given the caveats appearing in the last announcement
  • Why is the website otherwise appearing to offer a “business as usual” face to the world

I’m not suggesting any improper has occurred by asking these questions, rather simply that they need answering, and leaving both as they are could lead to further upsets, confusion and general bumpiness down the road.

But well done to Cenji and CasperTech for offering a first ray of hope in the matter.

Policies, debate and the vicious circle

Posted on by Inara Pey

In commenting on my last post about the Teen merger, Ayesha Askham raises a point that has been touched upon before – and not only by me; and that is LL’s seeming inability to think things through.

While I still stand by my view that the merger will not result in the heavens crashing down around our collective ears, how the matter has been handled is, as Ayesha rightly points out symptomatic of  an ongoing problem we, as users, face every time a policy change is announced.

That problem is this: once LL has determined a course of action, they resolutely set their faces towards that goal in spite of whatever reasoned arguments are put forward, or what later transpires to demonstrate that maybe we, the residents, do actually have a better grasp of the complexities of SL than those (currently) employed by Linden Research itself.

In this respect – and as many, many, many people have elsewhere pointed out – HAD Linden Lab sat down and listened to people back during the time of the Great Adult Policy Change farrago, and genuinely considered the overall benefits of defining a PG continent then the merger of TSL and the Main Grid would now be a non-issue.

But this doesn’t mean that we, as residents, are actually free of a portion of the blame here. The painful fact is that over the years, we’ve become our own worst enemy in trying to deal with LL. So often, we react to almost anything LL has to say as if they were the Axis of Evil actively and maliciously working to bring about the collapse of SL, and thus to be despised and vilified at every turn.

And if you don’t accept this, let me ask you: just how many times do you react to any news at all that may impact your enjoyment of SL with a roll of the eyes and a bitingly sarcastic swipe at LL? Even as recently as this week, and the news of the Apez collapse, I personally heard several people react with sentiments amounting to, “Bloody LL, killing the competition!” (or words to that effect) when LL had nothing whatsoever to do with the Apez crisis.

And herein lies my point: truth be told, we share a portion of the blame for LL not listening. I say this not to excuse or legitimise their  cock-ups; I’ll let my record for calling them out speak for itself. What I am saying is that even when we do offer logical, sensible, achievable and workable solutions to perceived issues / problems (as in the aforementioned case of establishing a PG/G continent), we do so with such force of anger / negativity we actually encourage LL to ignore us. The result is that – as Ayesha points out – LL and SL constantly seem to lurch from crisis to crisis. And even when they’re not to blame for problems – they still get a pasting.

And so the disconnect between company and users persists, and even those who once made an effort (however kackhanded)  to involve themselves with users end up retreating into their own little ivory towers as they scale the dizzying heights of LL management, and so perpetuate the problems and the angst (Good old Jack).

Some saw the “return” of Philip Rosedale as CEO as a sign that this circle would somehow be broken (as it was myopically and wrongly seen as being “Kingdon’s fault”). However, the fact is that while he may still appear to be the Cool Dude of SL, Rosedale himself has a lot to answer for when it comes to LL’s approach to its product and its users. And – whatever portion of the blame we ourselves should be prepared to hold up a collective hand to and say, “mea culpa!” – it cannot be denied that the circle can only be taken by someone at LL being prepared to “screw their courage to the sticking place” and make a decision to actively engage with users in the knowledge that in doing so (to mix my Shakespeare very thoroughly), they’ll have to risk the “slings and arrows or outrageous fortune” (or at least, outraged users) and by debating them, soothe them (so to speak).

But that isn’t going to happen until LL get an CEO who can actually break the mould within the company – and that is going to be hard.