The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday September 2, 2026. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.
Meeting Overview
- The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
- As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
- On the first Wednesday of the month at 14:00 SLT.
- In both Voice and text.
- At this location.
- Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
- Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Web Services Updates
- Responsive marketplace homepage:
- LL is fixing small bugs but looking to start the next step in making marketplace responsive and cleaner.
- Note that this work does more include significant changes to the homepage (e.g. how feature listings are highlighted, etc., as has been requested); it is purely about making the homepage load faster in the viewer, etc.
- It was noted that this has resulted in the Best Selling element of the homepage being replaced by Trending Now – which is seen to have minimal relevance to creators / users, given it is based on a mix of things like search results rather than actual purchases.
- The above led to a request for users to be able to select best selling over different time spans (e.g. the last week, month, quarter, etc.) to again remove bias.
- Marketplace search clean up ran successfully and hopefully we’ll see improvements in search results and speeds as part of this rolling update – see here and here for more on this.
- Marketplace internal refactoring and clean up – much of this should be unseen but result in fewer errors, less reporting errors, more performant search results and page loads.
- Lindex sell survey – LL is trying to get a better understanding of how Linden dollars flow in the economy as they enter and leave
– Event Duplicate improvements (also see the questions asked of merchants, below).- Kermit Linde also reminded people of those with regions leased directed from LL of the L$ Payments for Land beta programme (at the time of writing, last updated, August 3, 2026).
- Event listings are now limited to one event at one time at one parcel, in the hopes to prevent repeated event spamming (e.g. people using multiple accounts to spam the event listings with the same event, etc.). LL is also updating error handling around this so it’s clearer to users.
- Work to add regions to search on maps.secondlife.com is in progress. There is some internal debate over region maturity ratings and exposing them via the web maps which still has to be addressed, given the web maps can be used without necessarily being logged-in to the SL website.
Questions asked of Creator Merchants
- Outside of Paid Listing Enhancements and classifieds, how do you promote your products? Blogs? In world events? Advertising?
- Responses included: Facebook; advertising at suitably-themed events; Discord channels; word-of-mouth; blogger reviews, dedicated store blog / websites; Flickr and similar.
- If you are a merchant, what do you do to attract new customers? Do you consider new customers establish residents who just don’t buy from you, or new residents?
- Both.
- What would make it easier for a new resident to engage in the economy? Adding payment methods? Visibility? Maturity Ratings?
- The above question led to a discussion on barrier to entry to the economy (e.g. linking accounts to a payment method – which many long-time users see as a barrier new users are wary of) versus the fact that many new users are coming into SL having seen “influencer” / creator videos on SL and so are aware and prepared to spend money on looks, etc., from the get-go.
- As a purely personal opinion – assuming LL read these summaries:
- I would suggest that asking such questions at WUG meetings is of limited value, as they are addressing a very closed group of regular attendees, so even as a straw poll, the meetings are of limited value in terms of representation.
- If feedback is being requested of creators, better to ask through broader channels as – such as the official blogs – as formal surveys.
- This would allow the community to directly pass the word to those wishing to respond through the forums, via bloggers raising their own posts on the subject, by users posting to social media, etc., with links to the survey, etc.
General Discussion
- In terms of attracting new users, it was suggested the the change from “Join Us” to “Sign Up” on the various join buttons on various SL web properties could actually be putting potential users off on the grounds that “Sign Up” can sound more like a business-like / long-term commitment, where “Join Us” sounds warmer, friendlier and less of a major commitment.
- This resulted in a conversation about apparent in terminology across various web properties, with some using “Sign Up”, some “Join Us” and some “Sign In”.
- Whilst the mix of “Sign Up” and “Join Us” does suggest inconsistency, there is also the matter of target audience. For example: the Marketplace is primarily intended for existing SL user, so “Sign In” makes more sense than either “Sign Up” or “Join Us” if the user happened to be logged out of their SL account when they open the Marketplace.
- A discussion on getting new users started – specifically centred on the Avatar Welcome pack, its limitations (and the reasons for them), lack of content support, attempts to address this by various creators / groups, etc., – again, please refer to the video.
- A further question for creators was asked: which three avatar bodies would they like to be able to see added as a “works with” option in MP searches. The responses were:
- Female: Reborn, Legacy (TMB), Maitreya.
- Male: Legacy (TMB), Bellezza, Signature.
- The above led to concerns over favouritism being shown towards specific brands, with the suggestion made that if a brand is to be listed as “works with” as a search option, then that brand must be sold on the MP (so the bodies would have to be listed).
- Store blocking was raised: the ability to completely block MP stores and listings from a user’s Marketplace experience (e.g. to eliminate the multiple stores listing poorly-made, unoptimized AI generated content) from filling up search results, etc.
- This led to a general discussion on AI generated content and managing it (e.g. if regulatory moves to watermark AIG content become law, whether such content can be auto-screened from SL, etc.).
- Requests were made to separate star ratings from leaving reviews on the MP, and to provide Merchants with an image gallery capability for use in their stores.
Next Meeting
- Wednesday, October 7, 2026.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 