Category: Web User Group

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday November 4, 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

[Video start-6:00]

• Second Life web maps
  • maps.secondlife.com now supports searching by region name, and across all maturity ratings. Just enter a region name in the search bar.
  • The caps API issue reported in my simulator user group update is known, and it is hoped this will have a fix in place in the coming week.
    • This was apparently part of the fall-out from the Internet P2PShell vulnerability at the end of October.
    • A problem here is whilst LL own the domain and the map service, some of the API are provided by third-parties and not directly under LL’s control. Further investigations are going on to see if these APIs can be handled in a more protected manner, or whether there needs to be some form of migration away from them to an alternate solution.
• A fix has gone in to hopefully resolve the issue of some snapshots failing to upload (to the SL feeds?). This is being monitored.
• Continued under-the-hood (i.e. non-user-visible) refactoring and clean up of the Marketplace. This should result in:
  • Better visibility for the team when things fail, for fixing response / fixing.
  • Better performance around automated jobs (PLEs, redeliveries, etc).
• Multiple security patches and cleaning-up to better deal with attempted AI generated exploits.
  • Once aspect of the security work LL has been implementing throughout 2026 meant that when the P2PShell vulnerability surfaced, they were well placed to deal with it, and none of the SL services had to be taken down in order to avoid exposure, etc.

Marketplace Images

[Video: 6:35-22:07]

Question form LL: how do creator merchants on the MP go about making images for their listings (thought processing, editing, , what is included, tools used, etc.).

• General response:
  • Many simply use the ad image they use in their in-world vendors + supporting images.
  • The preferred tools were given as PhotoShop and GIMP for editing.
• Requests were made for:
  • Actually embedding videos of products, rather than just linking to them – this appeared to be misunderstood, as a mitigating factor raised was that of “hosting” videos by LL – while what was being asked for was embedding of You Tube, etc., videos (which is still complex, but does not require storage on LL’s part).
  • An ability to zoom / enlarge images.
  • An agreed aspect ratio / format for images.
• Whilst somewhat separate in terms of responsibility: a better choice of aspect ratios for Inventory thumbnails rather than just 1:1 square, as many creators use the same image for both thumbnails and MP, and so feel limited.
• It was noted that support for GIF images is being looked at.
• Juniper also enquired whether creators would consider having a 3D preview option for their products (e.g. as with Turbosquid or the SL mesh upload preview tool) would be useful.
  • This received generally favourable responses.
  • However, the idea of only allowing 3D previews of products was not so positively received (do HUDs benefit from a 3D preview? do texture images  – such as art pieces – benefit?); what about resellers who do not have access to the original asset? What would they display?
  • Overall the feeling was that a 3D preview would be a powerful addition to the MP, but it should not exclude the use of 2D images, with the request being made for any 3D preview to include a wireframe view option as well, and something like a “data sheet” listing things like LOD models, Land Impact, etc., so that users who wish to can made more informed decisions on purchases.
  • Some of this conversation got into the weeds, technically, on how best to handle things.
  • Later in the meeting the request was made that – if a 3D preview option is to be provided – LL look at also providing an animation preview capability.
• Juniper emphasised the idea of a 3D preview was more for feedback purposes at this point than something actively being implemented, with the internal focus at the Lab being brainstorming how to make MP listings “better”.

General MP Discussion

[Video: 16:54-46:52]

These topics were raised during or immediately following  as a part of the above.

• Variants and Styles: the ability for creators to have a single listing for all colour / size variants of the same item, rather than having to list them all individually.
  • The idea of “Styles” or “Variants” – both terms have been used by LL for this – has been a long-running topic, and in 2021/2 a project was initiated to provide this, and by late 2022 it was indicated it could be deployed in 2023. Since then, it has emerged that the capability is not ready for deployment, and has consistently slipped down the list of priorities at LL.
  • Juniper commented on the Variants situation as:

Variants is a big push we would like to do that of course, and part of our marketplace clean up is so we can work this bit by bit if we can.

• • The request was made to at least allow a means for creators to somehow group versions of an item together beyond just related photos.
• Marketplace Categories: a further request was made for the Marketplace categories to be overhauled (e.g. “hair” being classified as an “accessory” rather than a “body part”).
  • It was also asked way Categories appear to the left of non-listing pages and as a drop-down selection in the page header area (where it also appears on listing pages). However, the latter is intended for searches and does not have the same granularity as the Category list in terms of sub-lists of items.
  • It was suggested that rather than having hierarchical/static categories, the MP should have a more filter-like approach (as seen within other on-line marketplaces), allowing returns based on multiple selections (and which can be used with search terms as well) – as with the filtering on Inventory.
  • Juniper noted that right now, there is an internal exercise going on to consider how categories might be improved.
• “Thank You” page and links: Following a purchase, the Marketplace displays a “thank You” page, which has hints and tips for shopping which, most notably:
  • There is a link “How to Collect your Purchase” – which actually goes to a video covering purchasing L$, using the Marketplace, buying in-world etc., with only a small portion on how to find MP purchases in inventory. Given that people will have already gone through buying L$ and purchasing things from the MP – why not just have a clear, simple instruction directing people to look for their purchase in the Received Items area / folder of their viewer’s inventory?
  • Whilst there is a link to return to the MP homepage, it is buried among other links – surely it should be promoted so as to be more obvious?
• More general:
  • Juniper noted that work is going on to make redeliveries more robust. It was noted that the ability for creators to have their own items redelivered through the listing management pages appears broken for some.
  • The view was again expressed that there are too many clicks required for a creator to get to their listings (currently: Creator name > My Marketplace > Merchant Home > Manage Listings – why not have Manage Listings under My Marketplace?).
  • Requests was made for creators to be able to:
    • Set an item as a Featured Item in their own Marketplace store.
    • Have in-world store Groups to be linked to the creator’s Marketplace, so that Group members shopping at the MP get a discount.
  • Various suggestions were made for LL to host “curated” limited-time sales events on the MO. For example: an invitation for creators to register for participation in periodic Marketplace Sales events (aligned with Shop and Hop?), limited to so many creators. Those who are successful have their item(s) listed a specific set of MP “Sale” pages generated by LL, with items automatically returning to their “pre-sale” price at the end of the event. Those successfully participating in one event are automatically excluded from the next.
    • Having a creator set their entire store as having a sale was seen as a potentially easier option to provide than this particular idea.
  • A request for a store’s banner logo to appear on all associated listing pages, not just the store page, rather than the small square logo to the right.

In Brief

• [Video: 47:04-55:25] The question on what information  – such as Map-related data for use in terrain maps, etc., – is permissible for collection & how it might be collected was again asked.
  • This is a question which has been subject to a game of pass the parcel around the various user groups.
  • The concern is that it is not clear as to what is / is not permissible to be collected via bot, and the potential for bot systems to be banned (a-la Bonniebots)
  • Ideally, having a dedicated API to furnish “allowable” region information such as terrain information (elevation, etc.), water height, region name, height of structures, etc., would be the preferred solution.
  • It was again noted that not all of the API LL uses are under their direct control – although this might be changing in some way. As such, Juniper offered to take the request back to the office to try to have it discussed with all relevant parties and in line with whatever is trying to be achieved with API management in general.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, December 2, 2026.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday October 7, 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

• Juniper linden, the normal lead for the meeting was out of the office, so the meeting at lead be Eliza Linden, who is relatively new to LL.
• Not a lot by way of updates: the focus has been on bug fixing in various areas.

Future Marketplace Planning

The following were raised as ideas / thinking on what might be done in the future for the Marketplace, the idea being to obtain feedback and also input on other items that might be considered.

Marketplace Lists

[Video: 1:44-7:19]

• Allowing the Marketing Team and “in the future” creator-merchants to create curated lists on the Marketplace (e.g. lists of items (and links to them) a new user can use to pull together a complete look or a complete outfit for their avatar).
• This was seen as a good move for fashion bloggers – which would not be the intended initial aim. It also appeared to be based on the idea that bloggers could create their own lists – which again, was not specified by Eliza, nor would it be an adjunct to / replacement of things like wishlists or favourites.
•  Overall, the feedback was, if it is something that will take time and resources to implement – then it shouldn’t be something that is prioritised.

New Resident First Time Discount

[Video: 7:30-23:10]

• A small (5%?) discount for new residents on “their first Marketplace purchase” – whether this meant overall (i.e. their very first purchase, or their first purchase from a specific store was not made clear), potentially with an upper limit (e.g. 5% discount on items up to L$XXXX).
• Either way, the consensus was that any discount of this nature should be covered by Linden Lab (e.g. by dropping any associated MP fee), rather than the creator.
• It was also noted that creators already run in-store discounts and special sales (like Fifty Linden Friday offers, etc.), which could render this idea moot.
•  This conversation diverted into discussions on:
  • Reinstating thing like PIOF sign-up perks (e.g. charging US $1.00 for registering a credit card on an account, then providing that dollar as L$ credited to the account) and L$ bonuses for remaining an active user with day log-ins over the course of the first month after sign-up, etc.
  • Just how aware genuinely new residents really are about things like the Marketplace, in-world sales / discount events, etc., and how to help them become informed.
  • The idea that many coming into SL are attracted to it via all the videos, etc., put out by users and creators, vloggers, etc., which impart levels of knowledge about the platform – commerce, avatar customisation, etc., – which actually both serve to encourage them to sign-up and be in a position to engage in the economy from the start.
  • LL providing more and simple to follow videos on things like the mechanics of avatar looks – mixing heads and bodies, how to actually wear / add attachments, use BOM, etc., for those users who do come into SL with minimal foreknowledge.
  • Coupled to the above – the need for LL to comb through their own web properties and update or remove clearly out-of-date information for new users which runs contrary to the way SL now works.
  • Commentary on the so-called “lite” version of the viewer – the return to the idea that new users will be furnished with a “cut down” version of the viewer will a limited set of capabilities.
    • This appears to be something of a re-hash of the “Basic Mode Viewer” introduced under Rod Humble’s tenure at LL as CEO (e.g. in 2001-12). While it initially worked well in helping users get started in SL and was subject to updates (such as the inclusion of Voice), ultimately it was cancelled due to problems in handling the transition from it to the “full” viewer.

Subscription Level “Best Perks”

[Video: 30:11-31:25]

• What do people consider to be the best benefits / perks at the different subscription levels?
  • Premium Plus free uploads.
  • Larger number of permitted Group memberships.
  • Mainland free tier.
• This part of the meeting quickly segued into the more general discussion, noted below, starting with the conversation on communications.

General Discussion

Please also refer to the video for the following.

• General Marketplace requests made included:
  • Having the page numbers for multi-page Search results to by at the top of each page as well as the bottom.
  • For the upper section of MP pages – Search bar, list ordering, number of items per page – to remain static when scrolling, rather than moving off the screen when scrolling down a page (i.e. a dedicated scroll bar within Marketplace pages or having the upper section float when a page is scrolled).
• There have been numerous requests for users to be able to block Marketplace merchants they have no interest in purchasing from from their Search results (so as to reduce the number of “unwanted” results from their Searches).
  • This is something the Marketplace team is still considering on how to best implement.
  • Concern was raised over stores / search results being “blockaded” in terms of people “ganging up” on a merchant and blocking them, thus driving down their visibly in things like search stats, etc., and thus trend down in search results in general due to the internal algorithms viewing them as “less popular”.
• An extensive conversation on communications – from blogs through socials, etc., covering things like keeping people properly informed on initiatives and changes to initiatives use of e-mail to inform people, not updating old blog posts with updated information over making the new information the subject of a new blog posts, etc.
  • My personal gripe here is more of the inconsistency of communications: sometimes an event or initiative is announced via a blog post; sometimes it is via a forum topic being opened; sometimes it s both; sometimes it gets a mention on the Lab’s socials, other times it doesn’t. At times people are encouraged to use the forums for feedback, other times it is via Discord. It is a scattergunning that lacks any form of internal structure or policy and thus makes it so much harder for users to stay abreast of things.
• A discussion on policy relating to Marketplace and third-party tools (a creator has made a CSV-based tool to ease the process of creating and editing MP listings and was seeking clarification on making it available to people). This was to be referred back to rest of the Web team for internal discussion.
• Two non-Web relevant topics were raised:
  •  The Bellisseria Ridgewood Enclave stores (advertising via Classifieds, availability, etc.) – which is more relevant to the Land User Group meeting.
  • The need for better up-front identification of Scripted Agents (registered bots) via their profiles. This is actually more of a Governance / Trust and Safety issue.
  • Details of both Land User Group and Trust and Safety User Group meetings are available via the official user groups page.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, November 4, 2026.

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

[Video: 6:33-14:15]

• 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.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday July 1st, 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

• Under-the-hood Authentication/email service upgrades are complete, with some internal clean-up going on. However, now that all services are migrated/updated, LL can look towards adding more authentication options in the future.
• Web search is slowly getting UI tweaks as LL hammers out how to present information in mobile and improve query responses. The latter – providing better tuned search results, should become more consistent over the next couple of months – is also on-going work.
• Internal marketplace improvements around bulk redeliveries, which have sometimes been getting stuck + clean-up of search results/listings. If anyone is still experiencing issues, please file a report.

General Discussion – Marketplace

• A question was asked if reviews on Marketplace listings are indexed by the search system. At one time they were, but as LL didn’t do anything with the data that aspect of indexing was removed to improve search performance.
• Variants (having things like multiple colours for an item in a single listing:
  • Creators at the meeting were asked how many different variants of the same items did they tend to offer. Responses varied from 6 to 24 or 8 to 18.
  • Shoppers were asked how often in viewing items on the Marketplace (e.g. via search results or when browsing a store) did they see multiple variants of the same item. The responses were generally “too often”.
  • One suggestion to deal with the above – at least until the Variants capability surfaces – would be to add a filter to search allowing colours to be specified.
  • Creators were asked how they indicate to shoppers they have other versions / colours of a products available: this appeared to be through the Related Products option.
• Store clean-up: creators were asked how frequently they clean their Marketplace stores of products (e.g. those that no longer sell, those they’ve deprecated, etc.). Answers varied from “never” to “every month”, with it also being pointed out that some creators will actually move older products from their in-world store to the MP to make room for vendors selling newer products in-world.
  • The above led to a suggestion of having a “Archive” where people could either see something like a list of older items / items that don’t sell so well from the creator and / or has the ability to offer redeliveries of such items, but  without the ability to purchase them.
• A question was asked about the Last Updated field within listing and its accuracy.
  • Juniper Linden noted that it has a long-standing bug which actually looks at the wrong data, thus leading to incorrect dates being displayed. It is something on the “fix” list, but it has risen to the top of the list.
  • The suggestion was made that if it is giving false information, it should be disabled until fixed.
• Marketplace content flagging (including flagging reviews):
  • The point was made this this needs a degree of overhaul (e.g. more Reasons for Flagging, etc.).
  • Juniper Linden indicated the flagging process is under review. Suggestions on categories for flagging via Canny were requested.

Marketplace Search Discussions

• The inclusion of 3 Featured Items in search returns was highlighted as potentially confusing for a couple of reasons:
  • The items are not clearly labelled / differentiated from the result of the search returns on a page to be easily identified as Featured Items (that is, pad for).
  • Sometimes the three Featured Items do not appear to be related to the search term and could thus cause confusion / annoyance. For example: a search for (say) “Living room suites” returns a page of items in which the first three are two houses and an living room lighting set.
  • Juniper linden noted that the entire Featured Items element within the Marketplace will be receiving changes that should hopefully make it clearer as to which items displayed on a page are Featured Items.
• Use of keywords:
  • A discussion on the use of “keywords” within listings titles, descriptions and keywords appears to result ins a bias towards such items in search results. The example cited was home décor items with something of an equestrian theme (e.g. including reference to horse tack or featuring a horse) utilise the term “equestrian” in the item title, within the keywords and within the item description (so effectively repeating it), all being listed first in the results of a search for “equestrian”.
  • This is somewhat hard to guard against, as it is not strictly keyword mis-use (much as using keywords such as “bed”, “four poster bed”, “canopied bed”, “canopy bed” isn’t exactly keyword stuffing a listing for a 4-poster bed).
  • However, the fact it does appear to push items to the top of search results regardless of relevance and / or sales volumes is something it was felt by LL should be investigated further, a a report on the issue was requested.
• Marketplace search “relevance” being the default option when displaying results:
  • By default, search results are listed in terms of “relevance” – which is itself an esoteric terms, being based on various criteria LL cannot specify (as it potentially opens the door for gaming search).
  • This is a problem, as “relevance” can result in a lot of “old” and potentially outdated items being prioritised in search results. This can results in a) someone making a ill-informed purchase; and / or b) gives the impression much of the content in SL looks basic or “old”.
  • It was therefore suggested that perhaps Age: Newest First or Best Selling might be better defaults, or “relevance” is revisited and improved, and / or that the Last Updated field issue noted above is fixed, so users can see the actual age of an item.

TJay’s Marketplace Extension for Browsers

• Related to the above, TJay’s Marketplace Extension for browsers was mentioned.
• This adds a number of capabilities to Marketplace listings, including: an option to hide the Featured Items section (again, mentioned above) on the front page, category and search pages; a display of product keywords for a better understanding of each item’s attributes and keywords; the date an item was “first posted” (listed) on the Marketplace.
  • HOWEVER, as noted both on the extension’s download page notes, and possibly as a result of the Last Updated issue noted above, it is possible that the “first posted” date added by the extension might be inaccurate in some cases (I’ve used the Chrome extension for the last few years, and so far as I can tell, “first posted” seems to be generally accurate, outside of the warning given in the extension download pages).
• Those wishing to try the extension can obtain it via the following links:
  • Chrome (work for the majority of variants – Epic, Brave, Gener8, etc)
  • Firefox.
  • Edge.

What Constitutes “Valid” Content?

• The last part of the meeting was a fairly “spirited” (in chat) discussion on “valid” Marketplace content.
  • A viewpoint was raised that whilst not wishing to deprive a person of MP income, the Marketplace is ever-increasing in size, leading to a feeling among some “newer” creators producing “the latest” in goods, that they are being “squeezed” in the Marketplace, and that perhaps some action needs to be taken to remove “older” content on the basis of when the creator last logged in.
  • The counterpoint to this is that whether or not a creator has logged-in “recently” or not is irrelevant: if their goods (no matter how old) are selling, then there is a not unreasonable expectation that this should be allowed to continue.
  • The issue of support was also raised: is it fair for the MP to be selling goods which may generate support requests to the creator which simply go unanswered as they no longer log in? (The counterpoint here being just because a creator doesn’t respond doesn’t mean they are no longer active – they just might not care about the item in question.)
  • LL do attempt periodic clean-ups of the Marketplace which sees items that have not sold in X amount of time belonging to creators who have no logged-in to SL for Y amount of time (and also presumably have not cash-out out for a time?) being delisted (not deleted) from the MP.
  • A suggestion was made that creators who have not updated / sold content for a period of time should be e-mailed and informed that the item will receive a lower “relevance” rating in search results, decreasing its visibility. A feature request was also raised the idea of “de-ranking” items.
• Please refer to the video below.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, August 5th, 2026.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday June 3rd 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

The focus of work for the past month has been mainly on under-the-hood updates and preparing for upcoming releases. This work includes:

• Authentication/email service upgrades.
  • Aimed at providing better security.
  • Also includes a migration to LL’s own e-mail service.
  • This work is about to go to QA for testing.
• The refresh of the web-base land / region purchasing pages is now going through QA. This is seen as the second part of the Land Portal overhaul which started with the refresh of the Linden Homes pages.
• Search updates:
  • Improvements being made to web search. Once this work is deployed, the team will focus on fine tuning things like search results.
  • Work on adding the ability to search by region on the web-based world map is now in progress.
• Marketplace: work:
  • The Responsive Marketplace Homepage is due to go through QA.
  • There is a review of Marketplace listings in progress, aimed at de-listing (not deleting) items where the creator has not logged-in to SL for a considerable period and the item hasn’t generated any sales. Part of this work is also to automate the de-listing process.
  • General Marketplace background work.
• Under-the-hood upgrades to the new user join flow.
• The web team has been reviewing their general workflow as a whole and how work is managed (some of it with a view to automating suitable tasks, such as the MP listings clean-up mentioned above).
• The cookie prompt constantly appearing in places like the viewer Web Search tab and which can pop-up in SL web services  where it may not be required (or actually feeds a cookie to the viewer) is acknowledged as being too aggressive, and there is a review underway to ensure it only appears when required.

Trust and Safety Town Hall / User Group

• There have been internal discussions on LL’s Trust and Safety team should hold Town Hall meeting or start their own User Group meeting.
• Trust and Safety is responsible for ensuring a safe and secure environment for users by enforcing community standards, addressing user reports of misconduct, and protecting user privacy. They also manage issues related to user safety and the integrity of the virtual economy.
• A request was made for topics to discuss (presumably to help determine which would be more beneficial: a Town Hall or a regular UG meeting). The primary topic suggested concerned Marketplace / phishing scam links, including:
  • Providing a Firestorm 7.2.4 like capability to unmask URLs pasted into in Group chat / chat / IMs using square braces – see here for more).
  • More controls for Group owners to manage the use of links, etc., within their Group chats (e.g. limiting links to “safe” sites – gyazo, Flickr, and similar; the ability to specify if a Role within the Group can post links; support for whitelisting links, etc.).
  • As a part of this discussion it was noted that LL is looking:
    • To add further account security options beyond the recent e-mail verification push.
    • To broaden of MFA options (to further encourage users to protect their accounts against hacking & the risk of their accounts a) being rubbed of any L$ balance; b) being used to to drop phishing links to all groups associated with the account).
• This discussion became quite protracted through the meeting from around 10 minutes in through to around 25 minutes, but the general consensus was that a Town Hall or regular UG meeting would be useful.

General Discussion

• In light of recent (over the last year?) issues with the Second Life wiki going down, with a request for a monthly downloadable package of the wiki to be made available for those interested in viewing it offline.
  • It was acknowledged the wiki has in the past been badly hit with LLMs and bots data-scraping and causing it to fall over; however, it is believed that countermeasures to prevent the problem have been put in place. Those still seeing the wiki being down for extended periods should file a report via Canny.
  • Offering a downloadable version of the wiki was seen as problematic as the information within it is subject to change; however, there might be other options for making the information available (subject to priorities), and a Canny report was against requested.
  • This resulted in a general discussion on the wiki – such as perhaps having a compressed (and regularly updated) archive available for people to view; encrypting IP address for those making active edits to the wiki, etc.
• The above led to a wider discussion on the general visibility of various SL web-based properties and their general use, including the fact that many users never even use their Second Life dashboard at secondlife.com/my, as it is not known about / is not seen as dynamic / informative enough (Something I’ve raised directly with LL numerous times).
  • There is a review in progress to see if various web pages like the dashboard could be refreshed/ updated.
• Items raised but outside of the Web Teams responsibility:
  • A request was made for a limited sandbox area to be included in the SLB regions to allow folk to a) rez gifts, etc.; b) take part in impromptu building classes and similar.  This was seen as a good idea for future SLBs, and will be taken back to the Lab.
  • The suggestion was made that some means of identifying Lab-managed regions should be added to the viewer Legacy Search (e.g. the Places tab), so that things like “official” sandboxes appear as the first returned following a search on such, thus assuring users the destination is “safe” (as much as a sandbox can can “safe”!) for them. This was seen as something that could perhaps be implemented within the Web Search.
  • A conversation on allowing a switchable (by region holder / estate managers?) option to enable region-wide chat. This was seen as useful in welcome hubs, etc., where incoming users can often arrive, ask a question via chat and then wander out of range before getting a reply – and then miss it, leading to them thinking they are being ignored.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, July 1st, 2026.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday May 6th 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.

Project Zero Update

• Project Zero (the viewer streamed to a browser) is now closed – see: Linden Lab announces Project Zero to end).
• Interestingly, this work is now being described as an “experiment” rather than any form of product development effort; a description which is somewhat removed from how the project was initially put forward (although it is fair to say that the Firestorm iteration of the work was more experimental by the Lab).
• “A lot” has been learned from that experiment, some of which will be used to improve both the desktop viewer and Mobile App experiences.
• Support has already refunded all or nearly all L$ pack purchases and are working through the list to make sure everyone gets refunded. More info is in the blog post here if you need help.

Web Services Updates

• The refresh of the the official viewer log-in splash screen is now available in the current RC (and soon to be release) version of the viewer.
  • It has already been suggested this screen could benefit by the inclusion of the Lab’s own SLBN RSS feeds for blogs, etc, even if only in link format (as with the Firestorm log-in Splash screen).
  • Official blog posts are linked-to under the Events (or some reason – space?) tab, but the broader SLBN links are absent.
  • Surfacing the official blog and the SLBN links more clearly would benefit both official communications – given many users do not directly address secondlife.com, and help the “community” nature of SL.

• The refresh of the web-base land / region purchasing pages is in its first passes of “button up work”. and is currently on track to surface in the next few months. This is seen as the second part of the Land Portal overhaul which started with the refresh of the Linden Homes pages.
• The Responsive Marketplace Homepage making progress, and will be passing through the design/QA gauntlet soon.
  • It is hoped that some of the tools used in this work can be put to use in enhancing / re-working elements of the Marketplace in general (e.g. making it more modular than monolithic) in order to add features more easily and leverage opportunities to help promote creators and stores.
  • This work would be subject to senior management agreement.

Internal and Quality of Life Updates

• Web Search has received a range of under-the-hood updates (OpenSearch migration, Debian updates, Python upgrades), with an eye to tackle some first pass search results updates as a result of these updates in the near future.
• A range of under-the-hood but necessary security update.
  • Mention of which again brought forth requests for more options to be added to the current MFA process, particularly e-mail support.
• Wrapping up assisting teams without authentication/email upgrades.

New Joiners

• Eliza Linden is a new hire, filling the role of Economy Product Manager, with responsibilities related to the Linden Dollar, the LindeX, and also producing support to the Marketplace transactions, etc. She may also become one of the Lindens attending the Web User Group meetings in the future.
• Crowley Linden has joined LL as a Software Engineer with the Tools & Payments team.

Other Items

• A bug report has been filed about items shown on the front page of a Marketplace Store not showing the correct price after a listing update – although the actual listing does show the correct price.
• Marketplace requests:
  • A suggestion was made for merchants to be able to group like items together within their Marketplace stores or to have tabs within their stores so they can display items which might be brought together, etc.
  • It was asked if it would be possible in future to have better integration between the MP and in-world stores – such as having both Marketplace listings and store vendors pull products for delivery to customers from the same repository.
  • The response to these ideas was somewhat favourable, with it being mentioned that Casper (of CasperTech fame) is now looking at the MP and familiarising himself with it, and these might be things that could be incorporated into the MP alongside of features from the CasperVend system.
  • It was requested that the ability to review Demo items (particularly those with limited functionality) due to the negative feedback Demo items can garner for this reason.
    • This led to a more extensive discussion on reviews and hope to improve them.
• The second half of the meeting [31:59-1:10:20] involved a user-generated presentation on Marketplace usage, featuring a series of slides. Allowing for the data being a snapshot in time (with changes occurring all the time), some of the highlights include:
  • The overall volume of listings has increased throughout the MP’s lifetime, despite periodic delisting exercises for items that have not sold or listings from creators who have not logged in for specified periods (e.g., 2 years or more) and things like the de-listing of Gacha items.
  • 2016-2017 saw a large-scale jump in MP listings / activities – largely as a result of the introduction of multiple mesh bodies and the need to cater for them all with clothing and accessories, etc.
  • In the last decade, 16,000 MP stores have put out at least one product a year (with some releasing as many as 33 per month), and the longevity of individual products has increased (e.g. whereas merchants may have previously removed slow-/non-selling products in the past, now they are being left as listed on the MP.
  • The “average price” for purchased items on the MP is L$350 (obviously with a high degree of variance between low and high cost items such as fatpacks, etc.), with the suggestion that this is a good price for new creators to consider when selling their first individual products.
  • Gacha items appear represent a relatively low number of listings within the MP (and have been declining), but they do have a higher volume of sales.
  • AI use may have moved from AI generated content (peaking at around 1%of overall MP content being self-reported as AI generated) to the use of AI tools for imaging / branding. This led to a side discussion on AI and AI tools.
  • Please refer to the video for specifics for all of the above.
• A request was made for a) the OAuth client for SL web being made available to users on external services, and b) if the SL Discord bot could do the same thing?
  • These questions were directed to Kermit Linden, but no specific response was offered during the meeting.
• A complaint that a recent fix to logging-in to the Forums means that those with capitalisation in the middle of their users names now have the letters displaying in lower-case in their names (e.g. “Snuffyab123” instead of “SnuffyAB123”.
  • This issue might be related to a similar issue with SL Wiki for users with Edit rights, but this has yet to be confirmed.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026.