Category: Web User Group

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, September 7th, 2022.

These meetings are generally held in-world on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. They are usually chaired by Reed Linden, who is the Lab’s Product Manager for the Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).

A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Updates for the Last Month

[Video: 2:47-10:20]

Land Ownership “Journey”

• A complete re-write of every route by which users can obtain and hold land, from Premium (+Plus) Linden Homes, obtaining Mainland (incl. Abandoned Land), and private island regions, and renting from private estates.
  • This involves not only a re-write of existing land-related web pages (again, as examples, the Premium Linden Homes selection page, the Mainland auction page, the region purchase pages (which date from 2005!), etc.), and the development of completely new pages related to land “ownership”.
  • The work is being carried out using technology that is “new to Linden Lab”.
  • Initially, this work will not involve any changes to Land tools within the viewer UI. However as the project progresses, it will see changes being made to the viewer’s land management tools, etc., as well.
• The first element of the land work to be user-facing will be the new Land Portal, which is expected to be made available in the next few weeks.
  • This will provide access to land.secondlife.com and offer a “preview” of what form the new “land journey” will take.
• [Video: 15:36-17:15] Following the work on the Land Portal, the focus will likely either be on updating the Linden Homes pages OR the price region purchase pages.
  • Once the Portal is up and running, the Lab will be monitoring where people go on accessing it, which may influence the order in which the land-related web properties are updated.

Secondlife.com Beyond Land

• The “land journey” work is the first phase in a larger project to completely update all of the secondlife.com web pages and portals, and which will also eventually encompass Marketplace as well.
• Some of the thematic elements of this work can already be seen in places such as join.secondlife.com.
• The overall aim of this work is to offer a modern look and feel to the Second Life web presence which is both easier to maintain / update and allows for new capabilities / functionality to be more easily added.

Marketplace Search

• This work is to leverage all of the recent work put into “regular” such (e.g. the relevance engine, etc.) for Marketplace Search.
  • The current focus is on importing all the infrastructure work carried out for Search into the Marketplace search capability, including the framework for the relevance engine.
  • However, rather than using the current relevance engine, a version specific to Marketplace searches will be built for better optimisation.
  • The updated Search will likely include additional search options.
• The overhaul of the search tools is seen as a further step that will better enable the use of Styles (i.e. single listings with multiple variances (e.g. colours) of the same product), although the first element of this work is liable to be the “next” significant release for the MP.
• All of this work is being seen as a lead-in to the potential complete ground-up build and phased implementation of a completely new Marketplace, with 2023 being designated “the year of Marketplace”.

New User Experience

[Video 18:04-24:00]

• The New User eXperience (NUX) has been identified by the lab’s Executive Team as a major area of focus for the at least next 12 months.
• Some of the Lab’s work in this are has been previewed in terms of the upcoming “all mesh” New Starter Avatars (see here and here), but LL recognises more work needs to be done within the NUX as a while.
• Questions asked at the meeting (from a Web Team perspective)  were:
  • Are there “silver bullets” existing users think might improve the overall NUX from sign-up to engagement?
  •  Is there something that could be implemented that would immediately change the NUX to improve retention?
  • What specifically could be done on the web side of things to present a more engaging NUX to incoming users?
  • Have people specific feedback from recent new users (e.g. those whom they may have asked to come try out SL) which might feed into thinking about improving the NUX (e.g. worries users have expressed in having to download and install the viewer as an “unknown” piece of software, issues of people being pressured into believing they are using the “wrong” viewer in favour of another, etc?
• This is liable to be a major topic of conversation at the next WUG, so those with constructive ideas, particularly (but not exclusively) on the web side of NUX, are invited to attend.

Premium Subscriptions – Looking Beyond Premium Plus

[Video: 24:09-26:30]

• Premium Plus take-up is still viewed as being “very successful” to the point the Lab is now considering ideas for other possible Premium subscription options, which may include things like:
  • “Premium Lite” – which might offer some of the options available in Premium, but not all of them, and at a lower price.
  • “Premium a-la Carte” – which might offer users the ability to pick and chose at least some of the options available to the current Premium / Plus offerings, each with its own fee, and thus pay a subscription based on the options selected.
• No timeline on if / when any new subscription options might arise, what they might comprise or the pricing involved, as this is only in the “discussion” phase within the Lab, but feedback is being taken through the WUG meetings.

In Brief

• Multi-factor authentication: moving beyond just the use of a third-party authentication tool (Google Authenticator / Microsoft Authenticator) to offer additional means to complete the MFA process is unlikely to come before 2023.
• A further request was made to de-couple Homestead “ownership” from having to hold at least one Full region. While not entirely ruled out for future consideration, there are some very practical considerations around this idea that need to be considered:
  • One of these is the heavy use of Homesteads by private estates and the potential of severely damaging the market if Homesteads were to be de-coupled from Full region holding at the same price.
  • Another is the question of whether, if offered at a higher tier than when coupled to Full region holdings ($109 a month), what that tier would be in order to avoid too severe a disruption to the current land market.
• Lower mesh upload fees for Premium Plus: this has been indicated as a future Premium Plus benefit. However, it is proving difficult to implement because unlike the other fees for uploads, etc., mesh does not have a “one fee fits all” structure – the cost varies in accordance with things like model complexity, LODs, etc., and injecting a fee reduction based on a percentage calculation into the process is proving to be a more complex task than imagined.
• Eliminating store names appearing in Marketplace searches using item names: this is a fix currently being worked on as a part of weighting changes to search (e.g. store names and user names will not carry as much weight as item names).
  • Conversely, when searching for store names, these should have a higher weighting as the initial MP search updates are deployed.
• SL Wiki: it was restated that, outside of various “official” pages, the SL wiki is no longer “officially” supported or subject to updated for a number of reasons.
• Feature requests:
  • BUG-232355 “Group Name Change” given the desire to reduce the proliferation of Groups in SL and the load they can place on various back-end services, this has been a long-running request, now accepted by the Lab.
  • BUG230941 “Add a store blocklist to the Marketplace” – will possibly be amongst the “Soon ™” Marketplace updates.
  • BUG-231257 “Incorporate 360 Snapshots in to the Destination Guide” – is viewed as a more nuanced request requiring interaction across different services which may make implementation difficult, but the request has not been ruled out.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, October 5th, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022.

These meetings are generally held in-world on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. They are usually chaired by Reed Linden, who is the Lab’s Product Manager for the Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).

A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Forum Policy Changes

[Video: 1:48-17:12]

Note: Forum governance (and governance & policy topics in general do not fall under the remit of the web team, and so are usually not a part of discussions at the Web User Group. However, an exception was made at this meeting, to allow Keira Linden to discuss the recent policy and moderation changes made to the SL forums.

As her comments and the feedback from some attending the meeting have no bearing on the Lab’s Web properties per se, I have separated them into a separate article, Forum changes: Keira Linden speaks, and I refer those interested to that summary (video included). This article will focus pure on the discussions concerned the Lab’s web projects.

Premium Plus and Name Changes

[Video: 17:38-23:15]

• Features continue to be added, and tweaks made to the service.
• Most recently, Name Changes were added to Premium Plus for a fee of US $14.99, with the Premium price lowered, and the service extended to Basic accounts as well – see: SL Name Change fees updated & service extended to Basic accounts for more.
• In addition, the one-time price reduction for those joining Premium Plus on the monthly payment plan (so $24.99 for the first month instead of $29.99) has been extended through to Monday, August 8th, 2022 – see Premium Plus sale last chance (via linden Lab) for more.
• [Video 51:40-51:53] An upcoming feature for Premium Plus is “VIP Regions”.
  • The grid infrastructure to support these is now in place.
  • Exactly how these will be used was not specified.

Search Relevance

[Video: 23:34-31:15]

Note: the following refers the web Search and the in-viewer Search, it does not currently apply to the Marketplace.

• As a part of (continuing) work to improve web Search, LL implemented a “search relevance engine” machine learning tool, designed to observe how Search performs and gradually improving the relevancy of results.
• This tool has now been in use for a couple of months or so, and LL is now has some meaningful results from it.
• Prior to the tool being implemented, it was possible:
  • To search for the same term using different case sensitivities (e.g. “apple” and “APPLE”) and get completely different search results.
  • To search for a precise brand name (e.g. “Maitreya”), but have to scroll through multiple result before finding the brand store itself.
• With the new tool, issues such as these are gradually being identified and corrected (based on searches users are making) by the tool itself, without the need for human intervention.
• As more searches are made and recorded by the tool, so it is anticipated that more users should start seeing the relevance of their search results improve.
• In addition:
  • More data is being gathered on users’ search behaviours (e.g. how often do people click on items on the first page of a set of search results as opposed to scrolling down the list), so this information can also be fed back into the search relevance engine.
  • The Search team is starting to work on fuzzy matching, which it is hoped will assist those who have typing issues, or form whom English is a second language, so so may mis-spell terms / names.
• TPV developers repeated a request for an API to be provided, so the updated search capabilities can be leveraged by legacy search capabilities used by TPVs.

Marketplace

[Video: 31:20]

• Work on Marketplace variances – now called Styles – is progressing, with al the required infrastructure now in place.
• The remaining work for this is front-end related, and is targeted for completion later in the year.
• The Marketplace rebuild (see my June 2022 and July 2022 summaries) is targeted as a 2023 project.

In Brief

• There are a “lot of struggles” going on around a mobile / web client, and is “not a straightforward product”.
  • Some of these “struggles” revolve around whether the Lab should being its own solution or partner with a third-party (perhaps one already providing a solution for mobile / browser access to SL) to develop a solution.
  • In this, LL has been working with the Speedlight team, but there is nothing that should be currently perceived as a formal partnership between the two.
• TPVs representatives also requested:
  • LL give serious thought to a long-promised Events API to allow TPVs to pull events from the web events lists and promote them through the viewer (e.g. via the Splash screen).
  • BUG-231714 “[WEB] Please make Linden Lab splash screen data public in documented XML or JSON files” be given greater consideration.
• Access to real-time traffic data (avatars within a region / parcel) was again been requested in relation to search results (so when you search for a place you can see how many are there).
  • This is described as difficult to provide, as simulators would have to be polled every single time a location on them is searched – which could be multiple times, with search having to be frequently re-indexed to reflect the updated traffic figures.
  • Search indexing rates are being increased, but they are not at a point where that indexing is frequent enough to support real-time traffic data.
• Multi-Factor Authentication: no further progress since extending it to the viewer. However, the Lab still hopes to move away from a wholly third-party app based approach, although there are no time frames for when this might be achieved.
• There is a (non-Web) discussion on the “secret sauce” of SL, the complexities of the viewer, questions around splitting the viewer into two modes (as seen with the Basic and Full viewer, circa 2010-11), none of which is particularly relevant to this summary, but can be video in the video.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, September 7th, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, July 6th, 2022.

These meetings are generally held in-world on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. They are usually chaired by Reed Linden, who is the Lab’s Product Manager for the Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).

A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Premium Plus – Quarterly Membership

[Video: 2:55-6:42]

• There has been what LL regard as a “positive” response to the Premium Plus launch on June 23rd, with take-up being “ahead of the curve”.
• Quarterly accounts:
  • These were Grandfathered for Premium in 2018 (so those on Quarterly could continue, but those upgrading after the grandfathering could only opt for Monthly or Annual). As such, Quarterly was not listed as part of the original Premium Plus offering.
  • I raised the question through the Meet the Moles session at SL18B (via Saffia as host).
  • Quarterly has now bee added to Premium Plus – but only for those upgrading from Quarterly Premium. If you are not already on Quarterly Premium billing, you will only see the Monthly / Annual prices.
• Coming soon: the ability to directly pick a Linden Home parcel (one that is available but not part of the allocation system as per my Premium Plus notes) that is currently offered via filing a support ticket will be moving to a web-based ability.
• Still under discussion / in development for Premium Plus:
  • Reduced mesh upload fees.
  • Premium Plus linden Homes.
  • Premium Plus “VIP areas”.
• The Premium offering will also continue to be updated.

Future Subscription Levels

[Video: 42:29-end]

• Are their plans to offer more Premium subscription levels? Plans, no. There is nothing definitive being planned or in the works for further levels of Premium at this time.
• Are the discussions about / interest in possible permutations of subscription options? Yes.
• It is certainly true that the system is now set-up to support different subscription offerings if more levels were to be added.
  • This latter point sparked a discussion of what people saw as “ala carte”, which largely came down to people wanting only pay for something specific – such as Linden Home or free tier – rather than picking a range of options – please refer to the video for details.

Name Changes – Pricing Updates

[Video: 4:25-4:45]

Currently being worked on but not implemented at the time of writing:

• The promised lower cost for Name Changes for Premium Plus.
• A reduction (unspecified at this time) cost to Premium members, to be introduced alongside the new Premium Plus pricing.

“Land Journey” Refresh

[Video: 7:15-8:20]

• Work is now in progress for this.
• Will involve a complete overhaul of obtaining land – from private islands through Mainland to rentals.
• Intended to be a tool for all who are seeking or selling land.
• The Lab is open to suggestions as to how the overhaul of the “Land Journey” can better serve land rental businesses across SL – those with ideas should file a Feature Request Jira.

Marketplace

[Video: 8:20-16:36]

• Work on Marketplace variances (e.g. multiple colour options for an item available from a single listing) was placed on hold as a result of the work on Search and Premium Plus, and so is now Unlikely to be deployed until the autumn / fall period.
• Currently for the MP, the focus is on taking the work for Search relevance that has been carried out and implementing it within Marketplace search, plus updated capabilities including Boolean searches, exact matching, fuzzy matching, etc., plus better relevance ranking, better filtering, better sorting, support for special characters.

Marketplace Rebuild

• This was mentioned at the June 2022 meeting as a potential project – rebuilding the Marketplace from the ground up.
• The project is still in the discussion stage, and feedback is being sought – again please refer to the June meeting notes to see what was discussed and forward ideas to LL via Feature Request Jira.
• This is a long-term project that will not be ready for ant form of surfacing until some time in 2023 at the earliest.
• It is possible that as and when roll-out does commence, it will be in stages until such time as parity is reached with the current MP / sufficient store owners have move across, it makes sense to complete a migration and shut down the current MP.
• Equally, an iterative approach allows any work to be halt and reconsidered if things do not go well / do not meet with a positive response from users.
• The new MP will be built to support mobile device access.

In Brief

• No major news on SL Mobile, other than “avenues are being investigated”. Also see Mojo Linden’s comments from SL19B.
• There have also been discussions on “how to engage” with the core SL product (outside of the Marketplace) via the web. Things under consideration include:
  • Group chat.
  • Inventory access / management – although this is noted as being problematic (e.g. reflecting updates on the web whilst also logged-in).
• Also in the works are more landing pages to help promote Second Life to potential users / groups who might be interested in using the platform.
• The future of Place Pages is uncertain. They need attention, but it is not clear how valuable they might be.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, June 1st, 2022.

These meetings are generally held in-world on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. They are usually chaired by Reed Linden, who is the Lab’s Product Manager for the Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).

A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Premium Plus

[Video: 2:17-8:30]

• Premium Plus will officially launch during SL19B (Thursday, June 16th through to Sunday, June 26th, 2022).
• Grumpity Linden (VP of Operations) and Patch Linden (VP) of Product Operations will be discussing Premium Plus – price, benefits, etc.), during interviews at SL19B (dates TBC)).
• The price will (obviously) be “more” than Premium, but there will be an initial “discount” for those signing-up following release.
• Indicated initial benefits include:
  • More: free tier than Premium’s 1024 sq m; stipend; group slots.
  • Lower fees for uploads (excluding mesh initially, as the upload fees for this are calculated differently, so the hope is to offer discounted mesh loads after Premium Plus has been deployed).
• “Future benefits” being considered for “the future”:  new region types; new Linden Home types; potentially discounts for options such as Name Changes, mobile applications (not defined), “priority access to some areas” (again not defined).

Search Update

[Video: 8:40-10:36]

• As noted in past WUG summaries, the Lab is working to improve Search results relevance. This work is now progress.
• The SL Search engine uses an Elasticsearch instance, and the third-party contracted-in to work with LL has Elasticsearch expertise.
• In particular, work has been focused on building “search relevance engine” machine learning tool, designed to observe how Search performs and gradually improving the relevancy of results.
•  Additionally, a number of fixes are being developed for common issues (e.g. search for an item by its name, but it doesn’t top the results list).
• It is hoped this work should start surfacing in July(ish).

Marketplace Overhaul

[Video: 12:30-57:29]

• The development of the listing Styles – formerly called listing variance,  the ability to have a single listing for an item that has multiple individual colour options that would otherwise have to be individually listed) -has been on-going for some time.
• All of the backend infrastructure and database updates are now in place.
• HOWEVER – in order to implement the capability, the front-end of the Marketplace effectively has to be re-built. Because of this, LL is considering a complete rebuild of the Marketplace “from the ground up”.
• To this end, a portion of the meeting was spent discussing what form the MP might take to meet the needs of both merchants and shoppers, e.g.
  • What should it look like?
  • What features / capabilities are important to merchants or shoppers (either within the existing MP or that they would like to see added)?
  • What features / capabilities within the existing MP require improvement / replacing and how / why?
• A further recognition of the need for a complete rebuild is that the MP is often the “front page” of Second Life for the user community, in that it is the web property that is most often used by residents (It also has a reasonably high visibility on the web in general), and thus needs to reflect this.
• The plan is to discuss these points (and others raised by the Lab / meeting attendees) over the next few meetings.
• Feedback from this meetings included:
  • Look and accessibility: more in the way of an Amazon style of look / feel (including the “Users who bought this also bought” type of section); better integration with tools like screen readers / magnifiers; better recognition of screen resolution / size and scales the UI to suit; an ability to produce short links to listings.
  • Search: more relevancy when searching for items (which will hopefully come out of the Search overhaul); ability to filter-out specific stores from search results; ability to have store names listed as a search result option; ability to add an item to the shopping cart directly from a Search results list (rather than having to open the product listing page and add from there).
  • Refunds / Redeliveries: the ability to allow refunds and prevent the redelivery of an item for which a refund has been given (BUG-226218); the ability to redeliver directly from the listing page.
  • Social Media integration: improved capabilities to offer You Tube links and links to Instagram accounts (e.g. for product preview images), etc. Seen as possible, with the caveat that apps like Instagram use tracking pixels, etc., so linking would be depending on negotiations around this (LL do not as a rule allow user data tracking).
  • Improved co-ordination between MP and in-world stores:  an ability for merchants to update their in-world store location globally, rather than by editing all listings; the ability to have an MP store better reflect the in-world store (e.g. if a creator had a store that has multiple “departments” or “mini stores” within it, these can be reflected as “sub-brands” or “sub-stores” within the MP, and if one of these “sub-stores” is renamed (either on the MP or in-world), the change is reflected on the other).
  • Tools for merchants: improved analytics / metrics on store performance / listing performance; options for applying discounts / promotional codes on selected items.

There were also a number of non-specific recommendations “make it better”; “better tools to deal with negative / inaccurate reviews”, etc., that will require more clarity / granularity as to what is desired.

Suggestions have been (and will be at upcoming meetings) recorded by LL, and will form the basis for both internal discussions and more idea generation at the next WUG meeting.

Timeframe and Approach

Assuming this goes ahead:

• In rebuilding the new Marketplace, the ability to migrate existing listings from the current MP to the new MP would be factored in; precisely what form this would take has yet to be fully determined..
• In reality, it is unlikely any form of initial “new MP” will be available until some time in 2023; the focus at the moment is purely trying to road map capabilities, features, design, with user input.

“Land Journey” Refresh

[Video: 57:30-58:33]

• The next major web project will be a refresh of all aspects of land sales – the Land Store, how Linden Homes are offered / selected; how land for sale is located, how it can be rented (and from whom), etc.
• This work likely will not include the return of land auctions by users, unless a system can be developed that avoids abuse and can pay for its cost of implementation / management.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, July 6th, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, April 6th, 2022.

These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

March Progress Summary

[Video: 13:45-17:19]

• The front-end work on Marketplace Styles (aka variant listings) is close to being finished.
• [Video: 16:22-17:19] The sales tax on recurring US billing (see Linden Lab announce sales tax on recurring US billings) actually came into force on April 4th, slightly delayed from the planned introduction.
  • Note this is a state requirement, with no money going to LL, and the Lab has tried to structure things so the impact is initially felt by as few in SL as possible.
• [Video: 53:47-55:20] Search:
  • The Search instance is being upgraded to Python 3 so that it can be hosted by an expert third-party service, who will then manage the update of the instance.
  • Once this is been done, work will commence on building a Relevance Engine to assist in managing search results.

Future Work

• The overhaul of the Destination Guide is still being planned.
• The “Land journey” – how to obtain Linden Homes, land via the Land Store through to obtaining an entire private region – is to be overhauled to make it easier for people to understand how to obtain land directly or rent it from others.

Premium Plus

[Video: 2:16-11:54]

• The release of Premium Plus has been pushed back until the latter part of May. Then main reason for this is to allow additional time for all the teams involved in managing / marketing / supporting Premium Plus to be ready for the launch.
  • When released, there will be a pro-rated amount for those on annual subscriptions with 6 months or more of Premium membership left until their next renewal, and renew at their normal renewal date at the Plus rate.
  • Details to be clarified when Premium Plus is launched.
• The overall contents of Premium Plus are locked down, but will be made public at the time of launch. However, it may include (and as noted in my January WUG summary):
  • A higher amount of free tier than Premium’s 1024 sq m.
  • A higher stipend.
  • A higher sign-up bonus.
  • More group slots.
  • Lower fees “on certain things” (unspecified).
  • Where “more” is being offered (e.g. free land tier) it is liable to be roughly double that of Premium (so the stipend will be more than double that of Premium, for example.
• Upgrades to Premium form Grandfathered accounts:
  • Grandfather stipend accounts will receive the “standard” Premium Plus stipend, not a Stipend based on their L$500 Grandfathered status.
  • [Video: 43:59-45:10] It is not clear at present if Grandfathered accounts would recover their Gandfathered L$500 a week stipend on downgrading from Plus to Premium, or revert to the standard L$300 a week. This will be clarified for the next WUG meeting.

Questions / Poll from LL

[Video: 19:38-35:05]

The Lab is looking to gain feedback from users, with a series of questions asked at the meeting, which may well be asked again through the forums as well. These included:

• How do you to find things to do in SL? – responses included: opening group chat with the message “I’m bored”; using the Destination Guide; asking friends; using travelogues such as in this blog; visit the What’s Hot section of the viewer splash screen; Tweeted from other SL users.
• How did you get started in SL? – responses included: friend already active in SL; seeing one of the SL video ads; seeing people discussing SL on Twitter.
• What makes you stay? – responses essentially revolved around creativity of others, ability to explore, opportunities to meet people, a group of close friends, art, building etc.; force of habit.
• How familiar with the SL client and finding things you’re looking for would you say you are? – most said they felt they are all reasonably familiar.
• What’s the hardest part about finding friends/activities in SL? – responses varied from simply finding other who are willing to engage in conversation through to the rate at which many social spots can be opened and closed (and the reasons for this, which flowed between tier costs and the sheer amount of work involved in day-to-day running of a venue); timezones.

In Brief

• [Video 36:06-37:10] BUG-226218 “Ability refund purchases but disallow redelivery on Marketplace” – a feature request that has been accepted for consideration.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, March 9th, 2022.

These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!). Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

February Work Summary

[Video: 1:23-4:53]

• The Marketplace variants project is now officially titled Marketplace Styles:
  • Most of the back-end infrastructure work to support different styles (e.g. different colour variants for an item in a single listing) is now complete.
  • The design of the front-elements (as will be seen by users) has now been approved.
  • It is hoped that prototyping will be available for viewing (e.g. through the Web User Group meetings) in the “next couple of months”.
• Search Relevance project is now seeing plans being put together, and some of this may be available for viewing at WUG meetings in April / May 2022.
  • [Video: 43:59-45:24] Work currently underway is to track the relevance of a given search result (e.g. “user searched for X and gained these results. User then took option Y in that list of results” – where if Y= the first item in the list, relevance can be considered high; if they take the 100th option, then that suggests the relevance of ordering is not as good as it could be). The idea here being to be able to feed this back into improving the relevance of search results.
• Premium Plus – an announcement is expected in March 2022.
  • The overall page of benefits has apparently been agreed (no details at present).
  • There are still some elements to be finalised (pricing?).

Marketplace Q&A

• [Video: 5:00-6:16] Could Marketplace order history be sorted by item cost (e.g. most expensive at the top)? – seen as a reasonable suggestion, and a feature request – BUG-231907 – has been filed.
• [Video 7:04-8:01] Sales tax: a reminder that as per the official blog post on the introduction of US sales tax, sales tax on applicable US purchases will be applied in accordance with local jurisdictional requirements (e.g. state-level laws, etc.). So if your state / jurisdiction does not charge for the sale of virtual goods and services, then LL will not apply it.
• [Video: 8:37-9:39] Marketplace Sub-Brands: following the discussions in the February meeting, a project is now being scoped based on the feedback given. However, the development of any project is unlikely to surface in 2022.
• [Video: 9:55-12:00] The question was asked if LL could provide the means for creators on the Marketplace to run collaborative sales / events – a shared page with links to items the creators participating in the event are including in it. This was referred to as an “interesting idea” and for a feature request Jira to be filed, preferably with some details on how this might work.
• [Video: 14:26-15:00] A request was made for further community categories on the MP. Again, a feature request as been requested.
• [Video: 20:52-22:10] A request was made for sellers to be able to disable customer reviews on the grounds it has become “normal” to see negative reviews. Whether or not this is the case, the majority of reviews are left in good faith, and while it can be frustrating to see negative reviews where the purchaser has failed to try a demo / not read supplied instructions, the view is that disabling reviews is not the answer.
  • [Video: 22:44-24:50] The suggestion was made in text later in the meeting to allow up / down voting of comments. However, unless carefully controlled (e.g. only allowing those who have purchased an item to up / down vote), then this is potentially open to abuse as well (e.g. a creator getting all their friends to down vote a negative review – or even one person down vote multiple times). As such, any implementation would require considerable forethought and design.
• [Video 25:09-26:07] Could MP store owner be allowed to include links between their stores and the social media platforms they use? This has been tried in the past, but has not worded out. While there is no objection to trying for a better mechanism again, there is currently no work planned in their area. Again, specific ideas welcomed via feature request Jiras.

In Brief

• The wiki has (after all) bee updated to HTTPs, and the syntax highlighting issue for the LSL pages has been addressed.
• The Destination Guide is on the Web Team’s roadmap to receive and overhaul / face-lift, but no ETA at present. One of the aims of this work is to make it easier to find places that actually have people in them.
• There was some discussion on the “new” look for Search, with some criticism for the places summary not showing traffic (a location must be clicked and seen in the expanded view to get traffic numbers). However, whilst experienced users find this useful, new users found the traffic reference confusing, and so it was purposefully placed in the expanded view.
• It was again noted in the meeting that LL are looking at the new user experience from “top to toe” – from sign-up through getting in-world to customising an avatar, to finding things to do and people with whom to interact.