Tag: SL Marketplace

SLM: How about some Direct Disclosure?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Yesterday, Brooke Linden blogged requesting SL Merchants volunteer to help with the new SL Marketplace Direct Delivery system. I actually missed the post, as unlike the old Jive system, news such as this doesn’t get pushed to the Featured News announcements on people’s dashboards, so you have to go hunting for the sodding information – which is about as pleasant as dropping a hardback edition of the OED on an exposed toe or two (and I speak from a position of authority on this latter point).

Direct Delivery (as it is now to be called) is a method by which the current Magic Boxes (themselves a hold-over from the days when SLM was still XStreet SL) can be replaced by a method to deliver items direct from a merchant’s inventory. This in itself is not a bad idea – some OS Grids actually already have such a system.

However, as it currently stands, the testing programme for this new system looks like it might not get out of the starting gate because Linden Lab seem hell-bent on keeping the whole thing a Sooper Sekrit to the point of absurdity.

  • There is no actual information on what the testing actually involves, beyond the broadest outlines (people will need to spend “several hours a week” involved in “trying to find problems” and “try out typical Marketplace Merchant activities”
  • There is no real information on how the system works, what set-up is entailed, how the Beta might impact a Merchant’s store and current delivery mechanisms, what additional overheads will be involved on the part of Merchants in order to actually position themselves in preparation for taking part in the programme
  • No information on what support will be available from Linden Lab for Merchants in the event of significant problems occurring that impact a Merchant’s ability to do business or which might adversely impact their reputation
  •  No information on what this is likely to do to inventory loads and organisation, etc., is provided.

The lack of such up-front information means that it is next to impossible for any Merchant to reasonably evaluate whether or not they should offer to participate – and this despite previous promises from Brooke that such information would be forthcoming.

Instead, Merchants are being asked to blindly sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) covering their involvement in the programme. On the one hand, this suggests that there is a high degree of paranoia evident at LL (an NDA is required for testing an enhancement to a product for which there is not credible competition in terms of scale? Is there something broader going on here that users are being kept in the dark about?). On the other hand, LL’s NDAs have in the past helped to create rifts between company and users, so the use of the term “(updated) NDA” in the sign-up form is already going down faster than a lead balloon among many well-established Merchants.

There are a myriad of other questions surrounding SLM as a whole, and precisely where LL are going with it.

While many are reporting that their SLM sales are growing (I’m one of them), in-world sales are equally declining for many (I’ve seen my own in-world sales significantly drop). Significant drops in-world sales calls into question the viability of keeping stores and shops open. After all, why pay $40-$100 a month in tier if you can achieve the same volume of sales for $2-$5 dollars a month in SLM commissions?  This in turn opens up the risk of land rentals plummeting as stores are closed down and Merchants re-focus their effort on web sales supported by perhaps a single, low-cost store, and thus further undermine an already fragile in-world economy.

At the same time, there cannot be any doubt that Search in the SLM works somewhat better than the Viewer 2 in-world Search; so why isn’t effort being put into actually sorting the latter out properly and making it possible for people to enjoy shopping in-world once more?

Make no mistake, there is a need for a service such as SLM, and a Direct Delivery mechanism such as appears to be under development would be a welcome addition to managing stocks. However, the manner in which LL are once more approaching what should be a relatively straightforward development and implementation of a worthwhile feature is fast becoming shrouded in frustration and mistrust.

So how about it Brooke – or better yet, Rodvik – can we please have some Direct Disclosure around the topic of Direct Delivery before we’re asked to sign our lives away…again…?

To market, to market; Extending SL Marketplace’s relevance

Posted on by Inara Pey

Metaverse Exchange (MVX) is, it would appear, dead. The site has been down for around three months now – more than enough time for any outstanding fees, etc., to have been paid – assuming there was sufficient money in the coffer to cover costs.

It’s a shame; Metaverse Exchange was one of the better, smarter-looking alternatives to the SL Marketplace (SLM), and offered its services to grids other than Second Life. However, in its wake, dare I say, it leaves something of an opportunity for Linden Lab.

It is fair to say the Lab has a very odd attitude towards OpenSim Grids. On the one hand, the Lab will openly mention OpenSim, discuss ideas and so on, but on the other – most notably in the forums – stomps soundly on any mention by users of any specific OpenSim Grid; almost as if by doing so, they can hide the existence of such places.

But OS Grids cannot be wilfully ignored. They are gaining popularity among consumer users and content creators alike. Indeed, many of the latter have found that, sadly, creations they’ve made turning up on other Grids – Grids they aren’t involved in, forcing them to engage in DMCA take-downs; a depressing action to have to take. Even Kitely, which has been widely lauded through the likes of Twitter, allegedly has misappropriated content within it.

Several people have commented on the Kitely situation, from several different angles. Of them all, Botgirl Questi hits what is perhaps the most common sense tone. Rather than trying to hunt down and stop illegal content pirates on a case-by-case basis, we should, she suggests, seek to set-up “transworld marketplaces” that would enable goods to be readily sold across different grids.

It’s a grand idea – but not easy to accomplish, as MVX demonstrates. Not only does it require the ability to manage multiple virtual currencies with a workable exchange rate; it also requires a decent volume of traffic from the various Grids that join the system.  More particularly, it requires the trust of those using it.

Step forward Linden Lab.

While it still has problems, SLM is the most professional-looking of the web-based marketplaces available to virtual worlds plus the majority of merchants active across other grids are already well-established within Second Life. Therefore, a logical progression might be to extend SLM’s reach into other Grids.

Obviously, doing so would not be easy. There would need to be support for multiple currencies, magic boxes (or whatever replaces them) would have to support multiple Grids or come in various flavours, the product pages themselves would need to support currencies and offer a quick and easy means for additional currencies to be added / displayed. Similarly, merchants would need to select which currencies they wish to have displayed, based on the Grids where they have a presence.

This latter point might be something of a sticky wicket in some respects: it means that Linden Lab could be said to be promoting competition. However, if LL were to move in this direction, the benefits to the company and merchants alike would probably outweigh the downside. Just three such benefits could be:

  • Providing additional commission-earning opportunities to Linden Lab which – given the way the company have been pushing SLM, must be somewhat viable and worth extending
  • Offering a further marketing channel for Linden Lab; as other Grid environments mature, the chances are the number of users they have who are not also engaged with SL will grow – and marketing through the SLM pages could encourage them to come try out SL
  • Giving SL merchants an opportunity to extend their reach into other markets, an important boost in the face of the flat line situation many are experiencing in terms of SL in-world sales.

Beyond this – and while it would not totally eliminate content ripping – developing a “transworld” SL Marketplace could well help reduce the incidences of content illegally ending up on other Grid environments, as Botgirl suggests.

MVX managed to develop an environment that could span a number of Grids: Second Life, InWorldz and (dare I mention it) Legend City. It’s clearly not wise to try to support all OS Grids that come along; some won’t survive (again, as demonstrated by Legend City). As such, caution needs to be practiced in any engagement with them; but again, this should not prevent so cross-platform development from occurring.

At the end of the day, the one real weakness that doomed MVX was most likely that of publicity and reach, the former impacting the latter and thus keeping the use of the platform pretty much in the realm of happenstance – merchants would use it if they happened to stumble across it; consumers would learn about it as they jumped over to other grids as a result of hearing their favourite merchants were investing time and effort elsewhere. This isn’t an issue for SLM, which has an establishing branding behind it.

Beyond this is the fact that OS Grids are maturing and stabilising. Over time, they will become something of more keenly felt competition where Linden Lab is concerned – and people will jump back and forth in search of new opportunities – consumers and content creators alike. As such, someone is going to come up with a viable replacement for MVX that can reach out into these emerging digital markets and capture them.

So why shouldn’t LL look at the opportunities that may be had and claim the high ground first?

Maturity ratings change in the Marketplace

Posted on by Inara Pey

It would be nice to get an E-mail on this, rather than having to trawl the forums in the off-chance of finding it – especially given the overall significance.

Please, LL, sort out your bloody communications with users! And why wasn’t this set to happen ahead of the merger?

Hi all,

As  many of you know, the teen grid was shut down on Friday. This week, we  will be rolling out some changes in Marketplace to ensure Residents  under 18 will not be exposed to adult content. Here is a quick summary  of what changes will be occurring.

Phase 1: 1/27 Release
On  Thursday, the Marketplace will move to the General, Moderate, and Adult  content levels already in use in the Viewer. Just prior to this release  (starting on Wednesday), we will be running a process that will add a  content level to existing items. Once the release has been completed,  you will be able to review the ratings set on your Marketplace listings  by viewing your inventory: there will be a new column “Maturity” showing  what level the item falls into. Search will now support viewing general  or moderate/adult content. Please view the updated listing guidelines (link points to the current guidelines) on Thursday for more details.

Note  that, in addition to automated process to migrate listings, it will  continue to be possible to flag listings. Please take some time after  the new guidelines are posted to review your listings and make sure they  comply. People will be able to start flagging listings based upon the  new guidelines on Thursday (though I do not expect that we will see much of this right away), so the sooner you can do this, the better!

Phase 2: by 2/28/2011
Before  the end of February, Marketplace will be updated to allow setting  maturity level preferences at a more granular level than is currently  supported, such as allowing Residents to view moderate content without  adult content included.

Why was this done in 2 steps? Timing, pure and simple. We  wanted to ensure we had the proper controls in place as soon as  possible for the teens entering the main grid. Phase 2 will provide  further refinement.

A quick update on Maturity is on the agenda for the Marketplace Office Hours on 1/26.

Regards,
Brooke [Linden]

ADDENDUM- 27 Jan

It appears someone at LL was listening, as an E-mail containing the above was circulated today…

Does LL want our business?

Posted on by Inara Pey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marketplace opens

Posted on by Inara Pey

Grant Linden today blogs that the new SL Marketplace is now officially open. This replacement for XStreet has been the source of much gnashing of teeth for merchants and not a few consumers. Decisions made by LL to make the experience more “professional” meant that all merchants were faced with the need to completely re-work listings that – in many cases – had seen many hours of hard work put into them through the use of BB and HTML code to format and lay-out individual pages – with both BB and HTML being “banned” from the Marketplace. Equally as upsetting was the decision to alter the image format for posting to SLM, requiring more time spent by merchants re-cropping images to suit the new requirements.

All told, the beta of SLM caused more heartache: many popular features from XSL had been ignored in the development of SLM for reasons quite unfathomable: the “Buy Now” button for rapid-fire purchases (which, let’s be honest are probably the major type of purchase made on XSL) was absent – as was the ability to buy an item as a gift. The entire migration method was further muddied by the fact that further migrations of information from XSL initially ran the risk of overwriting work merchants had already sorted through in order to make their new stores browsable.

But it wasn’t all bad news. To be honest, even in beta, the new SLM offered a much cleaner, easier layout than XSL, and the meme of managing an online store – common to most commerce websites was logically implemented and the tool set offered a welcome improvement over XStreet – the aforementioned code restrictions and lack of a “Buy Now” button notwithstanding. So to were the new features contained within the store – the ability to cross-link products, the improved image upload, the ability to link to formatted PDF files and to include machinema videos into a product listing were all very welcome additions.

Since the launch of the beta, LL have been working to implement much-needed missing functionality – and kudos to them; “Buy Now” is back, for example, as is the option to purchase an item as a gift – even if it has been burried. And again, it has to be said that the overall look and feel is much better than XStreet and the use of stores makes it much easier to bookmark specific content creators; things that are all to the good. I really rather like it, despite the fact that as a merchant, LL made me jump through hoops on a number of occasions (including wiping my entire store at the end of September) to get to this point.

Doubtless, wailing will continue and people will grumble over some of the changes: hiding the “Buy as Gift” option away in the Shopping cart / “Purchase review” page, for example is going to leave people used to clicking on an option within the listing somewhat mystified and under the mistaken impression that one can no longer buy items for others (indeed, two people have already contacted me on this matter).

I’m also personally confused by the fact that the “Test Delivery” button merchants can use to ensure a newly listed item or an item someone has indicated they are having problems with is being delivered – has apparently vanished, and it appears that the only way a merchant can test an item is to physically purchase it from themselves  – a process that implies LL taking their commission – hardly fair if one is simply testing one’s listing. I’ve looked for a “Test Delivery” option on both the listed page for a product and the merchant’s Preview page – and I am darned if I can find one.

Doubtless more functionality will be forthcoming, whether or not it is simply page blindness that is preventing me from working out how to test deliver a product. For now, however, I hope Grant and the others involved in SLM continue to listen and engage with the community. When all is said and done, they soon more responsiveness in listening to and addressing a plethora of concerns than has been evidenced from LL during other major upheavals to people’s Second Life experience in recent history – and for that they are to be congratulated.

Of course, as I have a vested interest in SLM, here’s a shameless plug (link).

More on the Marketplace

Posted on by Inara Pey

The discussion thread relating to the new Marketplace is growing apace. What is most refreshing is the fact that (until the weekend arrived) Grant Linden was staying fully engaged with those posting comments – and addressing the good and the bad, rather than going about the usual cherry-picking we’ve tended to see in Linden responses.

While at times he seems to be little more than a gofer – charging back and forth between the thread and the “Marketplace team” to get answers – his contribution shouldn’t be diminished. XStreet, for all its faults has been a major means for merchants to gain revenue, and given the manner in which other aspects – most notably in-world search – are currently borked up, it is essential merchants aren’t panicked by either a rushed implementation of the Marketplace or a feeling that the Lab is responding (with apologies to Dr. Frasier Crane) “We’re not listening…”

I gave initial feedback from fiddling with the Marketplace the other day. Admittedly, I’m not “big-time” merchant my listing (or store) doesn’t top 50 items, and I don’t consider myself in any way shape or size an “entrepreneur”. I build because it is fun, I sell to off-set tier. Ergo, I’m not as deeply into the mechanics of XSL as other may be, and so I missed the fact that features critical to some businesses aren’t so much missing in the Beta, as potentially ignored as not being vital at this time.

This has caused a lot of angst among merchants. It’s also (as with Search and Viewer 2) brought the WannabeA Linden mob out in force. Some of the angst from the former is expressed in unnecessary dramatic expressions of disgust (some of which are vented without actually indicating precisely why the new system is a “pile of crap” which don’t actually help drive the discussion forward in any way). Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the scale we have people sanctimoniously posting as to why merchants shouldn’t be upset as this is, after all a “beta”, before launching into a pious sermon on what “beta” means and how people lack the common sense to appreciate it as such.

Shame on both sides.

Between the two, however lies a wealth of concerns that are valid – some of which are also very worrying, despite Grant’s best efforts to calm matters. An examples of this is distributed payments. Many items on Xstreet (and indeed in-world) are made by more than one individual (or more than one avatar). As such, both Xstreet and most in-world vending systems provide a means for the payment received for a sold item to be distributed to the various individuals/avatars concerned in its creation. Yet this functionality appears to have been treated as a “nice to have” rather than a “must be in place” feature by those responsible for creating SLM, with Grant only able to confirm it will be added “in the future”.

Similarly, how listings on SLM are synched with their corresponding XStreet listings has been a source of concern inasmuch as all information on SLM is currently drawn from “prepared” listings on XSL – only even when merchants have followed the rule and prepared their XSL listings, what is arriving in SLM needs a lot of additional work to make it both attractive and usable (as I can personally attest). Yet it remained wholly unclear for several days at to whether a re-synch of data between XSL and SLM would overwrite the latter – thus undoing the Merchant’s hard work in “fixing” things on SLM (which now appears to be the case), while it remains (at the time of writing) unclear as to whether the synching will also “undo” the new features unique to SLM that merchants can now employ in their listings. As the synching is an “all or nothing” approach (you either have it turned on, and everything is re-synched, whether it is a new item just added to XStreet or items you’ve slaved over so they “look right” on SLM; or you simply don’t get anything updated), it tends to undermine people’s preparedness to test things.

Both of these two issues are pretty fundamental and demonstrate something of a lack of forethought on the part of those behind the SLM roll-out – particularly given that while this “Beta” is supposedly for the benefit of Merchants, LL are nevertheless trying to get merchants to push customer traffic into the new Marketplace in order to “test” the customer side of things. While such testing is clearly needed, it runs the risk of damaging the reputation of at least some merchants for a raft of reasons.

Given the list of current issues within SLM: language defaults, inconsistency of image displays, synching concerns, confusion (and lack of information) on tags and tagging, large gaps in required functionality (i.e. the aforementioned distribution of payments), and so on, it is very clear that SLM has a very long way to go before it is ready to replace XSL. As such it is good to read Grant’s repeated assurances that SLM will not be rushed to prime time.

Nevertheless, given the SLM was the subject of extended discussions with some merchants (via the roundtable, etc.), and even some of those posting in the forum thread give the impression (which granted might be little more than hot air) that they were privy to the inside track on matters, the volume of issues with SLM is surprising. At the end of the day, this is not a new product.

The basics were there in XSL – yet they somehow appear to have been ignored in the drive to make the Marketplace “web standard”. And while it is all very nice for Grant to paint a picture whereby SLM will allow merchant’s products to be openly googled from the web, I’m not altogether convinced this is a necessary benefit or even close to a vital requirement. Not when the majority of shoppers for Second Life related items are going to be one of two places: either in-world or on SLM. So is Google-oriented visibility really that much of a vital driving force? It’s a nice-to-have, for sure for merchants – but I hardly think it is going to encourage the heaving masses to rush to Second Life any more than closer links to Facebook will bring hordes of new users screaming to the gates of Second Life.

But, all that said, it’s good to see that, following Philip’s address at SL7B, the Lab appear to be taking the time to listen to issues and address them. They need to keep this up – not just within SLM, but across the board. And the next time they fire-up an initiative that is liable to impact the lives of a sizeable portion of their user community, one hopes they’ll put their new listening skills to good use up front.