While checking to see if there have been any further updates on resolving the various issues affecting the Marketplace and merchants (the last update having been in November 2012, and the progress sticky has bow been removed), I came across the following.
On February 5th, Commerce Team Linden posted an announcement that user’s e-mail preferences for the Marketplace have finally been updated and expanded. The announcement itself is brief, reading:
Marketplace now supports the ability to set email preferences. You will now be able to turn emails on or off. In addition, new emails have been added and work has been done on stability to prevent delays in email delivery. Please see the Release Notes or the Knowledge Base articles for Merchants or Shoppers for more information.
The new e-mail notification options can be found by logging-in to the Marketplace and going to My Marketplace (menu bar, top right of the page) > My Account > E-mail Settings (options on the left side of the page). The updated settings allow both shoppers and merchants define when they receive e-mail notifications, as follows (note that all options are “on” by default):
Merchants:
Purchase notification email – sent after delivery and payment complete on an order or these fail to happen
Redelivery notification email – sent when Support or the merchant redelivers an item
Review alert email – sent when any changes are made to a review on an item in the merchant’s store
Flag alert – sent when an item is removed or blocked as a result of being flagged
Shoppers:
Order confirmation email – sent when an order is completed
Gift notification email – sent when someone received a gift from someone else
Redelivery notification email – sent when the Merchant or Support redelivers a purchased item
Revenue distribution notification email – sent when a shopper get a revenue distribution from a purchase in another Merchant’s store
Revenue distribution addition/removal email – sent when a Merchant adds or removes a revenue distribution to the shopper.
New SL Marketplace e-mail notification options
The review and flag e-mail notifications are liable to find particular favour with merchants (indeed, they are already, given some of the comments in the thread), as these have been oft-requested by merchants.
Celebrations / Holidays / Christmas, which gets the following sub-categories:
Crhistmas Lights
Christmas Trees & Ornaments
Men’s Seasonal Apparel
Women’s Seasonal Apparel
Celebrations / Wedding, which gets the following sub-categories
Wedding Decorations
Wedding Dresses
Wedding Rings
Wedding Tuxedos
(Bridesmaid’s dresses is also supposed to be in the Celebrations / Wedding category, but at the time of writing is AWOL from the Marketplace).
In announcing the new sub-categories, the Commerce Team have requested that any further inpute to the new listings should be made no later than January 10, 2013 – so if you do have specific ideas or comments on what is being proposed and haven’t passed them to the Lab, now is the time to do so!
almost a month ago, I reported on LL launching a contest to define new female skin categories for the Marketplace.
As I explained at the time – for those who don’t / rarely use the Marketplace / notice their existence, listing categories are the selections under which merchants can have their products listed in the Marketplace. The idea is to help quantify / filter products on the Marketplace (together with keywords) so that they can be more easily found (by a user using the Category option on the left of Marketplace pages and clicking down through the options to refine a list of displayed results in the main part of the page).
Marketplace listing categories: LL seeking to improve
Merchants have long felt that many of the categories used within the Marketplace are too broad; however, defining where and how the categories should be expanded is a problem in itself. In November, LL therefore issued a survey to merchants asking them for feedback on a proposed new structure – and as an incentive for people to participate, offered-up the aforementioned contest: to define a new set of categories for female skins.
Fantasy, in turn comprising: animal, vampire, fairy, alien, zombie and “other”
Human Light Toned, Human Medium Toned, Human Dark Toned – each of these in turn comprising: young, adult, aged
Human Fatpacks
The five winners of the contest are: SayaNicole Cuttita, Kilene Kondor, Emma Krokus, Yuukie Onmura and Voshie Paine. Each has apparently been informed and received their cash prize of L$2899 which, as LL keep reminding us, is equivalent to the cost of a month long [sic], frontpage Marketplace Product Listing Enhancement”. Indeed, according to the survey itself, a month-long listing enhancement was the actual prize!
Earlier this week I reported on and reviewed a new Virtual Landmark (VLM) system designed to provide and alternative to traditional landmarks. Created by Darrius Gothly, the Virtual Landmarks for Virtual Worlds system is designed to provide a comprehensive means of ensure landmarks and web links to in-world locations never need to expire.
Now Darrius, has taken the system a step further forward, and make the maintenance and update of VLMs even easier through the use of the VLM Location Beacon.
The VLM Location Beacon logo
The VLM location beacon is a single-prim object which can be linked to a VLM. Once rezzed and configured (using the VLMurl for the required location), the Location Beacon will become invisible and phantom and will continuously monitor for any changes that need to be posted to the VLMVW Database.
This means that if you need to move your store or a teleport location within a store or exhibit, etc., simply move the Location Beacon associated with the location (either physically if moving it within the same region, or by taking it back to your inventory and then re-rezzing it at your new location), and the VLMVW database will be automatically updated with the details of the new location.
Location Beacons which are in use will also periodically check the VLMVW database to ensure their “parent” VLM record is still active. If either the location referred by the Beacon has been removed from the VLM / VLMVW database (remembering that one VLM record can store up to eight in-world locations) ro the VLM itself has been deleted, the Beacon will self-delete, sending you IM to inform you it has done so in the process.
The VLM location Beacon now forms a standard part of all VLM packages offered by DGP4SL through the SL Marketplace. Anyone who has purchased package should receive an update from DGP4SL which includes the Location Beacon.
Update: June 2020: following the sad passing of Darrius in late 2019, his VLM product is no longer available.
Update, February 2013: The number of VLM packages has been reduced to two, an Unlimited Version and a free Business Promo Version (30-day trail period with 5 VLMs. The details of this post have been updated to reflect these changes and the associated pricing restructure.
Update December 9th, 2012: Darrius has now produced an online Quick Reference Guide (QRG) to getting started and using VLMs.
Update December 6th, 2012: In order to make VLM management even easier, Darrius has now introduced the VLM Location Beacon as a part of all VLM packages. You can read more here. I first reported on Virtual Landmarks, Toysoldier Thor’s revolutionary idea for bringing the likes of SL landmarks into the 21st century, back in August 2012. The idea started as a post in Toysoldier Thor’s blog before it moved to a forum thread post he started, and which generated a good deal of discussion, finally moving to a JIRA on the idea – SVC-8082.
The idea initially received favourable feedback from “front-line” LL staff at various User Group meetings, but appears to have been stuck in the “Someday / Maybe” category of things to do on the Lab’s side of the fence. However, things have now started to move elsewhere – but before we get to that, a brief recap.
Virtual Landmarks – What Are They?
The VLM promotional poster by Toysoldier Thor
It’s a problem we’ve all faced one way or another; as a user, we’ve opened inventory and double-clicked on a landmark to a store to find it has moved elsewhere; as a merchant, we’ve moved location only to realise that every landmark in every one of out magic boxes, vendor packs, Direct Delivery folders, recorded in every Marketplace listing now needs to be updated, not to mention every LM we’ve ever given out is now invalid; as a role play group we’ve relocated or revised our regions so that all previous teleport points and their associated landmarks are obsolete… The list goes on.
In his proposal, rather than creating and distributing a landmark, a store-owner (or whomever) would create a user-friendly VLM (e.g. “My Wonderful Store”) which can be associated with one (or more) landmarks people can teleport to. The association(s) between a VLM and the landmark(s) are stored in a dedicated database (Toysoldier called it “VLM Mapping Service”). Copies of the VLM can then be created in-world and distributed exactly as landmarks are currently distributed. When someone uses the VLM, their viewer sends a request to the Mapping Service, which looks-up the physical landmark associated with the VLM and sends the information back to the viewer, enabling the user to be teleported to their desired destination.
The power of VLMs is that should one of the underlying landmarks associated with a VLM subsequently change, all the creator of the VLM has to do update the VLM record stored in the VLM database with the new landmark – and every instance of the VLM in existence will automatically route people to the new location when used. There is no need to pass out new LMs, replace existing LMs or anything else.
Toysoldier also proposed a range of other capabilities as well, and it is worthwhile reading his blog post on the subject; but the above is enough to give you a flavour of the idea’s potential.
Sadly, and as noted, while the idea received initially favourable feedback from LL, there has been little or no movement on the idea. Until now.
Enter VLMs for Virtual Worlds
VLMVW – VLMs for Virtual Worlds has been developed by Darrius Gothly, the man behind DGP4SL, one of the most respected brands in Second Life, and who has been a strong supporter of the idea since Toysoldier Thor first proposed it.
VLMVW is primarily a subscription-based service designed to provide a powerful and integrated implementation of the VLM concept. Highlights of the service include:
The ability to create VLMs which can be linked to up to eight in-world locations
The ability to create as many copies of a VLM as desired. Note that:
Copies can be distributed in exactly the same ways as “traditional” landmarks
Copies of a VLM take the form of an in-world scripted attachment which is worn in order to faciliate teleporting
The ability to create “VLMurls” for use in webpages and in SL Marketplace listing. These function in the same way as SLurls, but with the advantage that if the location they refer to within a VLM is updated, all instances of the VLMurl will automatically point to the new location
A publicly viewable web Listing page for all VLMs a subscriber has created
A private (key-protected) web page displaying statistics on VLM usage
An optional “Store Kiosk” system which can be placed around a store / location and provide visitors with a means to quickly teleport between departments / locations.
The service is provided in two packages:
A free Business Promo Version which allows you to create up to 5 VLMs and provides a 30 day trial period. This allows you to test out the VLM system free of charge to see if it works for you. It is also available from the SL Marketplace
An Unlimited Version which allows for an unlimited number of VLMs to be created and has no account expiration date. This now sells for L$499 and is available from the SL Marketplace.
Both packages is supplied with comprehensive documentation and an optional info / demonstration pack using the DGP4SL stores.
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The basic idea is to get merchants to give feedback on the proposed new Marketplace categories which are under consideration by LL and – by providing suggestions on one category in particular – have the chance of winning “L$2,489 (cost of a month long, frontpage Marketplace Product Listing Enhancement) or [sic] your efforts!”
Marketplace listing enhancements: feedback sought
Listing categories are, for the uninitiated, the selections under which merchants can have their products listed in the Marketplace. So, for example, as someone who built houses, I would list my work under the category Building Components > Structures > Residential Structures. The idea is to help quantify / filter products on the Marketplace (together with keywords) so that they can be more easily found (by a user using the Category option on the left of Marketplace pages and clicking down through the options to refine a list of displayed results in the main part of the page).
Merchants have long felt that many of the categories used within the Marketplace are too broad. For example, and keeping with the example above, “Residential Structures” covers a multitude of options: houses, mansions, skyhomes, skyboxes, castles, tropical (tiki) homes, cabins, and so on. These means that search results using the current categories can end up being bloated (there are just under 27K of items under the “Residential Structures” category alone…).
However, defining where and how the categories should be expanded is a problem in itself. Do it autocratically, and you’re bound to get your hand bitten off. Ergo, having a survey – while it is hardly likely to please everyone – is perhaps a preferable route by which to encourage feedback, refine what has already been put forward and so a degree of willingness to engage with customers (merchants) and take on-board their feedback and insight.
Really, the problem here – as Ciaran Laval has pointed out – is one of perception. Coming on top of their refusal to engage directly with people and invite open discussion and discourse with their customers, the Commerce Team have effective said, thanks, but no thanks” which I’ve already commented upon) – the competition runs the risk of being seen as little more than an attempt to curry favour.
The really cynical might even see this as a sideways attempt to try to boost flagging listing enhancement revenues due to all the billing cock-ups in that department over the last 12 months by directly (and repeatedly) linking the cash prizes on offer with the idea of a monthly listing enhancement (see the quote from the blog post announcing the competition above, with the contest rules further pointing out, “Each winner will receive L$2,899 (the cost of a month long [sic], front page featured Product Listing Enhancement on the Marketplace)”, with the survey form itself outright (and confusingly) stating the prize actually is a month-long product listing enhancement (part 3 of the survey).
The prize as quoted in the Contest Survey (13th November 2012) – click to enlarge
Nevertheless, and quibbles aside, the call for feedback on the proposed listing enhancements – whether or not one enters the competition – should be heeded, particularly if, as a merchant, you’ve felt that they are currently too broad at present and need improvement. The contest itself is entirely optional – so if you have no interest in female skin categories, then simply ignore it and complete the first two parts of the survey.
It’s important to note as well that there is no limit as to the number of times anyone can complete the survey – so it is possible to post a response for each of the categories you use to list your products and services.
Earlier this week I reported on and reviewed a new 
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 