Tag: SL News

A little birdie chirped in my ear today that Lithium is to drive the new Comminity Platform recently blogged about.

No, not the copper coloured top variety made famous (in the UK at least) by a horde of clever little pink bunnies, but rather this kind. While it has not been confirmed, I’m guessing that the actual software will be this, which clearly ticks all the technology boxes Vogt Linden alluded to in his blog post; although I suspect the Lithium Awareness product may have a roll to play, given LL’s one-sided love affair with Facebook…

Certainly, the suite look more up to the task than the current tools in use. I still have reservations about the “power to the users” aspect of the new system, for reasons stated – and will be watching out for more news on this aspect of things. In the meantime, here’s to Lithium…

Following Amanda Linden’s somewhat faux pas-ridden announcement about communications, Vogt Linden chips in with an overview of what to expect from the “new integrated community platform” currently on (apparently) a closed beta at the moment and due to roll out on March 2nd.

Given the Jive platform was supposed to be the saviour of all our woes some 18 months ago, and was specifically chosen by LL for its, umm… “ease and flexibility of use”, one can hardly be blamed for sidling up to this announcement (which, given the overall negative response to Amanda’s post, unsurprisingly has comments turned off) with a degree of scepticism.

The key points are:

A robust self-help facility: well, good – providing it works. Getting assistance is hard enough as it is at present, and anything the enables people to sort out for themselves what can be sorted out for themselves is a good thing – providing it stays relevant (and the comment about answers being editorially reviewed by LL for inclusion in the knowledge base is welcome. However (and you know that was coming, didn’t you?). Many things cannot be resolved through self-help or through the assistance of other knowledgeable users; they simply require expert and understanding help at the Lab’s end of things – and by and large, this is where it all falls down.

• Non-premium members have a limited range of tickets that they can submit; often times the categories don’t match the problem they are encountering, and a ticket raised under the “nearest” (or most descriptive) category to their issue tends yo unhelpfully closed with a warning that it was incorrectly filed.Given that, by-and-large, non-premium members contribute to Second Life (and Linden Lab) in terms of content generation, revenue, turn-over, etc., this needs to be sorted out.
• Even premium members are faced with tickets remaining open for weeks or even months at a time without resolution. Again, this is unacceptable.

These issues being the case, Help needs to be a level playing field for all users. It doesn’t matter if you’re a premium member or not, suffering an inventory loss or seeing items becoming visible but unobtainable in your inventory is upsetting on many levels, and LL need to beef-up their entire support environment, rather than rely on self-help and other residents.

A unified search function: “Search” and “Linden Lab” are not, to many residents, term that set well together (unless the words “borked”, “screwed up”, “messed up” or “doesn’t work” enter into the same sentence); ergo, it’s possible that this function in particular is going to come under a lot of scrutiny. Even so, if it works, then LL will equally be due the praise as well.

Single Sign-on: Many thought we had this, after all it was at one point touted as one of the “strengths” of the JIVE platform. Good on Linden Lab if it now turns out to be a reality, rather than a hoped-for.

Contribution-based roles: Here is where my hair starts standing on end, and I really would like to see more information around this idea. What I will say for now is, for God’s sake, Vogt / Amanda / whoever don not give any resident the powers of moderation! Period. The General Discussion forum is already awash with egos aplenty, cliques, and self-appointed “guardians” of what should or should not remain seen (though an over-zealous use of the Abuse button). More than one “high-scoring” forum participant has a reputation for re-editing her own past posts in order to “score points” against her adversaries. The very last thing we need is for these people to suddenly be granted additional “powers” that enables them to further interfere with discussions and debate.

Easier ways for Residents Customers to share their knowledge: again, good in theory, but I’ll reserve judgement on how this works out in practice, assuming there isn’t some overall Linden-grown editorial control.

Social Media hooks: Personally for me, a “meh” point – but if they provide a service other people like and wish to use, then excellent. Just don’t go making them an imperative (say on web profiles, etc.), for those that don’t want them. In short, and where appropriate, make them fully opt-in, not partially opt-out (as is indeed currently the case with web profiles).

It’s going to be interesting to see how some individuals handle the week-long block on forum postings. Given that some forum contributors  post at the rate of 5 or 6 posts a day (and one is currently running at an average of twenty post  a day (number of posts / number of days a member of the forums) – where on earth does she get the time to actually log in to SL?), I think LL are going to need to provide counselling and care for those suffering from withdrawal!

After all the confusion, Apez has now been sold. It appears that Egoisme is now the new owner. Some Apez users are reporting on SLU that service continued more-or-less “as normal” during the last few months, and Cenji has indicated that all accounts have / are being honoured in terms of payouts.

How things will pan out for people remains to be seen. Certainly, with the demise of Slapt.me, the apparent disappearance of Metaverse Exchange and the wholehearted chewing-up-and-spitting-out of On Rez in favour of the SL Marketplace (nee XStreet SL nee SL Exchange), a good, solid, competitor is required to face-off against Linden Lab if only to encourage further development of, and enhancement to, current services. Whether this can be Apez / Egoisme remains to be seen.

Certainly, no-one can deny that Apez as a brand is now  – pardon the pun – damaged goods. Therefore, any attempt to “restore” the Apez name (as Egoisme state they would like) is potentially going to be akin to trying to push water up a hill.

However, the Apez system – servers, vendors, etc., did and do work well, and retain a lot of potential. Put them together with a reliable level of customer service (which many complained was a major issue with Apez), develop a really solid front end that disposes with things like “Sekrit Naughty Words Of The Day” lists, which offers both consumers and merchants a flexible means of both finding and promoting goods and services under a brand entirely distinct from Apez, and Egoisme might just have something. It’s still going to be an uphill climb – especially given the overall state of stagnation within Second Life and LL’s ability to massively steer people towards SLM; as such whether the possible rewards of persevering with such an effort prove worthwhile for those concerned remains to be seen.

Update: Egoisme apparently sold Apez not long after acquiring it. When this took place & to whom is unclear. All reference to Apez (including the press release announcing the acquistion linked-to above) has been removed from the main Egoisme website.

I build. No secrets there. I sell through an in-world store, SL Marketplace and Metaverse Exchange (MVX).

Or rather, I did.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a huge price restructuring for my house and home builds to reflect current market trends. As a part of this, I obviously updated prices on both SLM and MVX – noting in the process that the latter was now supporting several other grids – good oh! I thought.

Around the middle of last week, I was fiddling around and needed to log into MVX- only to find it’s no longer there.

What on earth has happened? Currently, going from the page that is displayed, it would appear the site is held pending renewal – but the fact it’s been like this for the better part of a week is a little worrying; and others are noticing as well, with questions being asked on forums including SLU. Siann Beck, creator of MVX apparently hasn’t logged-in to SL since the 17th January. Nor have there been any e-mails through the MVX channels (or at least, none that I’ve received).

*IF* MVX has gone, it’ll be a shame. I didn’t sell much through that channel, but the site was well considered and, even with the massive improvements LL have made in developing SLM, had several options that LL would have done well to adopt.

Here’s hoping this is just a hiccup, and MVX hasn’t permanently vanished into the ether…