Tag: Web User Group

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday April 3rd, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

This meeting was more a seeking ffedback type of discussion than it was an update on web project projects, etc.

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), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and / or 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.

Official Viewer Search

• It was noted by some users at the meeting that the official viewer takes longer to index new users so they appear within the web search People tab, whereas TPVs using the legacy search seem to index them a lot faster.
• It was similarly noted that very short user / place names (3 letters of less) don’t always show up in search results.
• It was asked why there is a L$30 fee for creating a Classified ad in a user’s profile / Search (short answer: to provide an additional search service of more “curated” locations over general search) and why such classifieds are not categorised (short answer: they are, via a pre-defined drop-down).
• There have been some reports of the viewer search constantly requesting cookies be accepted, either on every use, or the first time Search is used during a user’s current log-in session.

In Brief

• Ability for MP merchants to have their own “featured items” display pinned to the top of their store page on the first page of their MP store.
  • This idea has been floated by Sytax Linden a couple of times, and would allow Merchants to select items from their store (e.g. new items, best selling items, etc.) highlighted in some manner as featured items (possibly in a similarly distinctive manner to the Featured Items displayed on the MP home page).
  • It was met with broad approval / agreement.
• LL are still looking at the way thumbnails of products are selected for display within users’ Favourite Stores lists on the MP, with a view to making it more useful to Merchants. This might be by:
  • Displaying thumbnails of their most recent releases, so people can use the list as a quick reference to what is new in their favourite MP stores.
  • Tying the selected thumbnails to the store “featured items” capability discussed above (if implemented).
• General discussion on in-world store activity.
  • Some felt that the large volume of shopping events is having a negative impact of in-world store footfall, as people are event-focused, rather than opting to visit stores directly.
  • Some reported experiencing a steady decline in footfall within their stores, others no change / a potential increase in recent months.
  • It was pointed out that besides events, creator-merchants don’t necessarily help themselves by not updating the SLurls to their stores / items as listed on the Marketplace when they move (probably in part because there is no easy mechanism for them to do so on the MP if individual listings include SLurls).
• The above led to a broader discussion on market forces, such as the fact that content creation is now for more the purview of these wishing to do so on a full-time basis (in order to remain competitive) rather than something the “hobbyist” creator can enjoy as a means of generating revenue as a means to help support their in-world activities (land tier, etc.).
• Th question was raised as to whether CasperVend should / will be remained as it is now a LL property (just as OnRez and XStreet SL were purchased, with the latter going on to become the SL Marketplace).
  • The above included comments relating to the unfortunate / unwarranted knee-jerk reactions some users have had towards the Lab (and CasperVend users) in the wake of a certain article published within the social journalism website Medium, and which has been officially commented upon here (and, if interested, I’ve offered my tuppence worth of commentary here).
• It was asked whether people have made any attempt to use generative AI in their content creation. The broad feedback was – no. This saw a series of follow-up questions:
  • Do people think AI tools could be useful – possibly, but not far enough developed to be sure.
  • Should content produced using AI tools and sold on the MP be marked as such – yes.
  • Are there any preferred tools already in use with content creators – not really.
  • This lead to a subjective (i.e. only a handful of creators) discussing how AI tools are viewed  / currently used within SL (e.g. to generate vendor images).
• Sytax noted that feature requests made via the Feedback Portal board for the MP /Web are recorded and used to help inform and direct WUG meetings, particularly where it is felt broader / deeper feedback on ideas is required.
• A further request was made for store / brand names on within SL to be unique (as with avatar account names), to both help secure branding against copycats and also to make it easier for users to find the content they want when searching the MP.
• A suggestion that when there are Marketplace issues and updates, a mechanism is put in place to pop-up a notice when users access the MP, rather than replying purely on GridStatus (+ its outlets on Social Media), as many users aren’t even aware of the latter, whilst having notices actually on the MP means they are eyeballing them directly.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, May 1st, 2024.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday March 6th, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

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), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and / or 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.

Marketplace

• The Marketing Team has been working on back end and infrastructure work to upgrade the Marketplace. The updates should be released in the coming days.
• There were some outages when deploying some updates in the past week, which resulted in issues such as ANS not appearing in Marketplace. This has been corrected, and ANS should be back and working as normal.
• Once these infrastructure updates are deployed, it clears the way for some new features and UI updates LL has been planning.
  • In terms of UI updates, LL is planning improvements to the viewing products and checking out the Marketplace via the viewer, improving the display size when the floater is changed, and moving the MP so it will display decently on mobile or tablet devices.
  • The feature updates once again have a focus on search. These will include updates based on user feedback / requests, but details of what these will be and the likely time frame for deployment is still being finalised, so details to come. However, “some updates will come faster than others” in terms of information relating to them.

General Discussion / Requests for Marketplace

• A discussion on making the shopping cart / wish list more flexible.
  • This included requests for more carts for different functions (e.g. a shopping cart specifically for holding items to be purchased as such; carts which could be used to save items for later purchase, separate to the one used for check out, etc.).
  • The latter was particularly popular, either as a cart or a “Save for Later” list (a-la Amazon).
  • Making the wish list function more robust / flexible  / visible (e.g. being able to have more than one wish list).
• The above spilled into a discussion with the Buy Now button, with some wanting it to include the ability to buy and send gifts directly, rather than having to go through the shopping cart / checkout; some wanting a better distinction between Buy Now and Buy as Gift, as they believe people hit Buy Now mistaking it for Buy as Gift.
• Both of the above will be looked into.
• Coupons and vouchers: the ability for merchants to offer coupons and voucher for use on the MP is on the roadmap, but not currently being worked on.
  •  This spilled into the idea of “affiliate” linking – e.g. a person puts together an Flickr image of a look they have created and includes links to the items on the MP – when someone clicks on any of the links and makes a purchase, the originator of the photo gets a referral fee paid to them.
• There is interest at LL in developing a “You Might Also Like” function / “Also Bought” (again a-la Amazon), wherein items similar to the one being looked at are listed or items other have frequent bought together with the item being looked at are listed (rather than the current merchant-generated “related products” list). But again, not on the current roadmap.

Marketplace Styles

• Marketplace Styles (allowing things like different colour variants for a product in a single listing) had been given as a capability LL were hoping to deploy before the end of 2022 or early 2023 (see November 2022 Web User Group: new “Plus” subscription level).
• It is has now been confirmed as something LL has “got designs for” and “would like to get to”. So, as per my January summary comment, if you are a Merchant who has been looking forward to this capability, it is probably best not to hold your breath for its arrival unless you’re especially fond of blue as a facial colour.

In Brief

• Web Search (viewer):
  • LL are considering a re-working of the current web search page presented in the viewer.
  • The current layout might become “relegated” to being an “advanced search” capability, with tabs being added to the top of the page to make searching easier (e.g. by category – People, Places, Events – rather than having to specifically uncheck or check these on a per search basis.
• It’s been noted that the use of the word “Resident” when used as part of an account name is inconsistent (e.g. in some searches / actions, only the user’s first name needed to be entered, the “resident” is automatically appended; in others “resident” must be explicitly typed in as a part of the name. LL would like to address this, but no work going forward at present.
• A discussion on L$1 items, gifting and a “biasing” of top selling item lists., and the idea of limited L$0 items being gifted only to friends of the person using the item as a gift.
• Further requests to make demo(s) a dedicated category on the MP, or to make a Demo checkbox within listing creation to ensure the metadata indicates an item is a demo, this improving searches wishing to include / exclude demo items without having to rely on keywords.
• A general conversation on the MP and merchant’s perceptions on how people use the Marketplace.
• A suggestion to have a Marketplace button in the Profile floater for merchants who have a Marketplace presence – or configurable buttons that people can use to point to their MP store, their Flickr presence, etc. This led to a discussion on Profiles.
• The WUG meetings are “very close” to becoming biweekly.
• Note: the video extends beyond the end of the meeting. As this is use chat, rather than specific put to LL, it is not summarised here – please refer to the video.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday January 3rd, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

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), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and / or 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.

Marketplace

The meeting started with an apology for the issue over the New Year period which included items merchants were trying to list failing to appear, items and stores failing to show up in search results (see BUG-234924). The Lab believe the causes of the issues have been fixed, and processes have been put in place for the back-end systems to better alert support / engineering when issues of this nature occur.

A request was also made for any merchants still experiencing problems in trying to list items or in having their items / stores show up in searches, to file a Jira with LL.

The above was followed by a meeting-length discussion with what are seen as getting to be long-term terms issues with the MP, some of which are the results of changes which have inadvertently given rise to opportunities for the Marketplace to be gamed, and merchants losing revenue as a result. Key among the complaints being made were (but not limited to):

• Active stores seeming to vanish from the Marketplace entirely.
• Listed items failing to show up in any searches.
• Exploits such as items being falsely labelled in the Product title field producing misleading search results.
• Exploits being opened as a result of the 2022/23 overhaul of ElasticSearch (the engine powering MP searches), and relevancy weightings being given to product titles .
• Exploits allowing spamming through the features tab which further influences search results in favour of those doing the spamming.

It was noted that these issues – including the problems of items and stores not appearing in searches – go back over several months (rather the the issue witnessed over the new year period being a “one off”), and they are giving rises to across-the-board upset and frustration among MP merchants, and with their customers.

The conversation was very much one in which people spelled out the issues being experienced, whilst Lab representatives at the meeting mostly listened and took notes. This being the case, and rather than risk parsing the meeting through my own subjective presence as someone who is not a merchant, I will refer readers to the video of the meeting as embedded below, and encourage anyone experiencing any of the issues raised to file a Jira bug report with Linden Lab on the matter.

Marketplace Styles

• Part of the above discussion touched on Marketplace Styles (allowing things like different colour variants for a product in a single listing).
• This was promised as being an active project throughout 2022, with (the since departed) Reed Linden stating in November 2022 (see November 2022 Web User Group: new “Plus” subscription level) the capability could appear before the end of that year or in 2023.
• As more than a year has passed without mention, I raised the topic at the end of the meeting, requesting the actual status of the work (particularly as when it was raised in 2023, not long after Sntax Linden has taken over the WUG meetings, he did not appear to be aware of the project). The response was:

Styles is at the top of my list for things for MP. Just need to find the right time to slot it in. I can’t promise when but I am hopeful we can make headway on it this year. 

– Sntax Linden

• Which probably means that if you are a Merchant who has been looking forward to this capability, probably best not to hold your breath for its arrival. Unless you’re especially fond of blue.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, March 6th, 2024.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday December 6th, 2023. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

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), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and / or 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.

Marketplace

Supporting PBR Creations

Sntax Linden opened the meeting to idea as to how LL can support makers of PBR content via the Marketplace. Key feedback included:

• At least a clear category distinction for PBR-enabled items.
• More preferably the ability for creator to indicate whether their product is “classic Materials” (or some such – the technical term is “Blinn-Phong”, which is likely a confusing mouthful for most users) or “PBR-enabled”, in the same manner as they can note a product as “100% Mesh” or “Partial Mesh”.
• Some form of iconography on listing pages to indicate content (e.g. whether it is mesh (or partial mesh) and / or PBR enabled and / or rigged for wearing primary and secondary types; or whether it is “classic Materials (or some such), with/without baked lighting, etc.).
  • The problem here is that if the icons become too granular, they risk becoming confusing / off-putting when seen in listings and / or the simply confuse users unfamiliar with the MP, unless some form of cheat sheet / icon key is provided on every listing.
  • The above might be mitigated against if the icons are set with tooltip, so that when moused-over, the tip displays a brief description of the icon’s meaning.
• If icons were to be used, have them act as filters to help narrow / manage searches.
• Addition of specific search filter such as mesh+rigged+baked and lighting+PBR.
• Further filters in the left-side filter list to distinguish PBR components / kits (e.g. Building and Object components → PBR Materials).
• This broadened into a more general discussion on a greater use of distinguishing icons (with tooltips) within listings Marketplace in general.

Senra and Mesh Bodies

• The above also focused on the Senra avatars, and the need to distinguish creations for these so that new users using the Senra avatars can more easily find clothing and accessories to fit them.
• The above seems particularly pertinent given the “official 1.0” release of Senra made on Wednesday, December 6th, 2023 (the August release of the avatar now being referred to as a “beta” release), so there is potentially going to be an uptick in creator-provided content for Senra.
• This raised the question of a generic category and filters for mesh body types for easier product location (e.g. Human, Animals, Monsters, Fantasy, etc.) – although this could be subject to confusion when listing / trying to find things like anthropomorphic mesh characters.
• Garfield Linden suggested an open-ended tagging system for mesh body support: creators could freely input the supported mesh body as a tag, selecting from a drop-down that shows how many other products currently have each tag applied, with the ability to arbitrarily add new tags to the system. These same tags could then be used by residents to filter their search results.
  • Potential problems here are with scalability / accuracy: how many creators will select tags as opposed to just typing in their own? How unwieldy would this eventually make the drop-down list? How will the tag list be managed to prevent cluttering with typos (e.g. “nial” for “nail”, etc.) & the consequent accidental use of mistyped tags?
  • A suggested solution for the above is to have the field used by creators to add tag names actually display the total number of times an entered tag has been used (so a typo will hopefully show 0). This could also provide an easier means for creators to select existing tags without having to necessarily use a full drop-down list for tags.

In Brief

• The Linden Homes store (see: Looking at the New Linden Homes Store) is to gain search filters for finding themes easier, and also notifications. These should be deployed before year-end.
• There is a known issue with Marketplace fuzzy search such that partial names may not produce anticipated results.
• There was a general discussion on keyword abuse – including some stores using what might be regarded as keywords in product titles (e.g. the use of “bed” in the name of tattoos), which can skew search results (although may not always be intentional).
• There was a repeated request to prevent Marketplace stores using stars in their names, enabling them to show up in searches using the star rating system. This is something the Lab is looking at.
• The end of the meeting includes a general discussion on possible improvements in Marketplace gifting (e.g. allowing direct gifting, without having the items go to the user’s main shopping basket). This was coupled with requests with a more flexible shopping basket system (e.g. having the ability to use a basket to store items for later purchase, whilst also being able to purchase a selection of options within it when going to the check-out).
• LL is still mulling how to best integrate CasperVend with the Marketplace.
• Please refer to the video below for other topics.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday November 1st, 2023. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript.

No video this time, Pantera was unavailable, and the meeting was exclusively text chat.

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), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 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.

Updates Since the Last Meeting

• Linden Homes Store:
  • There has been a high degree of feedback on the Linden Homes store since its launch (see: Looking at the New Linden Homes Store).
  • As a result of this, improvements and updates are being made to the store, and feedback is continuing to be reviewed.
• Marketplace:
  • The Marketplace team have been looking into the case of some merchants changing their store name to include 5 stars to seem like their store rating is 5 stars. This is an ongoing investigation, but preliminary results indicate it is a small percentage of merchants, and a course of action has yet to be determined.
  • Marketplace search relevance is again being worked upon, primarily in response to feedback received, and updates will be forthcoming once they are ready.

Caspervend and the Marketplace

• In September 2022, Linden Lab acquired CasperTech (see the official blog post and my own article, which includes a Lab Gab interview with Casper Warden for more), a family which includes the popular Caspervend system.
• This meeting saw questions taken on how merchants use Caspervend, and capabilities within Caspervend they’d like to see incorporated in the MP. This drew a breadth of feedback including:
  • Caspervend’s use of graphs to present data relating to sales, deliveries, etc., being carried over to the MP and broadened.
  • A general expansion of MP stats (e.g. top selling products and sales over time).
  • Integration of Caspervend’s in-world selling tools with the MP to allow items viewed on Caspervend sales kiosks to be delivered via the MP.
• This discussion broadened into more general requests for capabilities related to both Caspervend and the Marketplace both together and individually. These included:
  • Having items purchased via the MP or via dedicated Caspervend in-world servers (and other third-party vending solutions?) to be delivered to a folder within Inventory called “Purchased Items”, rather than “Received Items” or “Objects” – as *everything* users receive might be regarded as a “received item”.
  • Having the means to report broken links within MP so they might be fixed (e.g. by a store owner where the links in their MP listings refer to the former location of any in-world store they own, as they’ve forgotten to update following a move).

Dynamic Landmarks

• Part of the discussion on Caspervend / the Marketplace raised the matter of dynamic landmarks.
• This is a subject raised numerous times in the past – most notably by Toysoldier Thor under the term Virtual Landmarks (VLM), see:
  • Feature request SVC-8082 “Proposed Global Service for SL: VIRTUAL LANDMARKS & VLM Mapping Services”
  • The Virtual Landmarks forum thread.
  • My own article on the VLM concept.
  • The third-party attempt to address VLMs, developed by Darius Gothly (but now discontinued – illustrating the need for centralised support of such a system by LL).
• The general idea for “dynamic landmarks” was referenced by Sytax Linden as a good idea, and the above points are being passed to him for reference (assuming they might be of interest).

In Brief

• Holding the Web User Group more frequently is still being looked into.
• Requests were made for the following:
  • Make the *entire* Destination Guide (+ things like the SL public calendar) directly viewable through the viewer(!).
  • Support for 360 snapshots within the Destination Guide.
  • Utilising different colours  counts on DG entries to denote scripted agents rather than active avatars.
  • Expanding parcel Search categories to match those in the Destination Guide in order to make public parcels more discoverable.
  • A public-facing document outlining what is being worked on, what feedback has been taken on-board, etc.,  so people are more generally aware of what is happening with web properties + updates.
  • More Search categories / filtering (web / viewer search) – e.g. “clothing”, “landscaping”, “Building”, etc.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, December 6th, 2023.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday October 4th, 2023. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and text.
  • At this location.
• They 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.

Linden Homes Web Store Refresh

[Video: 1:01-2:21]

• In 2022, LL commenced and overhaul of the “land journey” bringing all aspects of land “ownership” and land information – purchasing regions, renting or purchasing Mainland; obtaining a Linden Home and information on how to go about renting land from a private estate, etc., into a more fluid and updates set of web pages.
• The first phase of this work went live in early 2023 with the launch of the Second Life Land Portal, with the promise that the Linden Homes web store would be the next element to be overhauled. This work has actually been underway for some time, and while “not 100% done” it will be released “very soon”.
• Key elements of the new store include:
  • It is mobile device friendly.
  • It is accessible to anyone to view Linden Homes, whether logged-in or not (although, obviously obtaining a home still requires a subscription account).
  • It offers images and information on all the Linden Home styles in a browsable format and other information pertinent to obtaining a Linden Home.

Marketplace Updates

[Video: 2:30-7:02]

Since the September meeting:

• Marketplace reviews have been updated so that aggregates of star ratings will now be rounded up, rather than always rounded down (e.g. where the aggregate of all star ratings on a product review might total 4.8, it would be rounded down to 4.5 – now it will be rounded up to 5. This change is being monitored, and further adjustments might be made.
• Changes have also been made to the “Top Selling” report offered to Merchants to better match the “Top Selling” listing Merchants can generate for their products. In short:
  • The Top Selling listing was based on items sold in the previous 30 days; however, the Top Selling report was based on all products over the lifetime of the store.
  • The latter has now been revised to show both “best selling” over the lifetime of the store and the best selling items during the previous 30 days.
• The work in archiving-off MP items which had not sold in 2 months and the store owner has not actively logged-in to the MP in two years has received a final tidy-up, with all related demos for the archived items also being archived as well.
• Support have been furnished with assorted documentation and support notes for the MP so they can more thoroughly assist with reported MP issues.
• Further bug fixing through September, but no details as several of the bugs were security-related.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for more on these items, and other points raised in the meeting.

• [Video: 13:52-33:14] Marketplace gifting: an extended discussion on Merchants having the option to restrict items in their store which can be gifted to others.
  • The primary reason stated for this was on the matter of fraud wherein someone obtains Linden Dollars fraudulently, uses them to gift items to their main or alt accounts, then when the use of the illicit L$ is uncovered by the Lab, the amount is removed from the merchant’s account, and the merchant has no way to recover the goods.
  • Regardless of the pros can cons of gifting and matters of fraud, etc., there is a case to make that merchant creators should have the option to be able to disable gifting on specific products listed on the MP if they so wish, rather than being forced to opt-in to having all their products listed on the MP available for gifting.
• [Video 38:50-end] A further discussion of the idea first raised at a recent CCUG meeting for LL to create their own version of Flickr-style site specifically for SL users to share their photos. Several reasons were noted for this:
  • It could become a potential revenue source for LL. Flickr is split between limited Free accounts and more flexible (with additional capabilities) subscription-based  Pro accounts, so the idea would be for LL to follow a similar model, a limited service provided to Basic account users, and Premium and Premium Plus having access to more advanced features (e.g. ability to live-link, support for a greater number of images per account, etc). It is believed by proponents of this idea that people using Flickr Free accounts would be more prone to pay for the advanced features were they to be offered by LL, rather than paying Flickr.
  • It is seen as a means for merchants to gain an additional revenue stream (linking images on the service directly to MP listings), and to potential to offer selected bloggers  / photographers featuring their products to revenue share off of any sale.
  • Whilst not an impractical idea (and although not raised at the meeting) there are obviously questions of actual ROI for the Lab in running such a platform / service against the cost of developing, implementing and maintaining such a service.
  • Again, please refer to the video for this discussion.
• Some anger from a new meeting attendee on the fact that the WUG meeting is mixed text / voice and no warning of this is given through official channels (e.g. the User Group meetings page on the wiki, the SL Public Calendar or in any forum / feed / social media reminders for the meeting. It was agreed that pages and notifications will be updated to include the voice aspect of the meeting.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, November 1st, 2023.