Tag: Web User Group

Update, March 8th: as per this official blog post, further fixes and improvements have been applied to the Marketplace search update.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, March 1st, 2023.

WUG meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
• They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.

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.

Marketplace Search

The updates to the Marketplace implementation of ElasticSearch have been deployed, This means:

• Merchant and store names won’t be included in product-specific searches anymore, increasing the number of relevant results.
• The ability to do exact matches with quotes around a word or phrase.
• Asterisk(*) wildcard searches.
• Fuzzy matching will help with misspelled words and typos.
• Search operators AND, OR, NOT will still work as before. (Note that they must be capitalised. Consult the tooltip next to keyword search for more information.).

Issues were encountered, such as the need to capitalise operators (as noted above), a bug with determining relevance, the result page displaying an inaccurate count of returns, etc. As per the official blog post, some of these have been addressed, and LL are watching the situation to address further issues as they occur.

In Brief

• A general discussion on how the MP & search is used, e.g.:
  • How deep people go in scanning search return lists.
  • Do people use the MP & search to find specific products or general browsing (market research, curiosity, etc.)?
  • Do people use the MP as a means to find items then then purchase in-world or do they prefer to browse in-world and purchase via the MP?
  • The answers were broad-ranging and likely typical of a mix of merchants and consumers.
• The question was asked about improving listing management for merchants, which generated numerous responses including:
  • Tags for listings, which when clicked will generate searches for items using the same tag.
  • An in-listing option for the owner of the listing to click on it to edit the listing directly.
  • Improvements to how discounts can be applied.
• It was suggested that questions such as these should be put to users via the forums in order to generate broader feedback.
• For details of these discussions, please refer to the video.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, April 5th, 2023. 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, February 1st, 2023.

WUG meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
• They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.

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 January 2023

Land Portal Release

• [Video: 06:00-08:00] The new Land Portal has been launched. This is intended to be a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership” – purchasing regions, renting land from a private estate, renting or purchasing Mainland; obtaining a Linden Home.
• [Video: 10:33-10:49] There are currently no actual functionality changes to the pages behind the portal – these will come in time.
  • [Video: 8:51-9:22] The first of the Land pages to undergo update and improvement will be the Linden Homes page. This will make it easier to see and select available Linden Home styles – but this update “will be a while” before it is surfaced.
• Translations for the Portal and the Land pages will come in due course.
• The Portal has been used as something of a prototype, bringing together tools and technologies the Lab intend to use to build-out updated versions of their websites and portals, and ensure they are mobile-friendly.

• A technical blog post on what the web tools and ongoing website redesign means will be published be the Lab in the near future.

Marketplace Updates

• [[Video: 08:04-8:43] Search:
  • The deployment of the Marketplace Search updates has been further delayed, as indexing all searched to date is taking longer than anticipated to complete.
  • All other work is completed – the code is in place and ready to go – but LL want to ensure that search and order histories all remain in place when the switch is thrown.
  • once fully deployed, the new MP Search will have a close parity with the updated web search deployed in 2023, including its own relevance engine.
• [Video: 17:29-20:26] “Marketplace 2.0” – the Refresh / Rebuild:
  • Still being discussed / developed.
  • Will likely included further Search capabilities: fuzzy searching; negative tags / Boolean search options; the potential for improved filtering.

Marketplace Discussion Summary

Marketplace “Gold Star” Mechanism

[Video: 31:49-35:30]

One idea being floated internally at LL is the idea of awarding worn / attached items a “gold star” to items with a “low Land Impact”.

• The suggested approach would be to have some form of automated “side bake” mechanism which takes avatar attachments and assesses their LI, and then awards them a “gold star” on the basis of whether or not they remain within some defined “LI threshold”.  “Gold star wearables” would then be searchable as a category / categories within the MP.
• The core aims of this would be to:
  • Encourage wearable items creators to ensure their clothing and avatar attachment are more render performant/efficient (avatars currently have perhaps the highest performance impact, as no real constraints are currently placed on the complexity of worn items, so there is no incentive to model them as efficiently as possible).
  • Encourage consumers to consider what they are purchasing and its impact (“the gold star means it is better for you and SL”).
• This does raise concerns of further gaming of LOD (level of detail) in order to bring items in under the threshold, with the result that while they gain the “gold star” they nevertheless immediate collapse into one (or a small group) or triangles when seen from even a minimal distance – with creators who do so then “recommending” users set their viewer’s LOD rendering unnaturally high – and in the process further negatively impacting viewer performance.
• Alternatives offered at the meeting:
  • Utilise the revised avatar complexity calculations which form a part of the ARCTan project by which to measure the complexity of worn items (the problem here being the ARCTan project stalled some 2+ years ago and has yet to be re-started).
  • Utilise the “good LOD” calculations used for Animesh to encourage creators to model their clothing / attachments responsibly.

General Marketplace Discussion / Exchange of Ideas

[Video 20:42-31:45 + local chat]

• Variants (officially “Styles” – e.g. having multiple colour options for an item in a single listing) was again raised. No further direct feedback on this was given; however, at the January meeting it was indicated the work (which has apparently largely been done) is being “re-prioritised” in the face of the delays in deploying the updated MP Search.
• “One click demos” were suggested for the MP – being able to click on an attachment offing in the Marketplace and the item is temporarily worn in-world. This is something Garfield Linden indicated was of interest to him, and requested a Feature Request Jira on the idea.
• Search:
  • Phonetic searching was requested (particularly handy for those not well-versed in the currently-supported languages / dyslexia, where fuzzy search might over-compensate with results).  Sntax [sic] Linden acknowledged the “appeal” of phonetic searching.
  • Filtering clothing / attachments by body type: this is something the Marketplace Team are already looking at in terms of the “most popular” bodies – although how representative this might be of SL’s diversity is hard to determine.
• Pay what you want – suggested as a possible option to allow merchants to offer items for free, but with the option for buyers to offer a “tip” in payment.
  • The functionality for this may be overly complicated to implement.
  • However, in considering Marketplace updates / a rebuild, LL have looked at options for offering coupons, sales, and “price changey” options, so this idea will be added to the list for further internal discussion.
• It was acknowledged that Marketplace load times in the viewer’s browser (and the load times of other SL web properties a user may already be logged-in to) are “to darn high”, and that there are “performance skirmishes” to be had in this area.
• A suggestion was made for the Marketplace to support “related items” between stores. This would require engagement by Merchants, but the idea would be if Merchant A produced items intended for use with something Merchant B produces, they could mutually list one another’s products as being related. It could also be technically complex to implement.
• Marketplace and CasperVend integration: this is something LL would like to do following the purchase of CasperTech, and have had discussions about, but there are no firm plans as to have it might be tackled as yet.

Misc Items

Smart Landmarks

[Video 47:30-48:10]

• Mention was made of “Smart Landmarks” – LM’s that update when you move store / house.
• This is not something that is anywhere near being ready to ship (or perhaps evening being worked on), but it is on the Lab’s “wanna do” list.
• The late Darrius Gothly developed a scripted system called Virtual Landmarks, based on an original idea by Toysoldier Thor, almost a decade ago, although sadly, the system no longer functions. See: Virtual Landmarks: Solving an age-old problem?, closed Jira SVC-8082, and Virtual Landmarks: offering a solution to an age-old problem, plus, more recently BUG-232416.

World API Update

[Video 48:40-49:25]

• It has been notes that following a recent update, the World API reports banned agents as a part of the Group member count.
• It is not clear if the update caused this, but if so, it was not the intent. The matter has been noted for investigation.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, March 1st, 2023. 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, January 4th, 2023.

WUG meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
• They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.

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 December 2022

Marketplace Elastic Search Overhaul

[Video: 3:41-5:27]

• Following recent delays, it had been hoped the MP search updates would be deployed before the end of 2022. Unfortunately, issues with the updates continued to prevent this.
• The hope is now to have thing deployed as the “first thing” for web-related deployments, hopefully by the end of January 2023.
• As a reminder: this work is essentially the same kind of back-end update as carried out with Web search a few months ago, with the emphasis on faster, more robust performance, together with new search options, including:
  • Merchant and store names will no long be searched in product searches.
  • Wildcard (e.g. using *) will be possible.
  • Better exact matching against search terms
  • The back-end supports fuzzy matching to better handle typos when inputting searches.
  • There should be a noticeable increase in speed of search results being returned.
• Once running, these updates will allow LL to add-in the relevance engine AI to the Marketplace search (as a separate API entity to the relevance engine already running on the web search).

“Land Ownership Journey”

[Video: 5:31-7:30]

Summary: 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.

• The first user-facing element of this work – the new Land Portal, a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership” – will likely be deployed by the end of January 2023.
• The Portal layout is liable to be a template / proof of concept for overhauling the rest of the Second Life web properties to give them a coherent appearance, make them easier to maintain and add new pages, make SL’s web presence more performant overall and ensure it works on mobile devices as well as desktops / laptops.
• Once the Portal has been deployed, the focus will shift to the Linden Homes selection pages.

Marketplace Styles

[Video: 56:08-56:55]

• Work had been expected to resume on Styles (allowing multiple colours, etc., for an item to appear within a single listing rather than each requiring its own listing) following the deployment of the MP Search updates, with the plan for a deployment early-ish in 2023.
• As the Search updates deployment has been delayed, the work on Styles is currently being “re-prioritised”.

Q&A Summary

• [Video: 9:41-11:09] Marketplace Refresh / Rebuild:
  • This is still being looked at as a project for development and possible initial deployment in 2023.
  • There are still no firm plans in place as to what will be changed and why, how things will look, etc.
  • Feature requests and suggestions from users and merchants are welcome via the Second Life Jira.
• [Video: 45:20-End] Marketplace suggestions:
  • LL provide an individual RSS feed to all Marketplace stores for announcing new releases, etc.
    • Whilst not refused as a suggestion, the point was made that implementing and maintaining such a service would not necessarily be easy or direct – as every MP store would require a feed, regardless of whether or not the store owner uses it / people actually subscribe to it via their RSS readers.
    • There is already functionality available for this within the MP via Favourite Stores > Age: Newest First. This gives a thumbnail view of the most recent 4 releases for every store a user has selected as a Favourite, providing something of an at-a-glance view. It is not as proactive as an RSS feed but has the benefit of already being available.
  • A request to include a Date Uploaded field in Marketplace descriptions. This would:
    • Help determine the overall age of a product, allowing it to be better (but not perfectly) assessed against more recent improvements to the platform.
    • If also included in the Favourite Stores summary list, would further help users determine new releases.
    • This is seen as being a part of LL’s wish list for MP improvements.
  • With the move towards supporting the glTF 2.0 specification (initially for PBR materials, but potentially to be expanded to mesh content in general (and eventually possibly animations), these request was made to enable a glTF specific description / search indicator to be added to MP listings.
    • This is something LL has not considered – but given the shift in emphasis involved in glTF adoption, it is something that should be considered over and above the simple “Mesh” definitions in listings.
    • For those unaware, details of the glTF / PBR project work can be found in by CCUG meeting summaries.
  • Requests were also made for:
    • The ability to preview the contents items sold on the MP as boxes – the problem here being the box is seen as just that; a single object, so a means to “access” its contents and then generate a listing them would need to be built.
    • The inclusions of triangle counts / VRAM usage / complexity values for objects and attachments – the problems here are numerous, from how would lists be generated  / populated (e.g. some form of automated analysis of folder / box contents would be required for accuracy),through how should it be presented without “overloading” listings with information, to the question of whether the results would be properly understood by potential purchasers).
  • The ability to add multiple items to a shopping basket, but then select which are to be purchased immediately, and which can be “shelved” for a later purchase (if required), rather than having to purchase everything in the basket.
    • This was also indicated as being on LL’s own wish list of future options for the MP.
• [Video: 16:28-25:50] Place Pages:
  • Launched in 2017 (see: Linden Lab announces Second Life Place Pages available and Tutorial: creating Second Life Place Pages) Place Pages have never really been utilised or enhanced, which is acknowledged by LL.
  • Currently, there is no clearly-defined use case for Place Pages, although they do have a number of interesting features and capabilities.
  • The think at the Lab at the moment is whether Place Pages:
    • Should be given a degree of work to overhaul them in order to make them more broadly usable, or
    • Scrap them entirely and replace them with something more attractive to users overall – whatever that might be.
  • A perceived attraction with Place Pages is the ability for people to show off / promote their Second Life without necessarily having to have others log-in to the platform – or as a means to encourage them to do so – using tools that might be better attuned to presenting SL through the web compared to “ordinary” website building tools
  • The major reason for not overhauling Place Pages thus far is the fact that they underpin the land auction system.
  • It is acknowledged that given the plans for overhauling the SL web properties in general, there is potential the produce a version of Place Pages with better integration into SL’s web presence, etc.
  • User suggestions for Place Pages are welcome, again via the Second Life Jira.
• [Video: 27:29-28:02] Communities: a request has been made to expand the range of Second Life communities represented through the Communities landing page (such as the furry community, the sci-fi community, etc). Feature Requests are suggested on these, although it was hinted the number of communities to be rotated on the landing page may be increased.
• [Video: 34:24-39:00] “Premium a-la Carte”: whilst indicated as something LL would like to do, the idea of an “a-la carte” set of Premium benefits users can choose from and they pay a fee based on their selection, there are significant issues around general maintenance and billing and tracking which options each user has subscribed to.
  • What happens if a user selects option A as a part of their package, but then decides they don’t need it, and  they want to remove it (and its cost) or swap it for one or more other options + their costs? How frequently should this be allowed? How are the changes to track and recognised by the viewer and relevant back-end services? How is billing to be managed?
  • How much work is involved in managing an options list (adding new options to it or remove unpopular items from it, in order to maintain its appeal with users, etc.?
  • How complex any a-la carte system might be was demonstrated by the number of different views expressed in the meeting as to what options might be attractive to different people.
  • There is also the question as to whether an “a-la carte” option is required, or whether the existing Premium  / Premium Plus subscription levels need to be adjusted.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, February 1st, 2023. 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, December 7th, 2022.

These meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• 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.

Marketplace

Marketplace Elastic Search Overhaul

[Video: 4:29-7:00]

• The drive to get the MP search updates release is continuing.
  • It had been hoped that this would be completed by US Thanksgiving, but last minutes issues resulting from the sheer size / volume of the MP (which cannot be replicated in test environments) prevented this from being achieved.
  • The aim is now as soon as everything is working as anticipated.
  • Those using the Marketplace recently may have noticed some glitches with search – this has been due to the Search team banging on things under the hood in order to get the updates deployed.
• This work is essentially the same kind of back-end update as carried out with Web search a few months ago, with the emphasis on faster, more robust performance, together with new search options, including:
  • Merchant and store names will no long be searched in product searches.
  • Wildcard (e.g. using *) will be possible.
  • Better exact matching against search terms
  • The back-end supports fuzzy matching to better handle typos when inputting searches.
  • There should be a noticeable increase in speed of search results being returned.
• Once running, these updates will allow LL to add-in the relevance engine AI to the Marketplace search (as a separate API entity to the relevance engine already running on the web search).

Marketplace Styles

[Video: 7:15-7:54]

• Work will resume on Marketplace Styles (allowing multiple colours, etc., for an item to appear within a single listing rather than each requiring its own listing) as soon as the MP Search updates are officially enabled. As such, Styles will not be deployed in 2022, but will be the first MP update for deployment in 2023.
• It will obviously be up to merchants as to whether they use it to group variances in a product within a single listing or continue to list them separately – single listings for multiple versions of an item will not be mandatory.

Marketplace Refresh / Rebuild

• This is still being looked at as a primary project for development and possible initial deployment in 2023, and as such will likely form a focal point for discussions and feedback through Web User Group meetings in 2023.
• The work will at least comprise a refresh of the Marketplace appearance and the addition of further desired functionality; because of this, there is a push within LL to completely rebuild the Marketplace from the ground-up.
• [Video 13:54-14:05] Any rebuild of the Marketplace would not require merchants to re-upload there items: a migration of listings from the current MP to any new MP would be provided.

New “Plus” Subscription Level and Beyond

[Video: 8:00-10:34]

• The Plus subscription level was launched on November 18th, 2022 – for details please refer to the official blog post and my own reporting on the release.
• Work is continuing to bed this in alongside of the other subscription options.
• The Lab is generally pleased that the majority of users appeared to understand what they were trying to achieve within the introduction of Plus.
• Plus is the last of the currently-planned subscription options the Lab has on the boards, and there are currently no plans to make further offerings available.
• However, consideration is still being given to providing future possible options, such as:
  • A “Premium A-la Carte” level whereby your subscription fees are based on the options you select from a list.
  • Subscriptions based on specific interests (such as a “creator subscription”.
  • BUT these are only in the “Soon™” phase, indicating they are a feature or capability Linden Lab would like to implement, but which is not far enough along in development to determine if or when it might / could / will be implemented.
• [Video 21:19-22:42] Will subscriptions ever support payment in Linden Dollars?
  • This is being considered, although the overall implications, etc., have yet to be fully understood.
  • In particular, it could have ramifications on the status of the Linden Dollar (which is not at present regarded as a virtual currency, but could be if it were to become a recognised payment system for benefits.
  • As such this is an idea that is not even in the “Soon™” criteria of thinking; however, there is an internal goal to make it possible to pay for “all things” SL-related in L$ – the questions are really what will this do to the Linden Dollar in making it a virtual currency; how will that effect how the LindeX will function / be regulated, how Tilia can support such a move, etc.

In Brief & Q&A

Video, 17:00 onwards, unless indicated.

• [Video: 12:10-12:54] Real-time population stats:
  • The Lab is working on improving the ability for the Destination Guide to provide a real-time reflection of the number of avatars within a specific in-world location.
  • Should this be achievable, the capability will be extended into Search so that Places searches will return the number of avatars within the location at the time of the search.
  • This work might be completed by 2022 year-end.
  • [Video: 14:20-14:54] Concerns were raised over the use of unregistered bots (i.e. avatars not correctly flagged as Scripted Agents) to game the numbers. LL is aware of the unregistered bot issue across Second Life, but outside of users reporting them on finding them, there is no easy solution to this issue.
• [Video: 19:00-19:36] With the acquisition of CasperTech, will Caspertech Drop Boxes and vendors be integrated into the Marketplace?  Yes. However, what form this will take and when it might be undertaken has yet to be determined internally at the Lab / with Casper Warden.
• [Video: 23:22-29:42 + via text earlier in the meeting] The suggestion was made to make OpenSpace regions (aka Void or Water regions – not to be confused with the 2008 OpenSpace offering which morphed into Homesteads in 2009) as a part of a “Super Premium” offering (+ a nominal tier fee on to of the subscription fee) purely for use as private homes.
  • These regions have a Land Capacity of 1000, and are limited to 10 concurrent avatars, and are regarded as being for light use and a special purchase via support with the requirement that the purchaser must hold at least one Full private region.
  • While the idea was taken under advisement, such a offer could still impact the existing private estate market, and so would have to be considered carefully.
• The OpenSpace discussion further raised the idea of having these regions potentially on an on-demand basis (e.g. only spun-up when avatars are present within the regions. H
  • However, it was pointed out that regions, whether “up” or “down” require grid slots, and the infrastructure configurations means that grid slots have underpinning hardware, so there is still a potential hardware cost, regardless of whether a region is spun up for use or not.
  • As such, this cost impact would have to be resolved in order for regions (or a specific region type) to be made available through an on-demand system.
• [Video; 30:11-30:35] Land ownership Overhaul:
  • As noted in previous WUG summaries, this is 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.
  • A focus at the moment is on defining what “land” and the associated terms around it actually means (e.g. what is “renting land”? Where can land be rented? How is it rented?, etc.) .
  • The first element that will be surfaced is a new Land Portal, a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership”.
• For all other discussion points,  please refer to the video below.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, January 4th, 2023. 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, November 2nd, 2022.

These meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• 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.

Marketplace

Marketplace Search Overhaul

[Video: 1:08-4:30]

• All of the currently planned updates are complete and are awaiting the opportunity to “turn them all on”. This will likely happen (with an announcement) ahead of US Thanksgiving, 2022.
• Some of the noted updates include:
  • Merchant and store names will no long be searched in product searches.
  • Searches for exact matches (using quotation marks around search descriptors) has been added.
  • Wildcard (e.g. using *) will be possible.
  • The back-end supports fuzzy matching to better handle typos when inputting searches.
  • There should be a noticeable increase in speed of search results being returned.
• Once running, these updates will allow LL to add-in the relevance engine AI to the Marketplace search (as a separate API entity to the relevance engine already running on the web search).

Marketplace Styles

[Video: 12:15-14:00]

• Work will resume on Marketplace Styles (allowing multiple colours, etc., for an item to appear within a single listing rather than each requiring its own listing) as soon as the MP Search updates are officially enabled.
• It is hoped this capability will be available towards year-end.
• It will obviously be up to merchants as to whether they use it to group variances in a product within a single listing or continue to list them separately – single listings for multiple versions of an item will not be mandatory.

Land Ownership “Journey”

[Video; 8:14-12:12]

• 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.
• The first element of the land work to be user-facing will be the new Land Portal, a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership”.
• Overall, this work is not liable to be surfaced much before the end of 2022.
• When it does, it should be looked upon as a template / proof of concept for overhauling the rest of the Second Life web properties to give them a coherent appearance; make it easier to maintain existing web portals and pages and to add new ones; make SL’s web presence more performant overall and ensure it works on mobile devices as well as desktops / laptops.

New “Plus” Subscription Level

[Video: 4:1-35-8:05]

• The new subscription option is to be called simply (if possibly confusingly) “Plus”.
• This is designed to sit between Basic and Premium.
• Its core intent is to unlock the ability to hold land on the Mainland, although it will have a modest stipend associated with it + a small bump in the number of allowed Groups.
• Pricing is subject to the formal announcement that Plus is available, which is anticipated as being by the end of November.
• It is hoped that once available and given time to determine how it performs / users respond to Plus, that further subscription levels – which may possibly include an “a-la carte” option – can be defined and added to the selection.

Premium Plus (and Premium) to be Renamed in the future?

• It was suggested that the new subscription level would be better named “Basic Plus” – something that was not dismissed by Reed as an informal means of referencing it.
• However, the Lab is apparently considering single-word names for all current and future subscription offerings, and Reed indicated that if this is the case, then Premium Plus is likely to be renamed at some point in the future, and this renaming might extend to Premium as well.

In Brief

• It is hoped that a future Marketplace update will allow store owners to have access to search metrics for their items (e.g. which items are being popularly searched / purchased, etc.). However, this is not part of the Search updates described above.
• The web properties updates will likely include improvements to the web version of the World Map. However, what these changes may be & which they might be implemented is very much still TBD.
• Web profiles will not be entirely shut down for as long as the profile Feed remains popular with users – this is the one element of Web Profiles that has not been moved back into the viewer (and appears unlikely to do so).
• It has been noted that if a user has the Profile Feed set to Private, the new Legacy Profile viewer code shows a broken version of their web profile in the Web tab.
• For all other discussion points,  please refer to the video below.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, December 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, October 5th, 2022.

These meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• 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: 4:30-8:04]

Marketplace Search Overhaul

• This will hopefully be deployed in week #42 (commencing Monday, October 10th, 2022), depending on how it clears its QA pass.
• The initial deployment includes:
  • Updates to the Elasticsearch infrastructure.
  • Functionality improvements (e.g. better sorting, exact matches, etc).
• From this is it hoped that improved filtering, etc., can be built-out, and the work on Styles (listing variants) can move closer to deployment.

 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.
• The first element of the land work to be user-facing will be the new Land Portal, a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership”.
  • The Land Portal is still a development, and in the process of creating it, the team has embarked on building a design system so that the redevelopment of web properties can be undertaken with greater ease in the future.
  • Once available to the public, the Land Portal will thus provide insight into how the rest of secondlife.com will look at the web properties revamp continues.
• [12:11-13:08] While incorporating private estates / rentals within the new “Land Journey”, the intent is not to manage private rentals, the idea is to make it more obvious to users that they can rent from private estates, how they might do so, and (potentially) provide a means for people to highlight their own available rentals.

Why Overhaul the Web Properties?

Effort is being put into the web properties as many relay on core designs and structures built well over a decade ago, and are thus dated in their look compared to modern websites and are difficult to maintain. The re-vamp is therefor intended to both update SL’s appearance on the web (and make it more attractive to the curious) and provide the means for more functionality and easier maintenance.

Premium Subscriptions – Beyond Premium Plus

[Video: 8:13-12:02]

• The introduction of Premium Plus has opened the door to potentially having multiple subscription levels, and possibly an “a-la carte” capability (pick which benefit options you’d like, and pay on the basis of that selection).
• As Premium Plus has been so successful in its take-up, the Lab is looking to deploy what might be the first of further Premium levels by the end of 2022.
  • A formal announcement of what this new level is is be called and what it includes is expected “pretty soon”, possibly late  October  / early November 2022, depending on how the final naming and marketing, etc., decisions go,
  • This is not a level to sit “between” Premium and Premium Plus, but is regarded by the Lab as more of a “side” version,  so levels are not necessary identified by price point but by options.
• Reed’s view on additional Premium levels is that is the Lab develops ideas and takes feedback, so they will be able to offer choices (including a future a-la carte) that more fully reflect the hopes / wants / needs of users.

New User Experience

[Video 17:29-]

• 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.
• incoming suggestions for improving the NUX / user retention at this meeting were:
  • Inclusion of a “Getting Started” option in the viewer (or as an additional to the toolbar button?) to provide access to “approved” Second life You Tube tutorials (perhaps linking to the official Second Life University You Tube playlist?).
  • Introducing an actual “character creator” rather than just sets of starter avatars – this is actually already something the Lab is actually investigating at the moment.
  • Providing an over-the-shoulder camera view within the viewer, rather than / in addition to the current default camera placement.
    • Many already do this via the Camera Presets built-in to the viewer, and using “recognised” offsets such as those long provided by Penny Patton, and some TPVs provide an over-the-should view by default.
    • Doing so has many beneficial aspects to SL (such as the ability to properly scale building interiors) well beyond purely the NUX.
  • Making sure any gateway access points for incoming users have daytime EEP settings.
    • This is perhaps questionable where Community Gateways for specific role-play types (vampire / horror / space) are supposed to be dark – and having even a small area set to daytime might come across as counter-intuitive to incoming new players.
  • Improving the Inventory interface and ease the process of changing outfits, etc.
    • Some work on Inventory is being considered, which may include updates to things like available object icons, etc.. Alexa Linden has also been seeking broader feedback on inventory pain-points existing users experience.
  • Re-engineering the viewer so capabilities are only unlocked as new users visit in-world tutorial areas.
    • A problem here is that people come to SL for different reasons – so how do you ensure that their needs are meet both in terms of allowing them access to any functionality they require that may otherwise be “locked” &  ensure they can get to require required tutorial location(s) with ease?
    • Some also come in as a result of friends, and get hands-on support from said friends – so may not require “formal” tutoring  through dedicated locations – which then become regarded as a PITA in forcing people through them.
  • Providing structured hand-holding at the gateways where questions can be asked and answered – again something LL has re-experimented with, and many community gateways provide.

In Brief

• [Video: 14:23-15:33] Marketplace Rebuild:
  • Still planned for a 2023 project.
  • No definitive take on what it might look like, etc.
  • Lab still interested in obtaining feedback from store holders and customers on what they’d like to see incorporated in a new MP / approaches they believe should be taken (e.g. Amazon-like; Daz3D-like, etc.), and where specific pain point lie within the current MP & its presentation.
• General chat towards the end of the meeting on user retention, content creation, strategies for user acquisition, etc. Please refer to the video for details.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.