Commerce Update 2013

The beginning of this month the Second Life™ Market Place got a new update. The update deals mostly with email. But, there are 7 bug fixes too. 

My Test Avatar @ IMVU

My Test Avatar @ IMVU

Market Place (MP) email now has a number of setting to turn on and off email notice of for different events. The new events are:

  • An email to the recipient when a redelivery of an item they should have received occurs
  • An email to the merchant when a redelivery of an item in their store occurs
  • An email of any change to revenue distributions on a listing are made: addition and removal
  • An email to the recipient of a revenue distribution when a sale occurs
  • An email when an item is unlisted or blocked as a result of a flag
  • An email when a review is added, removed, commented on or flagged and removed (all to the merchant)

The bugs that have been fixes are:

  • WEB-2129 Assist buyer feedback: Inform sellers of newly posted reviews on their items on the main page.
  • WEB-3365 Sales Confirmation Emails from Marketplace are either “Laggy” or are not delivered
  • WEB-3482 Delisted items -> showing wrong reason for delisting + not warning merchants when flagged
  • WEB-4774 Marketplace does not send email if you are removed as a co-creator of a product
  • WEB-2399 How to Opt Out of Sale and Discussion Notification Emails
  • WEB-3072 No email sent when delivery fails on the marketplace
  • WEB-2879 I think there is a bug with the distribution sales notification by email

MP Qualifications

Every so often the subject of how to keep copybot’ers out of the MP comes up. The idea is that if having payment information on file was a requirement for selling on the MP, there would be less copybot’ed merchandise on the MP. Also, there is the idea that some type of vetting would eliminate many of rip-off scams, like selling empty boxes that are presented as having good stuff in them.

A new thread on the topic is running on the forum. Tahoma Deka posted the OP as their first forum post. Tahoma got ripped off to the tune of L$10,000. A DMCA cleaned out all the things Tahoma had purchased. Harsh. We learn in SL just as we do in RL.

Of course there is the obligatory noob that has to ask why Linden Lab doesn’t block IP Addresses… I think that one has been well covered. And another posts the seemingly obligatory TL:DT that rambles. I should probably be careful of how I write about their rambling…

But, there is an interesting post by LillyBeth Filth comparing SL and IMVU Market Places. I had not played with IMVU until I started writing this, so I’m not sure how accurate her description is. But, I suspect it is correct.

It seems at IMVU one must be a ‘premium’ member to sell on the IMVU MP. Also, there is a user approval of new products required. Also, there are no freebies in their MP. With 100k concurrent users per day IMVU is a bit more popular then Second Life. I can’t verify the 100k but this morning when SL had 44,469 avatars online IMVU’s home page shows 91,562 avatars online.

On an aside: IMVO uses SolveMedia for spam blocking… I think I will be keeping Solve.

Iren Tinkel points out that to enter Adult areas one must age verify, not that it is much of a challenge. Also one must go to a Premium account to own land and get better support. For the ability to upload mesh one must complete a copyright test. But to sell in the MP one just needs a free SL account.

In general the posts are in favor of at least having the requirement of Payment-Information-On-File before being able to sell on the MP. What do you think?

5 thoughts on “Commerce Update 2013

  1. An alternative might be to allow consumers to filter out content posted by free accounts in order to try and avoid being ripped off.

  2. I suspect LL is reluctant to mess with their #2 cash cow.
    Marketplace is messed up in several ways, but ppl use it a lot! It is popular in spite of the problems.

  3. I agree with taking more security measures about IP. Asking for RL data, personal ID or phone woult be very helpful. But not again with the BAD way of having a credit card to be able to register and upload mesh. That just cut off the wings of the building freedom in SL and is the last thing that SL needs.

    IMVU is a way different than SL. just because are avatars and you can buy clothes for them doesnt meant that is similar to SL. IMVU is a 3D chat, more likely a facebook game. So yes, people spend there a lot of money. Being premium there is worth it. Being premium in SL is just a waste of money. Is not really easy to make big amounts of money in SL to restrict the usage of Marketplace to premium users. SL actually have enought problems trying to keep people renting SIMs for their store and people playing continuosly so this rule doesnt really help at all.

    I will always vote for more security measures, anyway, there is something very clear and is that LL doesnt care too much about what items are being sold as copybot or infringing IP as long as people are spending their money. Also, I dont think LL would have the necessary measures to protect uesr content. They havent now, they will not have later. So having to pay to be allowed to sell things where LL will take benefit and you will not be protected at all… not the best deal.

    IMVU is a way better organized and developed as a market product in that side than SL. SL cant be IMVU in the same way that IMVU cant be SL.

    The solution is to work harder blocking non original content from Marketplace, giving more protection to content creators and making more accesible to everyone to be able to sell their products including mesh.

    Right now I still see a lot of copyrighted stuff on Marketplace, people that gave their credit card number (something that isnt even trusted since virtual credit cards numbers without RL data are possible nowday, so isnt the best way of verifying the personal identity of anyone) keep selling things without problems just because we need to wait for the original creator/company to come and fill a DMCA. This last sentence keeps sounding so silly no matters how many times I write it or where I write it.

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