Commerce

An SL resident (B-day: March 23, 2008 – Forum: Jan/6/2013) named Heavenly Villa posted asking SL users to complete a survey. The claim is it will help them improve business in SL. Heavenly Villa says the results will be published on the group’s web site/blog: Centre for Business Development. The poll is here: Centre for Business Development: A Poll.

If you have a business in SL, help out, take the poll.

It will be interesting to see the results of the survey. Unfortunately when the question came up about what one is selling comes up you can only select one item. I suspect some of sell into numerous categories.

A new post appeared a couple of days ago, 11/12 titled: Be Heard – Proposed New Marketplace Categories. The proposed categories are posted in the wiki: Second Life Market Place: 2012 Category Changes. Each section of categories has a feedback link. The feedback link goes to the Survey Money where you fill out a form.

It has been noted by Trinity Yazimoto in a post titled: When division is a communication strategy…… that the Linden post ‘No Comment.’ There is a certain irony in that.

Whatever your thoughts regarding the Commerce Team and their communication skills (cough) take the time to check out the categories. Add any that you feel you need for your services or products.

 Items Being Removed

There seems to be some effort to clean up categories in the Market Place. This seems to be resulting in a number of items being removed from the Market Place for ‘wrong category.’ So, if you are like me and seldom look at your existing products … it might be time to check them.

Petition

Pamela Galli (with 4,700+ posts – join: 2007) started a petition and then posted a link to the petition on the SL Forum. That didn’t last long. It has been removed. But, you can find it here: Linden Lab: Punish Criminals, Not Victims. Unfortunately Pamela is trying to get the ToS changed to increase Linden Lab’s liability, which is never going to happen.

Unfortunately IP theft and DMCA abuse are problems everywhere, not just in SL. The remedy exists in the RL courts. Our problem is the cost of prosecuting verses the cost of digital goods in SL is such that it makes no sense to pursue most cases. I’m not sure there will ever be a fix.

I do believe there should be a better way for the Lab to track the creation process and enforce or at least provide documentation about who uploaded what when. I think that the theft and abuse problems are hurting player retention. I think it has a significant impact on player retention and the willingness of people to build for SL. I can’t say improving the Lab’s enforcement is going to improve player retention and that will be worth the costs incurred. But, if a better way can be found I think it would be to the Lab’s advantage. I premise that on ‘better’ including being cheap.

I’m not sure a ‘better’ is possible. I do know that the Lab will not take on more liability because of a petition. Whatever can be done is going to need to be a creative process between the Lab and users.

There is a post in the SL Forums from the Commerce Team. Check it out here: Merchant Update October 2012.

354 people have read the post as I write this… comments appear to be open. No one has replied yet… if you do… no abuse.

A little bit of dialog has started between merchants and Linden Lab. Rod Humble has engaged in the conversation. There is lots of history, debate, drama, and a ton of frustration. If you have never heard of the Lab’s Commerce Team you’ve missed one of Second Life’s great sagas. Well… may be not so great.

The short story on the team is: the Commerce Team is responsible for the SL Market Place and I’ll guess more than half of all complaints about Lab’s poor communication ability coming from residents. I’m one that believes they are hiding.

The short story on the Market Place is: It doesn’t work. Yes, you can buy stuff. You often actually get what you buy. But, that does not mean the merchant gets paid. Merchant’s paying for advertising often don’t get the ads. They are often billed for what is supposedly free advertising. Merchant’s product promotions often end up in another merchants store and product images get mixed up between products and merchants… the list of failures is long and this is supposed to be the short story.

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