Linden Lab recently announced policy changes on its popular XStreet commerce site in an effort to make the shopping experience more, um, friendly. The Lab cited extensive consultations in launching a “plan that all of our residents have helped us build.” But not just the Residents held sway in the policy decision: larger considerations around how Linden Lab will handle mesh imports may have played a key role, and in this light the changes to XStreet have created the framework for future tiered pricing related to the value and type of goods and, perhaps, a long-awaited change to the premium/basic account categories.
XStreet is the Web-based shopping site for Second Life. Residents can browse virtual goods, purchase them using Lindens, and have them delivered in-world. One of the complaints about XStreet has been the gaming of the system through the posting of free items and the challenge of creating a level playing field for goods.
For the shopper a search for, say, ‘chairs’ can result in a long list of free chairs, which are posted either as a form of ‘loss-leader’ to promote a specific retailer’s goods or are simply free because of the ubiquity of certain types of content in Second Life. With no money made towards the maintenance of XStreet or the lining of Linden Lab’s pockets through commissions, less likelihood of someone with non-free items ‘making bank’ amongst a plethora of freebies, and what some argue is a degraded experience for the shopper (and what others would argue is degraded because of the interface and search function rather than the presence of freebies) the Lab announced that they would solicit feedback and figure out what to do about it.
Sinks and Shelves
In a world in which there are no ’sinks’ for virtual goods, content eventually becomes commodity, it becomes ubiquitous, and value eventually approaches zero. In game environments, sinks take content and goods OUT of the economy: your sword needs repairs, or your armor breaks. But in Second Life, content lives forever (or is lost in inventory, or just sort of fades away into dead accounts which are forms of a sink, but not to the same degree as a game environment).
This places a challenge on content creators and shifts the value curve in two directions: to create experiences and in-world brands as the focus of value accrual, and through the provision of new TOOLS for content creation to spark new innovations at higher price points.
The addition of sculptys, for example, made yesterday’s jeans obsolete, and suddenly every piece of clothing came with sculpted attachments like leg cuffs, collars or hoodies. Eventually these too become ubiquitous of course, and so there’s a constant churn of new tools and techniques and new approaches to creating recognizable and trusted brands, experiences, and communities.
There’s a philosophical debate around ‘freebies’ although I fail to see how it applies to XStreet. On one side of the debate is the thought that the lack of scarcity in a virtual economy like Second Life means that freebies can’t be avoided – that the trend towards ubiquity means that EVERYTHING will eventually be free, and that this is how you arrive at a rich environment in which everyone can participate, socialize and express themselves.
From a more mercenary point of view, freebies are often considered to be like samples – think of those little perfume capsules you get at the mall. It may be free, but it’s an interaction with a brand, and maybe by getting a whiff of the brand you’ll go back for the stuff that costs money.
It’s hard to take issue with either of these arguments but only insofar as someone has access to shelf space. To take the perfume example, a store can elect to cover the overhead, no matter HOW seemingly small, to facilitate that tiny transaction – the handing out of a free sample. But hey, they paid for the lights, the staff, the advertising that got you in the store in the first place. And for someone who has rented an in-world piece of land and set up shop and spent the time getting people there – well, more power to them.
If giving out stuff for free somehow helps you cover tier, or you even do it at a loss….it may be irritating, it may lower the competitive playing field, but that’s the way business works, and as I said above the expertise in content development moves on to newer tools or to expertise in community development, search optimization or branding.
There are all kinds of ways the Lab could have devised its policy about freebies on XStreet, but at a minimal level what this does is introduce a factor which says: “if you’re going to use up some shelf space, you need to pitch in for the tier” just as a grocery store would stop carrying items that don’t sell, or would rent the space to the company making the product – a common enough practice where Tide detergent buys retail shelf space by the inch.
The problem with the Lab’s decision isn’t in the mechanics (although I’ll be the first to agree there are other ways they could have achieved the same end) it’s in the rather disingenuous notion that it was motivated primarily by improving the shopping experience itself.
Content Protection and Identity
But at the same time as the Lab was sorting out the ‘freebie’ policy its been hard at work on two other things: content protection and mesh imports.
While there’s still significant anxiety over the ease with which people can ‘rip’ content, especially via third-party viewers, I’ve actually been finding myself fairly shocked at how aggressive the Lab is becoming in setting up a new regime for content protection. Has it been done fast enough? No. Is it complete? No. And has the communication been thorough and reassuring? Um…has it ever been?
But the Lab has made moves that a year or two ago would have seemed almost draconian against the background chatter about interoperability and open source and “all information wants to be free” (with lip service paid to content protection). Whether they’ll be able to get the genie back in the bottle is debatable, but give this another six months to play out and my bet is that the combined changes to policy, enforcement and code will result in a content protection regime that is radically different than it was a year or so ago.
One of the many things the Lab is considering is ‘fingerprinting’ content – something that has been alluded to by Mark Kingdon and even Philip in interviews, and which I’ve confirmed with several sources at the Lab is at least on the table, although they’re otherwise kind of mum about it and I’ve yet to confirm whether they’ve written any code. Now, I won’t get into all the details because as a stand-alone protection mechanism it has flaws, but as another tool in the arsenal it could contribute to better ways to track and remove copied content.
But this feature, and others in their content protection road map, relies in part on the connection of content to accounts and, to one degree or another, on the connection of accounts to identity (or at the very least some kind of verification or track-back info). The ‘trusted sellers’ program on XStreet and, at the far extreme, the Gold Solution Provider program for Second Life Enterprise, shift the Lab in the direction of linking content to registration/identity data, and thus towards being able to track who makes stuff (or at least who uploads it) and who to hold accountable for content violations.
Mesh Imports and the Commercial Dynamic
So the second thing the Lab is working on is mesh imports.
Frankly, I’ve been deeply skeptical about whether mesh imports are actually coming. But I’ve been told with certainty by those who should know that mesh imports are not some kind of optional/possible/wouldn’t it be nice enhancement, but that they’re coming, and that they’re probably coming sooner than we think.
The challenge that the Lab is struggling with, however, is how to sort out the policy issues in addition to fine-tuning the tech that will allow them in the first place. The ability to create content using industry-standard 3D modeling tools like Maya, 3DS, Blender or even Google’s Sketch-Up and to pull them into Second Life using the Collada 3D format has, on its own, technical challenges. But the policy implications are probably more staggering.
If content protection in Second Life itself is a problem, what do you do if people start buying items with a single-use license off of Renderosity, say, and then start selling them in-world? Now your DRM and copyright violation issues start taking on a new dimension, one which must have the legal team at the Lab puzzling out global regulations and laws while the rest of them think through the possibility that mesh imports unleash a flood of new content from Google Warehouse or wherever.
The problem is how to allow mesh imports while recognizing and dealing with the ‘external’ content protection issues and the impact on the in-world ‘prim economy’ through sudden access to entirely new sources of content which already exists in external warehouses, Web sites and on other platforms.
The solutions will rest on a bunch of things, and will include sacrifices (if you didn’t believe Philip at SLCC when he said that ‘change is coming and you may not like it’ then, well, believe it), but amongst them will very likely be the need to link mesh content to registration/verification information, and a new upload and listing structure which will likely include both variable fees and variable rights for different account types. While the policies are still being developed, it’s fairly clear that the Lab will likely include, or will have at least seriously looked at: a) charging more for mesh imports than, say, a simple texture b) restricting the ability to do so to verified accounts and, possibly, c) only allowing premium accounts to do so.
Mesh imports, in fact, give the Lab the excuse they need to re-open the premium/basic account structure, something which is difficult to revamp without having some new goodies to throw into the mix. Mesh imports could be one of a new ‘basket’ of things that will allow the Lab to reposition premium accounts as having an actual value, instead of being pegged to the ability to, um, get service or to own a parcel on Mainland.
I’d anticipate that some new Web-side features would be thrown into the mix and while we wait for the Second Life “Develop” microsite to get itself sorted out (the Lab plans to launch a portal directed to content creators much like its “Work” site, and I suspect it will be rolled out to coincide with plans around mesh imports), premium accounts may work at both a content-creator level as well as some kind of social media/Web site/preferred shopper type level for casual users.
So against the backdrop of the Lab’s attempt to get the content protection genie back in the bottle, to sort out the issues with mesh imports (including the IP issues that will arise and the impact they’ll have on the current virtual goods economy), the decisions related to XStreet and this week’s move to partner with Dragonfish for payment processing (and account verification) look more like stakes in the ground for an approach to managing the economy in which it isn’t just about what you’re selling and whether it’s free, but about who you are, what type of account you have, and where that content came from in the first place.
the much LONG needed IP content protection and legality issues responsea are all good. BUT the labs history of bait and switch policies make the “pay up front” methods to “then be served” suspect.
I suggest that they forget the WALMART 2010 methods of finding product manufactures, and learn to walk before running and look to only get “monopoly” profits AFTER partner products sell.
Asking for weekly new up front fees and playing loose with back end fees is quite frankly the reason the Linden Tao is a joke/or a crime beyond a few zealots and paid/self interested bloggers.
Seem like the LONG TAIL HAD to be myth, eh? if even “virtual IP” cant be stored on the web servers
or found though a simple text search.too many bits? Whos the non long tail luddites now?…
fairness.
Percentage of made sales fine, controls over who sells, fine. Partners beware and enter into agreements like adults.
BUT more of this
profits from selling “how youll get rich in SL” pr and sign up fees….please INVEST first….?!
thats the cult and amway mentality that LL cant shake as they offer these shortsighted, non industry building, and predatory relations.
Metaverse roadmaps and pundits you all were,,,my ass.;)
The thing that is most concerning to me is that a lot of these decisions feel like “management from a distance” or “management from on high” in a sort of General Motors sense. Maybe they aren’t. But that’s the vibe.
Even if the moves make sense, each move isn’t communicated well and stresses the userbase. A counter example would be: top management starting a forum thread and saying: “Hey, we have this issue and we have options a, b, and c for starters.” Maybe not everyone goes away happy, but knowing the reasons for things can make a lot of difference.
Of course, you can’t let the customers run the company or you’ll sell everything for free, but there’s still a better balance than now. Without getting too much into “media spin” ~ had they phrased things differently, I think acceptance of the freebie move would have been a lot more positive.
Ironically, I think a lot of the content creators distressed over the loss of their own freebies for sale may actually be the first immediate beneficiaries of the change. A sudden drop in competition against thousands upon thousands of free items will have some positive effect for somebody.
Finally there is the radical oldbie land baron stance of “Why a virtual web catalog at all?” ~ obviously it’s a great venue, but ultimately it pulls people out of the world to some extent.
Once that happens, there’s a hidden cost against the whole grid, in terms of online active users, land value and a whole host of other things. It’s one thing to participate in a virtual world and quite another to just think about it a lot, even if the money spent is the same.
* * * * *
I personally believe mesh is coming. It has to, if the grid is to remain competitive over the coming years; there’s no choice in the matter.
Agreed, there will be issues, but not really different in nature than the issue of ripped or resold textures. Just grander in scale perhaps. We might see a pullback of licencing from a number of sites ~ right now many sites *do* offer a ‘do as you like with it so long as you don’t resell our exact bundle of stuff’ sort of licence. Until recent years, there wasn’t quite the market for virtual goods that there is now and it was a lot harder to commercialise purchased 3D items.
@cube, as strange and vague as your comments are, I always find myself nodding seriously and profoundly.
@dusan, I’d say the long tail both is and is not relevant to digital world content like this; while stuff like books have an original production value of man-months, and mostly exist in a slow-moving context (not much has happened to literature, or music, in terms of experience quality) it thus will retain value for some for a long time. For digital content that rides on innovation (for an long time to come) ‘obsoleted’ digital content is just that; obsoleted, and the value zero, because at that time there will always be better versions available for free. So you have a world filling with cruft, which you can already see in large parts of the Linden Grid.
One would expect that any content producer that can make a decent income in the semi-pro Linden scheme should, and eventually will, start to look around to see if there aren’t better opportunities in the non-Linden world.
Paradoxically, enabling meshes might accelerate this process, as more semi-pros are forced to acquaintance themselves with professional tools, and thus become eligible to work in a non-Linden setting.
The question is whether the Linden grid can become a platform for professional content faster than this projected brain-drain.
The only thing that will keep them in the Linden scheme, like in any pyramid scheme, is the faith in the Linden scheme.
Dusan; Is it a logical follow that LL may not allow direct import/upload to the SL asset server of meshs but use XStreet SL as the only doorway/portal into SL for Meshes?
This way the Renderosity and Sketchup content creators will be licensing their content for use in SL and only SL by the listing agreement with Xstreet. Done deal.
Dusan, it’s just *so annoying* when you try to parlay the good reputation you have for being considerate of inworld issues to suddenly make nasty judgements that get wide audiences to savage inworld business. It’s the sort of thing that Justin Bovington who for many years used to have credibility has done, and eventually it exposes him as being utilitarian and even mercenary with regard to user-generated content.
Your discussions always fail to grasp the need for free economies, little friction in entering economies, and the need for both amateur and professional content and paths leading from one to the other based on merit, not company restrictions. Why is this “needed”? Because if you don’t have free economies, and you substitute socialist command economies, you will not only have stagnating state-sponsored content, you will black markets emerge anywhere and you will have “capitalist flight” of creators and buyers emigrating to other platforms.
This sort of statement is common these days, put into the mouths of “residents”: “One of the complaints about XStreet has been the gaming of the system through the posting of free items and the challenge of creating a level playing field for goods.”
But there was no such complaint from the sellers and buyers on Xstreet. The complaint came from *a few* very, very high-end content makers who began to bitch on the forums, with heavy Linden incitement, that their high-end expenso wares were not getting enough visibility due to “clutter”.
The whine then from Lindesidents — residents coopted into working for Linden Lab and now busy stepping on their old fellow residents — is that 20 percent of the content sells on XStreet so the other 80 percent is “clutter” (as was said in just those words).
Well, first of all, the judgement is silly as that 20 percent includes *my* content that sells nearly daily, which is cheap and amature. And it fails to include really excellent content that tends never to get sales *through Xstreet* as that is a catalogue people browse to come inworld to buy there (especially for prefabs).
You’re also failing to realize that these loss-leaders include skin demos, which people absolutely insist on having before making a purchase of $3000-5000 or more in Lindens, which is a lot of money in the $12-20 US bracket for an avatar “look”.
When you have a free economy, and you combine it with the unfortunate socialist alturism that the platform providers keep pumping as well (pious thoughts that “I must help da noobz” or guilty thoughts that “I must have fun and not be guilty”) rule XStreet and are the psychological basis for the freebies.
Get rid of the socialist propaganda about helping newbies, who are, after all, not poor war-torn refugees in third-world hellholes but affulent individuals with DSL lines, high-end graphic cards and disposable time and/or income *just like you or me* and therefore not needing of all this “help”.
The search in Xstreet, by sharp contrast with the inworld tabbed search with its useful “places” an “people” and their “picks” does not enable you to search *by name of creator*.
That’s a HUGE obstacle for particularly the good craftsman who relies on people noticing a good product and looking up *the name of the person*.
Just because you’re seeing a lot of chairs for $0 or $1 doesn’t mean that $0 and $1 has to go.
Even if one wants to justify capturing a fee from those primarily motivated to using the XStreet pages as advertising loss-leader gimmicks or philanthropical work (I use them for both as do many), you could still make the pricing schedule commensurate with the same use of inworld search/place ads for the same purpose, which cost $30, or inworld classifieds pages, which cost $50 per week, and enable the viewing of multiple items, and not charge *per item*.
Linden Lab could be improving the search; enabling name searches (surely a simple matter); and building the concept of the store more by having one page or store pay a fee rather than nickle and dime each item to death.
And I totally get what’s down the pike — and even further gulf opening up between “professionals” (usually insecure amateurs of five minutes ago layered over with snotty superiority about their nouveau status) and amateurs (which in fact often includes merely newbie professionals from RL).
These demands for getting rid of “clutter” on XStreet do not come from merchants or users, who didn’t make these demands before LL wheeled out SLE and began bitching about content not being free or findable for their high-end contents. These claims of “residents” in office hours are skewed and misrepresented as anyone can see by reading the forums now where dozens of people are pulling their items from Xstreet, including people who make very good stuff that just doesn’t happen to be hugely expensive, and who work with thin margins, as many do in SL.
As I’ve said in my answer to Pink Linden’s latest “your questions answered,” the Lindens simply aren’t looking at their real actual numbers of what to work with:
475,000 who spent more than L$1 a month
Of these, less than 40,000 that actually spend US $10 a month
Of these, only 300 people who businesses that make more than $2000 US per month.
It’s a very, very steep pyramid and Linden is knocking out the struts and chopping off the tale that has given it an enthusiatic user base merely to be able to say to Enterprise or the future Buyer or stockholder that they squeeze profits out of the top 20 percent of selling content makers — they want to be able to show their capacity for squeezing revenue out of virtual goods, which they see as the future, and not the land business.
I would have fully expected from you a thoughtful somewhat hand-wringing post about the bad idea of cutting off the long tail of amateur-to-professional low-cost virtual goods production to spite the newbie and non-commission-generating face, but you’ve disappointed me once again, as you increasingly do lately.
You’re so eager to get your company’s hands on mesh importants and the consulting and revenue generation, and so eager to be the first blogger to tell us all about how great an impact the mesh production will have on the economy, that you’re forgetting to contemplate that:
o no one has asked for mesh, like they didn’t ask for Windlight; it is a yuppie/geeky/very-high-skilled creator yen that has no broad-based user support
o there is no reason why mesh couldn’t co-exist with continued use of prims to build as well — at least, I’ve never heard any technical or political reason for this that makes sense
o the expensiveness in terms of land tier and the slowness and lack of openness in terms of development spawned not only OpenSim, which still isn’t credible; in a sense you could say it spawned Metaplace, for whom the Sims Online had to die for it to thrive. Who would have thought that a 2-D platform should be born and thrive when clearly “3-D was where it’s at”. So it’s conceivable that some 3-D prim based world might fork off and thrive despite all the propagandizing of mesh that we keep hearing *from those with a vested interest in it*.
If the world is totally meshified, and that means that people would reasonable amateur skills and attention (like me and scores of others that can at least make simple content and modify complex content) can no longer participate *in that 20 percent of sales in Xstreet* that is a very bad thing. It means that the core of SL — the free economy and free capacity for creation — will be gone. It will not be considered “progress” merely to create closed stables of craftsmen in guilds like the middle ages.
That is not the modern world, Dusan. It’s men in tights.
Prok – many many valid points. I tried to be as clear as I could be that most of this was my opinion about how the LAB is thinking, and the rationale behind it, rather than my own.
However, I’m going to have to think through your thoughts about freebies on XStreet – I’m honestly of the belief that there’s the free economy, just as there is in real life, and there are malls, just as there is in real life – and that malls have the right to charge rent.
Where I take issue is where the mall owner is also the town mayor, police force and judge.
Maybe I need to reconcile my idea of shelf space with this contradictory friction created by the ownership of the marketplace by the platform owner.
I’ll post more about it later.
The rest of it, however is my opinion of the Lab’s thought process rather than my own. I will say, however, that I don’t think that mesh imports are a good idea, and should be, at the very least, deferred.
Yes, mesh imports and prim builds would coexist.
But I feel the Lab would be making a monumental mistake if they allowed mesh imports without sorting out other areas of the business first.
@jeanRichard – It may be a logical follow but it strikes me as slightly untenable. I see it happening rather at the account level: you need a premium account to upload meshes, a premium or verified account to sell them, and who knows – maybe we even end up with different inventory abilities based on whether we’re paid or verified.
Overall, the whole thing is saddening, quite frankly.
[...] Writer had an interesting take on all [...]
I think the hilarious part of all this is that the Lindens cite they took opinions from their office hours, which are in a sim that can handle what, 40 people?
I’m a premium member, I should not have to pay to upload textures, nor should I be subjected to Xstreet prices either, I ask what the hell am I paying for and have been for these past years.
Xstreet search is horrible, that is the real problem. I search for an item and unrelated shit comes up. Thats still going to happen if they don’t fix that site.
I hope Xstreet tanks AND a resident commerce option emerges, I’m sick of them sticking their dirty sticky fingers in every aspect of the economy.
search—
no show items 0-10L problem solved.:)
But then again, the “cheap 0-10L” “free” mantra within a 300.usd server rental scam has always from day one been the problem and OBVIOUS failing of LL to offer anyting but a pyramid plan to others not in the intial “gang”
thanks Stefan – i know i post to force a little effort and thinking:) its my right:)
Shelf Space and Walmart. Thats the problem. What merchandising became from 1985-2005. Rememeber, you cant find a product in walmart not “controlled” by walmart and made in china.
Ebay and amazon want to kill off the last bricks of walmart( built in a pre net world) and drop ship chinese made products direct to us customers, problem is, were now broke and not buying jack.. the system was a pyramid, and non sustainable in a 20 year period..
USA got a 20 % unemployment now….
who can buy a new mandated 50 inch plasma tv..lol
virtual ip and transactions arent the problem, only THIS method of non regulated, non accoutable, central based “one web company scam ” style is.
in the 1990s our “gov” congress couldnt tell you what a derivative was, and today we all are ficked because of their ignorance as a whole, and the greed of a few paid off by lobbyists.
in 2000s our gov cant tell an online pyramid scheme from a software tools company, and sadly neither can most folks, and we get this continual stream of pyramid shaped platforms that can be nothing but scams and unsustainable..
anyhow… its not like its anything new or meta.
I wonder if all of the Internet Service Providers, blog hosting providers, social media networks, video sharing sites like YouTube, LiveStream, Qik and many others should band together and ban the concept of free accounts in order to improve the web browsing and reading experience by removing the clutter of free content that makes it close to impossible to find quality expensive content?
I think that the mini-parody above follows the logic of the proposal closely. Does the justification for this change hold together when applied at web scale?
I understand some of the reasons for making a change like this, however I do not understand a justification based on it being a user experience driven change.
Let’s presume, for discussion’s sake, that the volume of salable content were to expand to “re-fill” the number of items that will be removed through this policy change, or that they will all stay, but now be listed at some nominal price. Does replacing every L$0 item with a L$100 priced item (about US$0.30) change the landscape for a user who is browsing the marketplace?
I don’t see how the user experience would change at all after the transformation described above. It would be the same volume of items in the same categories with the same search feature set, except that the lowest price tier would be some low number instead of 0, thus “masking” the higher priced and presumably higher quality content (by this argument) in exactly the same way – from a user experience perspective.
In addition, if you look at scripted items, there are some very high quality, very useful items placed into the marketplace at L$0 for educational use, as they are on the web in general. Some of these are no lower quality than paid alternatives – again mapping directly to the overall options landscape on the web.
I don’t know whether anyone asked for Windlight or not, but the question to ask is: now that it’s there, who would willingly go back to not having it?
Second Life has virtual worlds with vastly better graphics breathing down its neck, e.g. Nurien. Gamers are certainly used to vastly better graphics and faster response. SL’s generalized nature means it will always lose in comparison with games where so much is predetermined and can thus be generated ahead of time, but SL is dead if it can’t improve.
I expect that anyone arguing that auto manufacturers should be denied specialized tools lest Joe Shadetree be unable to sell cars he makes from recycled soda cans with his Craftsman toolkit would be laughed out of the room; it’s equally silly to deny creators of virtual objects well-known, powerful tools for which there is copious documentation and instructional material–and at least some of which can be had for no more than the time and bandwidth it takes to download them.
Re: “Even if the moves make sense, each move isn’t communicated well and stresses the userbase. A counter example would be: top management starting a forum thread and saying: “Hey, we have this issue and we have options a, b, and c for starters.” Maybe not everyone goes away happy, but knowing the reasons for things can make a lot of difference.”
Desmond, *they have Dusan to play that role for them, they don’t need to do that — they’ve just done it with this blog post*. Dusan as a solutions provider was invited to their SLE roll-out, he spent time hob-knobbing with the Lab, and now he’s doing these blogs sort of leaking a bit and speculating a bit and posturing that he is worried a bit – and *that’s how they do it*.
The mall is charging rent, Dusan: it is taking commissions. The analogy is like the Soviet kommissionka (it’s a Soviet economy, controlled and manipulated, and that’s why something like the komissionka comes into play, where citizens bring their crafts or their used items and the state takes a hefty cut for selling them in state-controlled stores).
It is not like a used commission store in New York City because I think there is something like one store like that lol. Why? Because it’s not a good system. Most people in fact would rather pay rent, and control their costs. Or if they do have a commission arrangement in a boutique in Soho, they’d have competition, and could shop around for locations, deals, etc. etc. Or swaps. A book store owner will put a friend’s chap book in his store for free, etc.
The Lindens are grabbing twice, once for commissions, which they invoke as “like” the API store for Apple (it’s not) and now twice for listing — and this *on top of* tier fees inworld. If anything, they could be encouraging more land purchase which is their real source of income by waiving fees for listing above certain tier levels. But that’s likely too hard to manage, and they have another thing they are doing: constantly, frenetically, maniacally looking for ways to get out of the land business, which is heavy, customer-service-saturated, and doesn’t scale, and into other kinds of revenue generating schemes.
I don’t mind paying rent on a store, Dusan, even in addition to my tier, when my customers can look up my name and find my store easily. They can’t. There’s no search on names. Ever try searching on a name? You cannot pull up the person’s products. It’s only often somebody else perhaps including a name in an ad or something that rarely pulls it up. There are no name searches. And I can’t make an easy link to my store. Ever try doing that?
Even if you justify tier AND commission AND listing fees in a total all-out grab, you can hardly make the listing fees on the web, where it is supposedly easier to hold data, more than the world, which is more expensive to render. A search/places ad is $30; classifieds start at $50.
And Dusan? You’re sad but…not that sad. You and your company have 3-D tool capacity and you will sell your services even better if there is an easy upload and download system to sell stuff. The geek set has been whining for the ability to use the 3-D import and export tools in combination with SL and they will get their way. The Lindens have already paved the way for an elite class of tool owners and users that will widen the gulf considerably. The gulf will be widened *anyway* because of the tool cost and skills cost barriers, but the Lindens will add insult to injury by making it a licensing deal with a separate category of membership with clearance, a “developers’ membership” beyond the SP that the snotty “professionals” who are store clerks who were amateurs five minutes ago will leap at joining even for cost because they can then lord it over others.
Um, nobody is “denying” specialized tools and greater skills in a free market. Bring it on. What is *challenged* about this is the licensing of it as if more clearances are needed. Dusan is speculatively raising that this is due to the need to protect IP. But that’s bullshit. You need to protect IP *anyway*. Nobody is “denying” creators the use of any tools they want. What *is* being denied is the idea that they then get extra special privileges on top of this with special accounts, lock-out of features to others, and punishing fees to others. That’s what is happening to protect this special class of Linden-feted and self-feted creators.
Joe is right that the amount of content will shrink, but fill up again with merely $51 items that will create the same challenge of “clutter” (supposedly) if SL grows and has more sign-ups. >But…there isn’t any “clutter”. The user interface is the problem on XStreet, not the content lying underneath it.
There’s a lot of expensive items on XStreet that are of very poor quality. Items that will never sell. Yet without a listing fee those items will forever be cluttering up the listings.
Freebies aren’t the problem. The problem is anybody being able to list a turd on XStreet without a care for whether it sells or not. There’s no technology available that can filter out turds.
As for mesh import:
The value of content is going to drop dramatically when LL adds mesh import. It’s going to be possible for almost anybody to be able to create good quality content. Second Life is going to be saturated with good looking meshes that people didn’t make themselves. That’s not to say the items will be illegal. There’s a few ways of taking a model and basically rebuilding it. Also, there’s a lot of models freely available that can be used for commercial purposes.
The most important part of this story is Mesh import. When I speak to professional 3D content creators — and as an AD in advertising who studied architecture, I know a LOT of them — this is the single biggest reason, hands down, why there isn’t more professional content in SecondLife. Very simply, nobody who builds with professional 3D content tools (Maya, 3D Max, etc.) wants to build with wooden blocks. SecondLife: Talk about a tinker-toy interface.
Mesh import will create an absolute deluge of high-quality content. That will be bigger than any SL inside can comprehend. Everything, I mean EVERYTHING that has already been built with a 3D model (which means every house, skyscraper and product made in the last two decades) already has a 3D model on catalog somewhere.
Let the genie out of the bottle, already.