brooke linden is a senior producer at linden lab and oversees all things marketplace, the amazon/etsy of virtual goods & services for second life.
a website that delivers items to the tune of several million US$ into the hands of avatars all over the grid every day.
enjoy the show:
and now read on if you so choose:
– linden lab buys xstreet sl in 2009
– just because we can a throwback to that era:
– our musical guest jordan reyne
– inara pey on viewer managed marketplace
– vmm video by torley [comes in 4 parts]:
– cecilia d’anastasio coming on the show soon!
– fantasy faire in full swing [and we will broadcast live next week!]
– spiegel tv documentary about second life coming soon to the web near you
the drax files radio hour [with jo yardley] is a weekly production of basicdrax entertainment.
the show is supported by leap motion, stitcher, fatewear by damien fate, gizza creations, aeros avatars, maven homes, madpea productions, botgirl’s identity circus, ison, kahruvel design, vika creations, humanoid animations, loki eliot, botanical, death row designs, fallen gods incorporated, {what’s next}, abranimations, blue moon enterprises, avacon and landscapes unlimited!
special thanks to justin esparza for the show thumbnail!
music by jordan reyne.
contact the show via skype draxfiles, avatar draxfiles or email radio@draxfiles.com.
the drax files radio hour 
Great to have a Linden on the show. Though they are so wrong about the Feed. Facebook is the most successful website ever and the Feed could just be as popular among residents, even more popular, since there are no privacy concerns, which many people have with Facebook. Especially with the upcomming SL2 and High Fidelity or OpenSim, the Feed would be a great way for people to stay in touch with their friends accross grids. BUT the implementation in the viewer is just horrible. Important features are missing, it is hard to find and often uploading pics does not work. In 3rd party viewers it is even worse. So, how about giving the feed it’s own window, adding a Feed-button to the taskbar and maybe make the feed available on the log in screen as a widget? There is so much one could do, just copy what Facebook does, no need to be innovative. If the Lindens think that the residents don’t like the Feed, they should just ask random people in SL whether they know what the Feed is. 90% do not know it at all or how to find it. But how can they like it if they do not know it?
Regarding the Marketplace, I would like to see an API, so I can sell my products from my website. Also interesting would be widgets or an affiliate program, so e.g. Mr. Drax or SL bloggers could sell some show related items from their website for a commission.
I’m not on the Feeds all the time, like some, but I very much do like them. The reason I don’t use them that much, is because LL has not developed it farther. In a place like a virtual world, it’s a lot like FB, you have far too many friend to keep track of. Plus, it’s basically a marketing system. On FB, marketing doesn’t really work, because most people in real life don’t make things and sell them, as sad as that is and most of their friends and family aren’t enough to market to, nor want that marketing, for the most part. In SL, we might not all be merchants, but a good % are marketing something, whether that be their avatar, their travels thru SL, their creations, their events, or whatnot. SL, it’s residents, and the platform is perfectly suited for marketing in the feeds.
LL should set up the feeds into categories like a friends feed, and a travels feed, a marketing feed, a events feed, and so on. Much like it works now, if you get enough votes, your posting gets added to the main LL feed for that category. The Marketing feed could work differently for LL main Marketing feed, like LL could charge the user a small fee to show the posting in the main LL Marketing feed. There should also be categories for those. Who really knows what the price should be, but if I were LL, I’d think up a decently moderate rate of postings being bought, and raise the price of each main LL marketing feed price until it met that moderate pace. You would not want a feed that had a new posting every second. 2 or 3 an hours would be a nice pace, and would like garner the most money for LL.
Just my thoughts on the Feeds. I really do like them.
I’ll give some overall thoughts on the SL Marketplace, and changes over the years, which aren’t all bad, so stop expecting the worst from me. lol
Of course, I’m going to start with what is bad, but I’ll soften up later. As far as I know, last I tried, enhancements are seriously broken, and have been. I also think they are far to expense on the whole. Prices should match the wants. If nobody has enhancements for a category, then if they were lower priced there, more people would buy them. On the reverse side, if there are too many people buying enhancement for a category, then LL should charge more for them. This would all ensure that LL is maximizing their profits, and everyone has a price in their budget. If you notice, the deeper you dive into the categories, the less merchants buy enhancements, for the most part. If they were all priced differently, according to how many buy them, then the larger merchants with deep pockets would pay a lot for the main categories, and the smaller merchants would buy in the more specific categories. Remember, I love economics.
Ratings and Reviews are a total joke on the Marketplace. Xstreet’s system was FAR more superior, and more simple, and it was right there, not 3 pages deep. On Xstreet, far more people rated items. Yes, people tried to game it, but the volume of real customers rating products far exceeded the rate any ethically impaired merchant could match. Yeah, I know I had competitors that came and bought just to rate it lower, but after a year, and now 100 people rated it, those 2 1 star ratings looked pretty blatantly competitors, or idiots. The only people willing to review something today, are those that are frustrated or competitors using alts. I do get more good reviews than bad, despite all this, but I still feel bad for the smaller merchants and people starting out, who’ll be really discouraged when all the reviews are bad. It really do hurt a little bit, even when you’ve had years of experience. They add up, is all I’m saying. For every 1 you get, you are closer to giving up. I’ve been doing this full time for 8 years now, so a negative review doesn’t shake me much, and many times I learn more from them.
Recently tho, 1 really reminded me how bad SL’s rating and review system is. It happened on 1 of my most popular items, which crazily only has 2 reviews now, after being out for 4 years. It came out after the switch from Xstreet, so it never benefited from Xstreets system. It has 1 5 star review, and now 1 1 star review. IMHO, it’s 1 of the best AOs I’ve ever made. I know Torley owns it. Every Navi community in SL sells it on their sims for me, yet this joker gave me 1 star. This bad system also reflects badly on SL it’self when really good products get such bad reviews and ratings. This would not matter at all if SL’s system didn’t discourage people to rate and review items. Why do people need to only review? Let them just rate it, quickly, and get it over with. Not everybody has all day to right detailed reviews. Also, that rating and review system should be in the consumer’s face when they log in, and on every single page that loads on the marketplace, so that the consumers always have access to it, and a reminder to do it. Every so often, hey should also get a reminder directly from LL to go and tell the merchants how much they liked their purchases. Just a little help from LL could go a very long way to merchants.
Now to the better stuff. Direct Delivery was a good idea, although the implementation was shaky, at best. I saw some of Torley’s videos on the new stuff, and it looks promising, but I’m worried about the implementation.
Here’s an idea that popped into my head. Let’s give it a whirl. Now, I do have a solid stance that LL SHOULD NOT increase commission fees on merchants. That said, 5% is not much, and quite reasonable. Contrary to what others think, it definitely isn’t enough to make a merchant only sell inworld. As a merchant, I do see the value in that 5%. So, basically, my idea is to have that marketplace integrated into SL. I’m not talking about a web viewer in SL. I’m talking about having the products info shown when you hover over the product inworld, or rightclick select info. Inside of SL, we have limited ways to give consumers that info, or it’s just a pain in the butt with notecards. It would be very nice to just hover over a product and get the image, info, link to the marketplace, and buy option. I don’t care if they just buy like that. Whatever makes it easier for the customer, and I’d pay that 5% for the functionality.
Next idea, is to put a 3D viewer in the Marketplace listings, so people can see the actual product, and spin it around, possible even on their avatar, but in a 3D viewer, not SL. Check out SketchFab for a good example, which also shows the wire frame of the 3D objects, so that people know it’s efficiently made.
Last idea for the day, is integrate video into the Marketplace listing. It’s kind of dumb to have people leave your site just to watch a video. You are pulling people away from your service, and will likely end up click on some funny video of cats in the Youtube suggestions, instead of buy stuff on your site. Don’t even give them the chance to see those stupid cat videos, and keep them on your own site.
What i need next is the ability to set a prim as a vendor that copies its contents from a marketplace folder in my inventory. Make it so.
I also want more options for displaying categories on my marketplace store. Make that also so!
As for SLfeed, have you ever seen Linden Lab promote it? at which point during the Newb sign up is SLfeed promoted?. I suspect its not promoted because if it got too popular then it would break like a twig,
Maybe they should have just left AvatarsUnited be. You can only wonder what that might have become.
I really like the potential of the feed! It is like anything else apparently a resource game but a bit of investment in there could yield results. Maybe revisit the offline messaging feature as well?
Chakrat Northspring posted video about VMM in-world feedback session here = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iDqiyEVa8E