I don’t know if it’s my mood that has added to my annoyance with the latest blog and emails about classifieds, I have the cough from hell and I’m currently doing an extremely impressive impression of Grumpy, but the events have certainly rubbed me up the wrong way. First of all I awake from a nap to check my emails and find emails from LL telling me how they’ve nerfed inworld classifieds, and of course they go with the tired old BS of telling me this nerf is an imporvement and then I read Nelson’s blog post about a new classified beta, this right after reading how they are nerfing inworld classifieds.
They should be treated as separate issues, although one can’t help but wonder if the deliberate and destructive nature of LL’s approach to inworld classifieds is to encourage the big players to move to the new system as well as giving them advantages inworld that their classifieds wouldn’t previously have had, again we seem to be back to LL being hostile to medium to small business owners, I have no idea why they do this.
So the email, for those who haven’t seen it:
Two Important Changes to SL Classified Advertising
Dear SL Advertiser,
We wanted to ensure that you are aware of two big changes to the Classified ad program.
Maturity Changes: Previously, advertisers declared the maturity level of their ads. However, to prepare for teens coming to the main grid, we will be using the maturity system used for Search that is based on two factors:
- Parcel maturity level
- Content of the ads themselves
Advertisers’ declared maturity will still be visible in Viewer 2, but will be informational only and not affect the actual maturity rating for each listing. We are targeting these changes for the week of Dec 13th.
Ad Content Limit: All ads have recently been standardized to 256 characters. To maximize relevancy, new characters limits will help you choose only the most relevant descriptive keywords to help Residents find your products and services. Our testing has shown that this limit increased relevancy and click-through rates for classified ads.
For more information, please read about Classifieds on the wiki.
Thanks for advertising!
Kindest Regards,
Linden Advertising Team
Ok first of all, the 256 character limit is a pile of crap when you’re trying to write a human readable and descriptive advert, it’s better than the absurd 64 character limit but it’s still a steaming pile of crap and no amount of BS about relevancy is going to change the fact that it’s a steaming pile of crap that encourages one thing and one thing only, keyword city.
Then of course we have the issue that LL are already promoting irrelevant classifieds because they’ve changed the way classifieds display, they used to be an exact phrase match, now they’re not, this in itself already leads to irrelevant classified results, I have no idea which numpty thinks these changes make classifieds more relevant, but these changes simply do not make classifieds more relevant.
Then we have Nelson’s blog about the new beta system, which leads you to here. The first thing to note is that this seems to be a partnership with a company called GlamAdapt, secondly you can’t pay in Linden dollars, which suggests it’s not aimed at inworld residents, I have no problem with LL seeking alternative forms of revenue so this I don’t mind, but why are they pushing this on the back of nerfing inworld advertising methods?
Search has been borked for the majority of this year, inworld business owners have been struggling to be seen and now LL are pushing a different kind of advertising? Maybe when I read the blog again after a good night’s sleep it won’t make me so annoyed but it appears yet again that LL are leaving their existing users with crap galore whilst they go chasing rainbows.