Virtual Worlds – Page 293

April 1, 2011April 1, 2011

Extending The Marketplace

The Second Life Marketplace has a rule that only digital goods that are intended for use within Second Life can be sold on the Second Life Marketplace. I think LL need to look at this again and encourage other kind of content to be sold via their marketplace. I’m sure there are legal issues that would need to be ironed out, but with a list of carefully selected partners, LL could offer some items that aren’t digital only.

What are you talking about Ciaran? I hear one of you ask, well put it this way, I’m going to use Adobe as an example again, purchasing Adobe Photoshop from the Second Life Marketplace might well be something people want to do, they come to Second Life, they want to create, they learn that Adobe Photoshop is a useful tool, they purchase Adobe Photoshop from the marketplace, Linden Lab get commission and Bob’s yer uncle!

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March 31, 2011March 31, 2011

Machinima gets an official event

I’ve mentioned previously that Linden Lab don’t do a decent job of showcasing machinima, indeed I’ve mentioned recently that their own forums and website aren’t that clever with regards to promoting user generate content full stop. So imagine my surprise when I read that May will be the Inaugural month of Machinima. Although if I’m nitpicking, I could point out that the blog post should be being promoted within the Machinima forum on the official forums, which isn’t a forum that is designed to promote machinima…..seriously, LL, let people promote their wares on your forums!

Anyway, you have to be quick if you want to enter, entries need to be received by April 10th, no sex or violence and it can’t last longer than three minutes, so it was important to point out there’s no sex allowed as three minutes is a bit of a marathon session. However, if sex or violence are ever the theme, it will be allowed, I await to see if Linden Lab are mature enough to officially allow such submissions.

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March 30, 2011March 30, 2011

Kitely has potential but Second Life is still the Daddy

Kitely, an Opensim based virtual world provider, has been talked about by Maria Korolov over at Hypergrid Business and Hamlet Au over at New World Notes. The system, running from Amazon’s cloud services has some interesting concepts and some great potential, it’s also far from ready for prime time and very new.

Interesting points to note are that sims can go to sleep when not in use, rather quickly I’m told, this is an important concept because the billing policy of Kitely is per visitor minute, rather than a flat fee. That’s an interesting way of doing things. Logins are managed via Facebook connect, this for me is an absolute dealbreaker and no amount of saying lots of people use Facebook connect will change my mind, when that’s the only login choice in town, I simply choose not to engage. I’ve currently got Facebook blocked on my firewall, if I have a need to use it I’ll unblock it.

However plenty of folk are happy as Larry to use Facebook connect and therefore, Kitely is worthy of discussion, plus it’s a virtual world and I’m interested in them, and it’s my blog, so neener neener.

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March 25, 2011March 25, 2011

Save Dick!

This post is for all the Dicks in the world. Linden Lab have deemed you too hot to be quoted on the official forum, personally I find writing Dick easier than writing **bleep**. However it’s the attempt to wipe Dick off the face of the PG planet that is most disturbing about Linden Lab’s forum word filter.

Dick is a name, there are 338 results under people search for Dick, you can’t currently properly reference any of these 338 residents on the official Linden Lab forum. Trying to silence Dick in this way is quite frankly absurd, but it gets worse, what if anyone wants to talk of the famous Dicks through the ages, fictional and non fictional, you simply can’t.

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March 23, 2011March 23, 2011

Income Streams and Advertising

I’ve long felt that Linden Lab don’t do enough with premium memberships to sell them. Indeed I feel they should follow a lead from Mobile Phone companies and offer different deals. There are many people for whom the prospect of a weekly stipend and 512M of tier isn’t appealing, others would like a larger amount of tier.

There are those who would prefer a larger stipend and would forsake the 512M of tier as they don’t use it and have no intention of using it. Giving people choice is generally good. creating a premium package that appeals to different demographics is good, how about no free tier but advertising upto a certain Linden dollar value inworld or on the marketplace? How about a discount on marketplace advertising for premium members? How about different price points for premium membership where for more US dollars you get tier, the stipend and the marketplace or inworld advertising upto a certain value?

Then we get to partnerships, LL so far haven’t been that good on partnerships but their deal with GlamAdapt regarding Second Life Avertising Beta shows that they can do partnerships, unfortunately it also shows a flaw in Linden Lab’s own advertising.

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