One has to wonder whether Linden Lab have something up their sleeve regarding income streams, because land no longer seems to be flavour of the month. I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what exactly it is that they feel can supplement the tier system for income, I’m not seeing any strong hints anywhere.
The issue of land came up at last night’s community tools user group where people asked whether there would be a land user group, no plans was the answer, no plans to replace Jack’s office hour, which remained the land office hour long after Jack ceased being responsible for land! There is however a land discussion forum, a private one, for the top secret Atlas members but it seems some of them aren’t happy with the forums and they want an estate land for sale section, but Linden Lab seem reluctant to push land lately, which brings me back to wondering what’s going on.
However estate land can be advertised for rent. I can see why some Atlas members don’t like this, rent isn’t the same as buy, but there has long been an argument that people don’t own private land (we don’t technically own mainland either but that’s a different issue). I would much rather advertise estate land for lease, where the terms are different to a straight rental and people can sell the lease on, that’s why it’s different to a straight rental.
Actually I created Jira-VWR-3359 asking for changes to the UI so people could see that estate land purchases were different to mainland back in November 2007. There is a difference between estate purchases and mainland.
Another issue raised at the community tools user group meeting was for an adult discussion forum to be created, which is getting to pantomime levels with the Lindens claiming “Oh no we can’t” and users shouting back “Oh yes you can“. Indeed they can create such a forum and they already have an adult forum managed by Blondin, people aren’t asking to be part of that and it would be unfair if that forum was hijacked, but, as exemplified by that forum, the merchants round table, the atlas forum and some others perhaps as there are nine private forums, although they may not all be open to the public, Linden Lab clearly can create private forums, they could therefore create one for adult discussion, I suspect the issue is more one of not having the will to create an adult discussion forum than not being able to.
The whole, let’s pretend adult content doesn’t exist in public, as exemplified by LL not allowing users to have adult profiles officially, or not making a provision for adult picks, is not very adult at all, we should all be treated and act as grown ups and we should be looking to minimise exposure to such content for those who don’t want to see it.
Next the blog, the much unloved blog. and I say this as someone who can’t quite put his finger on what is wrong with the blog. I have noticed blog announcements on SL Universe or Twitter before I notice them on the official blog, it simply doesn’t yell “New Blog Post” at me anymore. This is to do with how things are displayed, if it’s a featured news post I’ll notice it in my dashboard when I login, but if it’s not, it can go into the ether.
However, Lindens have been good on posting blogs in the forums, the bunny jam blog and the machinima blog were both posted in relevant forums, which was marvellous to see because it shows Lindens using their own website sensibly, but they really need to give the blog a bit more oomph! I also have to say Linden participation in the forums has been much improved too, the new community platform is getting many things right, but there are a few jagged edges that could do with smoothing out.
Of course LL has something up their sleeve, if they didn’t then it would get pretty boring pretty fast. I’ve always wondered why they haven’t created a site to allow auctioning off of estates and islands by people who “own” them, LL could take a cut and it would give a central place for these transactions. I also think this could work for mainland parcels and possibly estate parcels but that would only be the case for the few estates with limited space and the name brand recognition and desirability that could drive demand.
We were asking for user land auctions not long after the auction system arrived, Ll kept saying “Not yet, but maybe in the future”, I agree that it would have been a useful feature, I still do think it would be a useful addition because auctions get people excited with auctions, I used to sell on ebay and was amazed at how the bidding could go crazy.