Funnelling Newbies: The New Business Portals
by prokofy on 06/06/07 at 3:05 am
At new AzureIslands Welcome area: helping others is helping oneself to a full roster of paying tenants.
By Prokofy Neva, FIC 2.0 Watch
Linden Lab finally officially announced today a plan that has been in the works for more than a year: funnelling the newbie sign-up stream to a dozen or so of their favourite business partners to take over the care and feeding of new residents — a job the Lindens have proven spectacularly bad at. By their own admission, there is a less than 10 percent retention rate for new registrations after 60 days. The portal plan enables a select list of companies chosen by Linden Lab to have first crack at the growing onrush of customers coming in the door — anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 a day or more — to see if they can make them stick. The list of chosen companies aren’t surprising as they represent not only some of the businesses I predicted in my last official forums post of June 2005 would become more powerful (remember Cabinhead lol?), but new U.S. and international partners: Azure Islands, NMC Virtual Worlds, Big Pond, The L Word, the NBA, SL Netherland, Mainland Brasil, STA Travel and Dreamland, and others.
The three main international portals, for Australians, Dutch, and Brasilians are emblematic of the increasingly large population of non-Americans in SL, and LL’s eventual plan to locate servers in other countries, were presumably they might then be liable to local laws.
What’s disturbing, however, is the use once again by the Lindens of a word that will grate for some — “community”. These businesses are “the community of partners Lindens want to work with,” but they are businesses. That’s why I’m calling them “business portals” — they aren’t “community” portals when at least 3 were built by, and evidently still managed by the leading metaversal services company Electric Sheep, and the rest all relate to companies interested in this project as a business. They aren’t the devoted volunteer or theme-related communities long associated with recruiting and taking care of new members in Second Life. There are quite a few groups that already take care of new people — New Citizens Incorporated, Luskwood, and The Shelter come to mind — but it’s clear that what LL wants here isn’t oldbie hand-holders in furry avatars or fairy wings or elves, but slick, professional ad men like the Sheep who made L Word for Showtime and NBA, and STA Travel, as well as well-connected digital new media education groups like NMC, and then major language communities as well like those they’ve chosen for Brasil and Netherlands. Portaling is a business; the communities that were first to emerge on the grid are non-profit and often disorganized or plagued with SL’s performance problems.
Groups that want portal privileges have to fly through some hoops — prove they can manage newbie orientation and build registration applications.
Who could complain about LL, a private company doing what it thinks is right to market its product to new customers, selecting by its own lights the partners they wish to work with for their own reasons? Well, 70 people in the thread about this already for starters — although most of them are complaining about LL’s focus on what they see as yet another new gimmicky and untried project, while big boo-boos like the massive and mysterious reset of passwords go unsolved (discourage old users to make room for new users to try out portals??). (I was told that all those who have used the support portal had to have their password reset due to “changes” in the portal — whatever that means).
But surely we can get over our gripes and praise any initiative that helps new people climb the incredibly steep learning curve of SL? Haven’t we all “been there”?
PUZZLED AND INDIGNANT RESPONSE ON THE OFFICIAL BLOG
The portal plan is likely to draw a variety of responses, ranging from indifference to curiosity to anger that “indigenous groups” that feel they are already prepositioned to handle newbies are being slighted in favour of companies with more marketing power. So you don’t have to hear it from me — everybody knows my theory about the FIC already — let me quote one of the posters who is troubled by this new policy:
Athena Whizenhunt Says:June 5th, 2007 at 6:56 PM PDT
All of this is confusing to me, I am a paying member of SL and work hard to develop traffic to my place. As I understand this, all I need to have is Lindens’ approval to shuffle newcomers through my place to increase traffic flow. Linden already directly competes for traffic in the skiing category and has shuffled me through their sim as a “nearby location” when TP’s aren’t working properly–currently. As I understand the reports 80,000 paying customers are supporting the rest of the residents of SL–almost 7 million. I think rather than have a giveaway in traffic numbers to Lindens’ favorites, Linden should concentrate on the actual problems that occur with SL itself, I have been unable to access textures, crashing occurs frequently, building is impossible during peak times, and entire sims have disappeared for hours at a time.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think these issues need to be addressed before Linden makes decisions to artificially support traffic numbers for different groups. Some of us try to do well here, lately I have been discouraged with the way Linden has been “adjusting” things to accommodate the “world community”.
Slow-rez textures and a portal-master dude at Info Island.
Athene is plaintively describing how she sees the situation — and of course many others in her shoes — Lindens are once again not only competing with their own customers, they are selecting some customers they like better and putting them in highly-privileged positions for economic windfalls at others’ expense — at best — and the sort of grind and exhaustion that comes with heavy customer orientation without retention — at worst.
Athena and others like her feel as if they work hard for the money, pay a lot of tier, and are among the minority of land-owners and content-creators supporting “the 7 million sign-ups”. So they wonder why Linden even keeps content-rich sites siphoning off traffic to themselves, and why Linden picks only some businesses to handle newbies and doesn’t give others a crack at them — in realistic ways that don’t involve having to hire coders to make up special registration applications on the Internet or even have to staff WAs 24/7.
TECHNICAL CAPACITY FOR MANAGING NEWB INFLUX?
The arguments against opening this up to a wider list of newbie-helpers who would both help newbies and gain customers are the usual elitist and tekkie arguments — Gwyn Llewelyn will be along any minute now to explain patiently and a bit condescendingly that anyone who wants to can just go and get the open-source registration API and make their own community. But who has the capacity? And is that what it’s really about?
Two newbies in deep conversation, scorning their building classes and prim lessons, out in the Out Back.
Having followed this somewhat winding and twisting story over a year (Reuben nee Linden Steiger Millionsofus was the first to work on the concept), I have to say that almost without exception, these “welcome areas” didn’t come first, with their registration APIs, and THEN the Lindens picked them; the Lindens brought closer those who were already close, and urged them to get on board. (The exception is Anshe Chung Studios, which has long had a welcome hub and staff on hand to steer newbies to starter plots or various themed sims; Azure Islands, while smaller, has also created opportunities for newbies, but only just finished building a welcome area for this project today.).
L-word also does a great job of educating and orienting newbies interested in the Showtime television program about lesbians, and no doubt other Sheep-sponsored sims do as well — the proof will be in the pudding, however. I didn’t see a single one of these portals tonight with anything near the traffic of not only existing infohubs but also popular clubs and malls.
It’s clear what LL needs out of portals — but why are these businesses signing up? A company like ESC doesn’t really need newbies and their micropayments — they aren’t an inworld business. But what they do need is to be able to say to LL and their clients and backers that they can have mass consumer intake and management for…whatever it is that mass media and mass entertainment will have for the masses. That remains to be seen. We’re a long way from helping people take a box off their heads, people. We’re helping old media profit centers with diminishing advertising revenue in RL create profit centers in new media, in what is essentially the cost center of SL — cost center now, until people figure out the magic bullet for keeping customers.
A TRIP AROUND THE PORTALS
A quick trip around some of these so-called “community portals” revealed that some were far more rudimentary than the concept of a special customized API and experience would suggest. To my surprise, one thing I discovered was that both Anshe Chung and Guni Greenstein were missing from the People List [Update: this was apparently a glitch in the "search" function and reportedly a temporary problem with access via China Telecom, the ISP, but they are visible again]; the group Dreamland wasn’t working for chat (that SL bug happens to big groups a lot, and some are nearly dysfunctional at this point). No one at Dreamland could be roused, but they may be experiencing the password lock-out and billing problems that have plagued numerous denizens of the Metaverse these last few weeks. The orientation hub had plenty of self-explanatory information, however, and residents strolling around who simply volunteered answers. In my experience, when the group is working, staff response is pretty quick.
I was no longer able to make an alt — LL now not only demands your real email and real name, if you give it, it will give you a message telling you that it reserves the right to limits alts. But a resident was able to confirm that when people come to the basic Second Life sign-up page now, they will be directly taken to the “community portal”.
Naturally, I *did* wonder what happens when a non-lesbian is taken to L-word, and a non-basketfall fan is taken to NBA but I imagine that it can’t be worse than getting flying penises directed at your head in the WA, a common experience in the regular welcome areas. And NMC, if it feels its traffic is sagging, might consider re-naming itself the E-word and inviting lesbian basketball players to hang around its welcome area.
Traffic at welcome areas and infohubs has been way down lately, seemingly out of step with increasing sign-ups — which themselves still show a dip. It’s the time of year — and some say the negative press on topics like “ageplay” and casinos and griefing.
The irony of all of this is that the newbie windfall is now being directed mainly to companies that in fact have least need of micropayments to sustain themselves, as some of them live from real-life contracts outside of SL with real-life corporations, or have foundation grants. And I found from talking to a few that not only were they unprepared for a newbie influx, at least one commented frankly that the whole point of getting new customers is to increase business and income.
And rentals businesses like Dreamland or Azure — or for that matter my own company of Ravenglass — don’t have to especially funnel newbies — they come in droves, they drop out of the sky, and it’s really a matter of how much staff time and customization you can throw at them. Helping newbies is at first an expense, and only a return on investment if you help them retain. Still, the sheer numbers, especially of those coming in on a stream to friends or colleagues or communities of like-mindedness or nationality, are a significant revenue stream.
Those who participate in the program are likely to wave away any criticism by indicating that “anyone can join” and that “it’s a lot of work”. Of course, anyone can join if…they can clear the hurdle of making a registration API, and prove to LL that they can handle newbies — and the criteria for that isn’t clear.
Some welcome areas I found were empty of staff, or had one harried person still trying to finish building –it seems LL dithered for awhile then sprang this project on them. Others frankly said they weren’t sure what they’d do with the newbies, weren’t quite ready for them, and had merely responded to LL’s request to help with the overall orientation problem. Still others had been in existence for awhile and had lots of content waiting — but not many takers yet.
AZURE ISLANDS
I spoke with Adam Zaius, owner of Azure Islands, who is in the program. “There’s a random % of new signups being shown a page where they can pick a start location from anyone who’s got a regapi site up. There’s like 10 other places in the list at the moment, LL posted a rough list on the blog a few hours ago,” he said.
So as people sign up, they are randomly delivered to the “portals” where hopefully, their experience might be a little better and more intuitive and easier than the regular WAs. The infohubs that residents have designed with their own content and help cards are for the most part unstaffed — few groups in SL have the capacity to pay staff or manage volunteers except large businesses.
At a few of the new portal hubs I found the standard bland Linden issue for orientation, in the form of those wooden signboards that look like they came straight out of a parody of Camp Iwannalayu or something, making you expect a surprised beaver to pop up if you click on them.
INFO ISLAND
One, the Info Hub, run by SL Library 2.0, had someone called “a portal keeper” but he wasn’t dealing with *this* portal project and couldn’t answer my questions; my frustrated round of teeth-gritting over the non-intuitive SL Query interface was unable to garner any response from helpers lounging around in the area “on duty” and talking about RL stuff. I clicked on bunches of stuff and stared at boxy builds in the distance and read about events that didn’t grab me — and judging from the traffic, they weren’t grabbing a lot of other people, either.
BIG POND
At the Big Pond, the new Australian portal with 11 sims, I found traffic only in the 600s on most of the sims. Unlike every other portal I visited, however, this one was distinctly geared toward the actual fun things that people actually do in SL — as most of the masses come in do not go to the library and struggle with accessing queries and databases in laggy SL, and do not watch shows about lesbians on television, but go to heterosexual clubs and dance, or click on other activities like “fortunes” or “shopping”. The language/country sims, if they stick close to what people actually want to do, will likely do well, but it might turn out that the last thing that people want to do coming into SL is hang around on their own country’s island, they may wish to leave it as quickly as possible.
MISSION STATEMENT?
I discovered more than a distinct new paint smell in these hastily-built welcome areas in most places; although some had staff, their sense of purpose was not clear. When I asked one person why he had signed up to get newbies, he frankly replied, “I am not sure.” In another, it seemed the sim’s efforts were directed to a pre-existing community that they would get and retain regardless of — inspite of? — LL.
Asked if the portal concept was one they were happy with, one organizer who spoke on background only said he wasn’t sure if the idea would serve either LL or the organizations chosen; while able to serve their own constituencies, they might prove unable to cope with the raw flow of sign-ups off the secondlife.com website.
A BETTER WAY: OPEN REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS AND PERMISSION TO ADVERTISE IN WAs
Is there a better way? Sure. First, let companies with staff and deep pockets who can code up regapis make them and steer in their existing RL customers or filter out the Internet’s masses who self-select to come to their theme. Let them pay for and run their own WAs and share their data at least to LL — and better yet, to the general public. There aren’t enough of them to cope with the influx however and keep the masses happy — these groups selected, except for the rentals, represent niche interests groups or national language groups. But that’s not good enough to handle the whole crowd.
Next, put in more welcome areas — they are all overflowing when traffic is up and tend to be laggy. It’s a cut and paste job on any new sim — or even open up more to open bids for resident development. Then — and here’s the curiously controverial part — *Allow them to have advertising on billboards or signs in the areas, and to have recruiters*. In short, legalize the system of touters who take people to clubs or other activities, and encourage (instead of browbeat) the legions of eager advertisers in SL with services and goods for newbies who are happy to help them in the course of serving them as customers in their venues or stores.
*Let them advertise and organize welcome committees*.
If the advertising space is rotated if free and enough walls are provided, and and/or if there is a system where people can purchase the top spots the way they purchase classifieds, the market will be free and fair.
Sure, there will be sex palace madames trawling for escorts — but you get that anyway, and there will also be all kinds of other basic service companies as well as themed sims whose owners would be more than glad to put people out on a schedule they can manage to orient new people. By enabling residents to enter the newbie orientation project at any time, at any level, with any type of content, in as much or as little as they can muster, the Lindens could be harnessing a lot of strength and boosting the economy as a whole and really helping newbies, instead of steering newbies to their insider pals, harming the economy of people who used to get those newbies, and ultimately losing the newbies. Because here’s what Lindens need to hear about portals and newbies: the businesses already paying 80 percent of Linden Labs’ bottom line with land purchases and tier are the ones sustaining on their parcels the 40,000 concommitant logged-on avatars remaining in SL. Instead of stiffing these people by bypassing them with old and new business pals, let them at the newbie stream, too.
A more open system is unlikely to happen any time soon, however (I’m confident it will eventually) because a tiny minority of forums-gripers and connected oldbies will scream that allowing advertising of goods and services in the WAs and Orientation Islands is “commercialization” and “crass” and “bombarding da poor newbz with ads” and subjecting them to those evil sex clubs. Even if the Safer SL gang could keep them out, that other thing the Lindens and their friends fear just as much gross sex — crass mass commerce — would come in and *gasp* serve newbies and then ruin their NPR-like master plan.
Sooooo….instead, we get the uh…non-crass advertising of big corporations who are already the most successful in Second Life getting just handed for free the huge windfall of new customers. It’s the usual commerce SL-style, which is more reminiscent of state capitalism or oligarchy.
Except for the rentals companies, then, most of these companies have other agendas and concerns, from consulting business to education, which, while legitimate aren’t necessarily putting the needs of new customers first, or making them the center of a conscious business plan to serve customers.
And even if they work very hard at this, they will be competing with each other in the chaos of SL. The urbane podcasters who might want to land at NMC will contain some European lesbians who will be peeled away to L word and some b-ballers who flee NMC for NBC.
What would make more sense? what would be the way most RL companies or non-profits would handle a job like this involving a huge influx of people?
ALLOW ADVERTISING IN THE WELCOME AREAS
In addition to allowing a free market of goods and services flourish in welcome areas, publish a request for proposals, and create an open and transparent bidding system. Rather than just reach the same old friends on the well-worn rolladex, or new friends carefully cultivated for loyalty and “comfort level,” put up actually publicly accountable criteria for what needs to be accomplished. The time frame of 4-6 weeks is short, but enough to see some results — but the mission statement has to be stated clearly. Rentention of 2 percent more avatars within 60 days? Increase in LindEx purchases over 90 days? Higher attendance at classes? Whatever the metrics are, they should be put in the RFP.
The “control” for this experiment should not only be the welcome areas left to their own devices as usual with all the projectiles, but an interesting other element to put in would be non-RFP participants who just decide to get involved on their own. In fact, people with businesses who would like traffic and who have things to offer newbies should themselves simply turn out helpers now and increase their activity and show what *they* do to retain newbies and show LL their group lists or rentals lists or whatever it is they identify as metrics even if they are not professionally organized.
But here’s a pro-tip, Lindens: stop calling something like this “community”. No community was formed to decide this. No community spoke. No community was consulted. Some *businesses* that are your friends were pressed into service for your own goals. That’s fine — just don’t call that “community”.
Mark
Jun 6th, 2007
ZOMG COCO IS GONNA BE SOOOO MAD!
< << loyalty just cos I happened to pick this place to live.
>>> FIC OMG!
Round and round she goes and where she stops nobody knows!
Freddy
Jun 6th, 2007
Really odd choice for portals. Ten bucks says this ideas tanks. STA Travel? come on…
L2D
Jun 6th, 2007
At times when Prok writes dull rants like this, I wish that the Herald would stick to documenting furry porn.
Jessica Holyoke
Jun 6th, 2007
Prokofy you made some very good points about the difference in the Linden welcome experience and the upcoming commercial welcome experience. However, you made a mischaracterization in your article. You suggested that “there will be sex palace madames trawling for escorts.”
First, a brand new resident is not someone a club would want to hire due to their inexperience. Second, potential escorts come looking for clubs to work at, not the other way around.
Lucy Tornado
Jun 6th, 2007
Do SL Herald writers get paid by the column inch?
marilyn murphy
Jun 6th, 2007
bah! humbug!
i have a bit of sympathy for new people in sl, but, we all came thru this crap of learning the ropes here and stayed. so its just a 10% retention. if the figures cited in this article, (20k to 30k a day) is anywhere near the truth, a 10% retention would mean 2 or 3 hundred a day come and stay.
with such a poorly performing platform thats not bad actually.
if the lindens want to improve on that, how about just fixing whats broke. sorry, i know this is a broken record syndrom thing.
anyway, time will tell if this works out or not. as to picking certain companies over others, do we know if others applied or were offered this *opportunity?
shockwave yareach
Jun 6th, 2007
Well, it’s not that big a deal. Those groups listed already have Help and Getting Started areas built. So it’s understandable that you’d start with groups that ready to provide support today instead of building something. And as far as I know, nothing prevents any group like the Furries or the Goreans from getting their names on the board. Luskwood is already well known even among furs who aren’t on Second Life as the place to get your bearings and start from. I’m sure the Goreans and the Trekkies likewise have had some word-of-mouth advertisement through meets, forums, IRC, usenet and such. So I see no reason the SL communities should even bother – they already provide such services to their newcomers and don’t need to be on that board. It will be a rare person indeed who comes to SL thinking she’s a Gorean slave, but doesn’t already know which sim to go to in order to get started.
Besides, as the TOS and the world is changing beneath our feet, a number of fandoms seem to be on the Linden Sh*tl*st. Never mind that they were free labor for years and built SL in the first place, or that they put bread on LLs table when nobody else was paying. LL seems to have abandoned its creative friends and now wants to bed with rich businessmen who don’t want want us and our strange ideas around anymore.
hello world
Jun 6th, 2007
um…10% of 30k would be 3,000.
Katie Singh
Jun 6th, 2007
The L Word has been handling newbies for several months now. It’s like night and day compared to Lindens. They had (paid) greeters available to help people, but I think those might have gone away since the L-Words season ended.
Their signup portal will also search through the lastnames trying to find one for the first name you want, which if you have a popular name is a lifesaver.
Economic Mip
Jun 6th, 2007
These were not as odd as one might think for portals. Basically, the ESC corporation was aware of this change and convinced many of its corporate clients (including the NBA, L-Word, and STA Travel, and the Swedish Embassy) to build simplistic orientation islands. Apparently, if you start at one of these locations, you can also set your home position to it, but why you would want to I have no clue. Also, in my opinion the MoU orientations are worse than the new Linden Labs designs.
beladona Memorial
Jun 6th, 2007
Some time ago, I had applied to be an official newbie greeter — I never received a reply to that application. However, I have continued to work with newcomers that I find and have created a “help package” that I give out, and now a kiosk that can be used to give the packages out as well.
As others have said, we all went through the experience of learning the ropes — it is not intuitive and the learning curve can be sharp at times. OTOH, I truly enjoy showing that SL can be more than sex clubs, gambling, role play and griefing.
Tenshi Vielle
Jun 6th, 2007
I worked at the NBA portal last night helping newbies work their way around. I think this is a much, MUCH better way at introducing the n00bs to Second Life – having an older, more experienced user help them with basic navigations.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 6th, 2007
No, Lucy, we are not paid by the column inch. For me, it’s actually harder work to write something a lot shorter distilled from my many notes and interviews and such than it is to just post a long comment. I put headers in for the eye to skim if it proves fatiguing and I can only say this: Herald reporting is a thankless chore, not leading to glory, leading more often to scorn, and paid a grand sum of currently $3.70 US per article, i.e. 1000 Lindens.
Like many people, marilyn, I get my news from the Blingsider
: )
There, Tateru obsessively reports on sign-ups every day — it was 27,000 yesterday for example, taking the number of signs-ups for Second Life past the 7 million mark.
Yes, I don’t feel it’s bad at all if there’s 300 a day, and if it only gets 1-2 percent better from these rigged portals, that will be enough for LL to justify rigged portals, and not even notice if in fact the long-term retention doesn’t grow. This is what we call in the field a QIP — a quick-impact project like clinics for children or water wells, designed for show and tell, of the type the US government splashes around in Iraq or Afghanistan to make locals feel like their lives are improving and to convince donors that money isn’t disappearing into the sand.
When you ask a question like “Do we know if others applied, or did they have the opportunity,” you are not fathoming the Koan of Linden, my dear. The URL for the api has been “known” by those who not only “need to know” but “can find out by poking around and hanging in the IRC channel,” and in the Tao of Linden, that *is* having the opportunity. If you are retarded and didn’t make use of that opportunity, you are a lozer.
Were they *offered*? Well, I imagine that there was probably more than one convo between a Linden and a developer with some community or potential customer list behind their back that got more than a bit of arm-twisting. I have only a hunch about this, but I was actually surprised that in my interviews yesterday, I found that rather than preparing for this for months and being fully charged up to receive and adapt newbies, most of the people were not really that braced for newbies and were doing it more because LL had a program than because they objectively needed newbies.
And that’s why government-sponsored socialism as an exclusive solution always fails. That is, all new immigrants need an array of social services, some government supported as welfare, and some supported by non-profits, churches, business, etc.
What happens with this is that a government welfare program for corporations like “shuffling traffic to their friends’ businesses” as the poster said — giving them traffic and a rich customer stream — undermines the other independent, spontaneous, and *proven* truly community-based business and non-profits that were already handling newbies.
I don’t know all the specifics of New Citizens’ Incorporation, but they have daily traffic above 20,000 and have 4-5 islands which they’ve opened and sustained on their own through their own donations, and received newbies through their own advertising, word-of-mouth, and likely landmark givers in some Linden-sponsored orientation here and there (not sure).
They have a hugely dense and very experienced newbie orientation program — probably the best in SL — because it is run by people who want to be doing what they’re doing on their own land they pay for, not on free Linden land where they get free advertising by roping newbs into stores or clubs. Big difference in the dynamics.
You would think if LL’s goal was to retain newbies — just thinking out loud here! — they’d go to this proven, high-traffic, independent entity that all on its own, with no Linden help, already had 20,000 or more traffic a day with newbies galore, and a rapidly expanding operation. Or they’d go to something like furries who have proven to have the most referals. But no…
In fact, NCI just came up with a plan to have businesses advertise on billboards that aren’t crass and tasteless as everyone fears, that are integrated into the orientation environment, and they help sustain the tier and freebies offered — I was one who signed up. So it will be interesting how this model works at the same time as Lindens try their model — and unfortunate that Lindens couldn’t get past their ideology about fancy tekkie wiki regapi portal thingies to merely include a SLURL on their website to NCI in this program, even if NCI didn’t have the resources or desire to make a regapi.
Re: First, a brand new resident is not someone a club would want to hire due to their inexperience. Second, potential escorts come looking for clubs to work at, not the other way around.
Jessica, I, uh, can bow to your expertise in the escort business which I don’t share, but I’ve been in SL and probably spent way more quality hours and days in the telehubs and welcome areas than you have.
Did you read Time magazine last December? The celebrated Time magazine reporter logged on to SL to go start his exciting newbie experience and…got shanghaied to go to a club with a girl tout and later got propositioned. And his experience is merely emblematic of many. Of course clubs and malls and whatnot hang around the WAs trawling for newbies. Do I need to go there tonight and screenshot and chatlog it for you? Go yourself. Sure, you might have an experience, as other venue operators might have of being overwhelmed with applicants that come to you.
But there are gadzillions clubs and malls and casinos in SL, now more than ever absolutely desperate to advertise to stay alive, since Linden has cut them out of the search list for casino ads or explicit sex ads. If anything, we’ll see more of it. The ones on the top popular 20 list don’t have to do this; watch what happens when the Lindens pull traffic from search results, however.
TT
Jun 6th, 2007
Actually Marilyn, 10% of 20k to 30k would be 2k to 3k new residents a day, which is even more impressive. Of course, we then need to subtract those who are merely alts of existing residents, and since we don’t have this metric anywhere, no one has a clue about the real number of “unique typist” residents who join SL in a day.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 6th, 2007
These were not as odd as one might think for portals. Basically, the ESC corporation was aware of this change and convinced many of its corporate clients (including the NBA, L-Word, and STA Travel, and the Swedish Embassy) to build simplistic orientation islands. Apparently, if you start at one of these locations, you can also set your home position to it, but why you would want to I have no clue. Also, in my opinion the MoU orientations are worse than the new Linden Labs designs.
I didn’t say they were odd, Economic; the Sheep are the oldest and best friends of the Lindens and had this registration API ages ago. ESC built L-Word, NBA, and STA Travel; I’m not aware that MOU is in this portal offering, even though oddly enough it was Reuben’s project ages ago to have newbies steered on to 5 top island dealers so that newbies would find land and homes and help faster. That project never happened AFAIK.
What’s unusual about a project like this is its lack of openness. It’s not an open bidding process. Only a dozen are selected and feted — the usual story. There’s no RFP. There’s no criteria that even internally, let alone externally, one can judge success by.
Here’s a very short article on the Blingsider — short on information, but it shows the optics of the sign-up page:
http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/06/06/whats-a-community-registration-portal/
If you’re Brazilian, you will click the Brazilian one presumably, etc.
I was told that there is also *random distribution* by Adam Zaius. We all know how the “random distribution” works from the OI and HI now — a battle I’ve been waging for ages, trying to get them to iron out the problems of a script that repeatedly dumps the “randoms” in such a small rotating set of locations all on one place repeatedly, for days, sometimes, instead of balancing the load by sequencing, instead of randomness (it has to do with some tekkie’s infatuation with the concept of randomly-generated numbers, which are just less sexy than sequenced numbers).
The point about the 10 percent is taken, but we do have to keep in mind that corporations sign up with their own last name and get 100 accounts at a whack, and don’t even use them all.
Re: “I worked at the NBA portal last night helping newbies work their way around. I think this is a much, MUCH better way at introducing the n00bs to Second Life – having an older, more experienced user help them with basic navigations.”
So you were paid by ESC to be a newbie helper — I saw them advertise for “odd jobbers” on the list in the last few days. I think newbie helpers SHOULD be paid. It’s hard work. Trying to rely on a newbie volunteer system that was as corrupt and skewed as the mentors were just didn’t work — the lack of retention proves it.
Still, as you’re paid by the ESC (apparently), you will naturally love this program and think it works. What the public needs to do to judge the effectiveness of this program is to have slews of reporters going around and chosing newbies to follow their stories, and asking them over time what THEY say and see IF they retain. I doubt we have the resources for this. You wish places like SLNN would do this. I will try to do it anecdotally. But that’s the task at hand.
beladona, I don’t think they have the helper program anymore — it’s closed. And I think you are like many people who try to help newbies — everybody does and some are more selfless than others. The question is whether LL can sustain the people who do this anyway in meaningful ways, instead of only rewarding pets with windfalls.
re: “The L Word has been handling newbies for several months now. It’s like night and day compared to Lindens. They had (paid) greeters available to help people, but I think those might have gone away since the L-Words season ended.”
katie, I praised the L-word here on my new alt at the time:
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/01/lword_beats_the.html
They had paid greeters but also ESC, Showtime and L-word staff and celebs even coming to that sim and really putting in face time and grid time. That’s not sustainable without deep pockets.
I agree with Edward Castronova that when people say they want governance of the sort that helps newbies intensively, they want a customer-service state that even RL states find really hard to pay for and sustain — which is why big bureaucracies of the RL helpers of RL newbies — which range from infants to immigrants — often become corrupt and have their hands out to get your some social good like housing or a good school for your kid. The customer-service state is EXPENSIVE. Only big, wealthy, motivated corporations can pay for it. so if they can retain customers, by teaching them AND giving them something to do that LL can dub as “safe” — we can all turn the corner in the Metaverse, eh?
but instead, there are just too many competing interests. Educators want to educate not about how to use the platform but about digital media in general and other topics — basically a lot of new media folks are involved in political indoctrination, in my view. LL is too, which is why their goals dovetail, but aren’t synonymous, as LL also has a bottom line to meet, at least until they give up and become a non-profit lefty foundation devoted to social change through virtuality.
I had to sympathize with this woman who wrote nonchalantly on the threads to this announcement that she didn’t see why LL couldn’t help her recruit her RL bondage community pals to come into SL where she’d be happy to help them not only go through the torture of trying to fix your sliders in appearance mode (I’m paraphrasing here ha ha) but the torture she might have in her dungeons. I don’t think I’ll be surprised to find that even Jean “BDSM” Linden will be helping her out with this one.
BTW, I recall in seeing that old piece I did on L-word now that not all the orientation islands will be as scrubbed of sales and signs and stores as, say, Azure is — L-word most emphatically had its friends selling their wares.
Pro-tip kids — Linden corporate-sponsored welcome areas are the new telehubs: get your store in one, you will do fabulously.
Tenshi Vielle
Jun 6th, 2007
Ay-yi-yi, Prok, you use your *alts* to write on the Herald? Ouch.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 6th, 2007
Uh, nice try there, hon, but I *had* to use an alt back then because you could only get on that island then by joining up on that website. It was an obvious alt, if you look at the name of the poster, duh. I’d have no need to use alts to write for the Herald. Do you?
So, you’re working for the Sheep now?
Cocoanut Koala
Jun 6th, 2007
You’re right about that, Mark.
coco
Cocoanut Koala
Jun 6th, 2007
You’re right about that, Mark.
coco
Carl Metropolitan
Jun 6th, 2007
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“I don’t know all the specifics of New Citizens’ Incorporation, but they have daily traffic above 20,000 and have 4-5 islands which they’ve opened and sustained on their own through their own donations [...]”
Just a minor correction here. NCI/New Citizens Incorporated has campuses–not islands. In all, we have just over 50,000m2 spread across four NCI plazas, plus some dedicated classroom and server areas. I only wish we could afford a just one island.
Currently our biggest budget item is classes. We pay instructors the 500L$ per class hour taught–the standard instructor fee that LL used to pay up until December 9th of last year. As the overall number of classes available in SL has contracted, we’ve spent more and more of our efforts (thanks especially to Rainbow Drake, our Education Director) picking up the slack.
We spend a lesser amount on tier, as most of ours is donated. (If you would like to kick in some tier, contact me, or NCI Deputy Director, Tateru Nino.)
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“[...] and received newbies through their own advertising, word-of-mouth, and likely landmark givers in some Linden-sponsored orientation here and there (not sure).”
As far as I know we don’t have any official presence at any Linden-sponsored Orientation Island or Help Island. We do have a lot of mentors who use our resources to help people, and provide our LMs. Thereare a number of NCI LM-givers on privately owned land, as well.
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“They have a hugely dense and very experienced newbie orientation program — probably the best in SL — because it is run by people who want to be doing what they’re doing on their own land they pay for [...]”
Thank you.
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“You would think if LL’s goal was to retain newbies — just thinking out loud here! — they’d go to this proven, high-traffic, independent entity that all on its own, with no Linden help, already had 20,000 or more traffic a day with newbies galore, and a rapidly expanding operation.”
I think it may be an internal LL disconnect between the Marketing department and the Community department. I don’t know. On the other hand, since we’ve spent so much time and money coping with the loss of LL Educational funding, I’m not sure we could have put together what we needed for a quality full-on orientation program this last quarter. NCI is set up to be the next step after Orientation Island; not Orientation Island.
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“In fact, NCI just came up with a plan to have businesses advertise on billboards that aren’t crass and tasteless as everyone fears, that are integrated into the orientation environment, and they help sustain the tier and freebies offered — I was one who signed up.”
And if you want to sign up to have your message seen at NCI, IM Carl Metropolitan for more information and a rate card! (I Have No Shame.)
Carl Metropolitan
Jun 6th, 2007
Jessica Holyoke wrote:
“First, a brand new resident is not someone a club would want to hire due to their inexperience. Second, potential escorts come looking for clubs to work at, not the other way around.”
I know it seems counterintuitive, but it does happen. I’ve seen it in person. Including one “pimp” who was telling an obiviously uninterested new female resident that escorting was “how all the women in SL made money”. She logged off immediately. Smart woman. I wonder if she was one of the 10% retained?
Carl Metropolitan
Jun 6th, 2007
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“I don’t know all the specifics of New Citizens’ Incorporation, but they have daily traffic above 20,000 and have 4-5 islands which they’ve opened and sustained on their own through their own donations [...]”
Just a minor correction here. NCI/New Citizens Incorporated has campuses–not islands. In all, we have just over 50,000m2 spread across four NCI plazas, plus some dedicated classroom and server areas. I only wish we could afford a just one island.
Currently our biggest budget item is classes. We pay instructors the 500L$ per class hour taught–the standard instructor fee that LL used to pay up until December 9th of last year. As the overall number of classes available in SL has contracted, we’ve spent more and more of our efforts (thanks especially to Rainbow Drake, our Education Director) picking up the slack.
We spend a lesser amount on tier, as most of ours is donated. (If you would like to kick in some tier, contact me, or NCI Deputy Director, Tateru Nino.)
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“[...] and received newbies through their own advertising, word-of-mouth, and likely landmark givers in some Linden-sponsored orientation here and there (not sure).”
As far as I know we don’t have any official presence at any Linden-sponsored Orientation Island or Help Island. We do have a lot of mentors who use our resources to help people, and provide our LMs. Thereare a number of NCI LM-givers on privately owned land, as well.
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“They have a hugely dense and very experienced newbie orientation program — probably the best in SL — because it is run by people who want to be doing what they’re doing on their own land they pay for [...]”
Thank you.
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“You would think if LL’s goal was to retain newbies — just thinking out loud here! — they’d go to this proven, high-traffic, independent entity that all on its own, with no Linden help, already had 20,000 or more traffic a day with newbies galore, and a rapidly expanding operation.”
I think it may be an internal LL disconnect between the Marketing department and the Community department. I don’t know. On the other hand, since we’ve spent so much time and money coping with the loss of LL Educational funding, I’m not sure we could have put together what we needed for a quality full-on orientation program this last quarter. NCI is set up to be the next step after Orientation Island; not Orientation Island.
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“In fact, NCI just came up with a plan to have businesses advertise on billboards that aren’t crass and tasteless as everyone fears, that are integrated into the orientation environment, and they help sustain the tier and freebies offered — I was one who signed up.”
And if you want to sign up to have your message seen at NCI, IM Carl Metropolitan for more information and a rate card! (I Have No Shame.)
Prokofy Neva
Jun 6th, 2007
Carl, thanks for that update and information. I don’t see that you are formally in a landmark collection at Linden sites, but probably mentors informally distributed the landmark and you could probably get your landmark into these corporate-sponsored sites if you work at it — and I see it is there already on Azure’s board. I also have it on my newbie orientation cards and boards.
You are so touching, Carl, after all these years, talking innocently about a “disconnect” between Marketing and Community. *Sigh*. I wish I had your child-like trust in the system.
You make an interesting point about “the next step after Orientation Island”. There’s probably more than one step after that, too. A lot of the stuff the Lindens foist on people in terms of their intermidable fascination with prim-wrangling, texturing, etc. is only for let’s say the third-phase step where that 10 percent of people who can become competent content creators can go. I’ve always felt they and their partners are hobbled by the idea that SL is only for elites who are the developers. They are serving developers, yes, like themselves, junior partners, crowd-sourced geeks who can program and make stuff. The rest of us are an accident.
Thinking of this “next step” or “how you really use SL to do other stuff besides building and scripting,” I made Memory Bazaar in Ross because I wanted a resource place where people could always go and get the definitive instructions for how to group land, adjoin land, find a free vendor to set up a business, do everything they can to establish privacy and security in SL, etc. I thought if you had visual cues that reminded people of where they found the information, even if they didn’t keep it or lost the information or couldn’t get it to load again due to SL inventory problems, they could remember the room or place on the hub to go find it.
There are so many practical considerations in trying to organize a public educational effort because all of us tend to impose what we imagine are the “hard things” that people need to learn or “easy things” they’ll enjoy learning when in fact these can be quite different for different people.
Example: I figure the first thing people will do when they arrive is look at a sign, so hopefully it rezzes and that sign tells them the first thing they need to know: click on stuff.
Then after that, they click likely on the ground, which is front of them, so I make that question “What is a sim?” and its answer “Ross, the place you are at, the computer server, etc.” (Of course one in 10,000 visitors will be some snarky geek who IMs me and says but a server can hold more than one sim blah blah blah).
Gamerz and geeks might “just know” that you have to click on stuff — not everybody else does. They might fuss for ages about how to define sims and servers “properly” but the rest of us just need to now that a sim is what is on a server someplace.
(I’ll never forget having to write to the people who made the old Cyberflix Titanic game, that I simply couldn’t get out of the room on the first part of the game. It drove me mad. I kept trying to walk out of the room, or pressing on the door, or trying to sit on the chair and nothing worked. Finally I got back an email from some chortling game-god who told me, “You’d be surprised how many people ask that question” — and this email was also a source of unending glee for an old geeky friend of mine who constantly recalls this story to mock me to this day. It turned out that what you had to do was click on every goddamn thing everywhere all across the room, all its cupboards and pictures and stuff, over and over, sometimes in a sequence. Like, click on the postcard on the desk, then the desk drawer THEN the window and it explodes and you are out of the room. There is no way to “just know” this classic meme of games, however, if you don’t play them.)
Or take another example. Adam Zaius might have a brief notecard saying “looking for somewhere to go next? Try these places or use search with your interests to explore SL”.
I find that this seemingly simple sentence has to be broken down into a half dozen baby steps.
Where is search? It’s a button down there at the bottom of the screen where you can’t see it, yes, that one, mixed up with your Windows task bar possibly. Now click on that, then look up top your screen. See places? Oh, be sure to check off “search in mature”. No, look on the right side of the screen. No, you won’t see your keyword per se lined up, but lots of names of parcels that have your keyword in their description. etc.
And where are the cool places and where should you go? You might not be able, cold, to put your interest key word in search.
After all, when you arrive in Grand Central Station, you don’t face a blank screen and a keyboard and are tasked to type in a keyword for your interest like “bus stop” or “record store” or “movie theater” or “fun” (Pirate’s favourite task for SL searching).
Instead, you see *billboards* (gasp! imagine such stuff! They have in RL! wow!). And you see kiosks with maps, booklets, etc. Or you see hotdog vendors and even people walking with sandwich boards about computer classes you can take.
I often wish I could make Philip Linden get off the train in Grand Central and walk with me all over the station and then across 42nd Street to 8th avenue, to see what real life provides as cues and ways of finding stuff that is so unlike his notion of what Grand Central Station is that he always touts (has Philip ever BEEN to Grand Central Station???) I will even buy him a hotdog and introduce him to this great, groovy concept we have outside of California called ADVERTISING ON SIGNS.
These would be (http://grandcentralterminal.com/):
o ADVERTISING — billboards, signs, flyers, little stores with ads for free taste tests, etc.
o PEOPLE PRESENCE — an information guy in the booth who at least will tell you about trains, and the men’s room location
o STORES — carts, kiosks, storefronts, with the basics like maps, books, food, etc.
o BROCHURE RACKS — showing sites, places from historical monuments or things like the Empire State Building of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
o TOUR BUSES — yes, just like Cubey Terra-Linden used to have swooping into the newbie areas, real life has those double-decker red busses with the people crying out to come on their tour, which is free on some busses because they figure you will buy at some of the stops and they may get a cut, or which is low-cost enough to take around the city to acquaint yourself
o THINGS TO DO RIGHT NEARBY — the public library, the Broadway movie theaters, Bryant Park with book and CD stalls outdoors and a food court, etc.
o EVENTS inside the space, concerts, etc.
Contrast that with LindenWorld (TM)
o Huge, gaping 1920s-1930s style gigantist construction like Dore or annoyingly cutesie Camp construction like Waterhead (also from the 1930s Adirondack camp concept of Roosevelt, etc.) with acres of concrete plaza broken up by outdated Pathfinders’ Picks, irrelevant information about LindenVillage, and pushing of scripting and building classes (Grand Central is built in the last centuries’ monumental style too, but updated and more interesting with less awesome gigantism).
o A fishing game built by Ben Linden (RIP) with Mah Jong put out by Torley (people actually play it, but…)
o A sandbox where people tend to shoot and put out freebies
o Highly-active, intensely organized griefer groups who play sound clips, make stupid juvenile inside jokes and rez stuff like penises or turn on their automatic “tourette’s syndrome” script, etc.
o Uhhhhhh have I forgotten anything? Have you ever, in the years of your existence, been to an event organized by *residents* in a WA or Linden meeting space?
Well, you can’t duplicate RL in SL. The hotdogs don’t work, for example, which is a shame, and you can’t have the soft pretzels.
However, you can create things to do, stuff to click on, landmarks to other places. The other day I had this great rewarding experience of the kind one doesn’t often get in SL. I newbie who was drawing from my money tree and hanging out at Ross wrote me that he had taken his first few dollars and used them to upload a texture of his own creation, then he made a champagne bottle out of those new sculpted prim thingies. Not your typical newb, to be sure, but interesting. I’ll put it out in the Rekviem Cafe in Refugio if you want to check it out.
Nacon
Jun 6th, 2007
Prok said “That’s why I’m calling them “business portals” — they aren’t “community” portals when at least 3 were built by, and evidently still managed by the leading metaversal services company Electric Sheep, and the rest all relate to companies interested in this project as a business.”
Yeah yeah yeah… You always feel like that because ESC is part of it. Here’s a thing, Prok, when you want to take a stand about how it shouldn’t be called “community”… keep in mind, you don’t have any “community”, not even yourself counts. And of course, they owns their own sims and servers, you’re just feeling upset because you’re too poor to make a difference or even having a “community”. You’re just not worth to have a “community” with you, so speak for yourself.
Of course you’re just writing this because you’re “Herald” reporter, duty to speak for the readers.. but still not a real one either. Too many people still hate your ill gut because you don’t know when to shut up.
(btw, are you just now ditching your “Herald” friend, Tenshi? Hahaha, what a world.)
Jessica Holyoke
Jun 6th, 2007
Prok, the example you gave of a girl enticing a new resident to a club and then propositioning them is different than the example you gave in your article.
Carl, That type of behavior you’ve described is why I hate pimps and pimp-like (pimpanoid?) residents, which I have seen in SL.
At the same time, many residents are directed to stripping/escorting as a possible early income stream. But I’ll put it to the forum, beyond camping, hippie pay, gambling and money trees, is there a better way to earn money in SL prior to someone learning the SL creative arts or by investing RL money into SL?
shockwave yareach
Jun 6th, 2007
And yet Prok, this “newb” is clearly one of the technocrati and self-created developers you seem to loathe so much. He makes things, so he must be part of the FIC class. After all, he can do things that most residents cannot, which is blatantly unfair. Right?
bubbles
Jun 6th, 2007
SL, LL, FIC, tekiwikiphiles run the world. Prokofy hates them. They hates Prokofy. Prokofy is screwed. Sorry Prokofy.
Carl Metropolitan
Jun 6th, 2007
Prokofy Neva wrote:
“You are so touching, Carl, after all these years, talking innocently about a “disconnect” between Marketing and Community. *Sigh*. I wish I had your child-like trust in the system.”
That’s not childlike trust; that’s assuming organizational incompetance. A polite way of saying that LL’s left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, and isn’t really all that clear on if there is even a right hand.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 7th, 2007
And yet Prok, this “newb” is clearly one of the technocrati and self-created developers you seem to loathe so much. He makes things, so he must be part of the FIC class. After all, he can do things that most residents cannot, which is blatantly unfair. Right?
shockwave, you must read Second Citizen too much or not read my long posts. The FIC isn’t “allt hose who are technocrati and self-created developers”. The FIC is those who are those things *and behave like arrogant dicks lording it over others, and actively trying to discriminate against them and seek rites and rituals of favouritism for their class vis-a-vis Linden Lab*.
The FIC or people I criticize (not “hate”) aren’t “all technically proficient people” or “all talented people” but some of the people in those classes of residents who also advocate that others should be activtely discouraged from a level playing field.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 7th, 2007
>Yeah yeah yeah… You always feel like that because ESC is part of it.
I think it’s important for the free media to keep a watch on big business, yes. In RL as in SL.
>Here’s a thing, Prok, when you want to take a stand about how it shouldn’t be called “community”… keep in mind, you don’t have any “community”, not even yourself counts.
Actually, I do, but it’s not for me to persuade you. There are many communities in SL. You’re not the judge.
>And of course, they owns their own sims and servers, you’re just feeling upset because you’re too poor to make a difference or even having a “community”. You’re just not worth to have a “community” with you, so speak for yourself.
Again, this is merely your tendentious and bilious judgement, not “reality”.
>Of course you’re just writing this because you’re “Herald” reporter, duty to speak for the readers.. but still not a real one either. Too many people still hate your ill gut because you don’t know when to shut up.
Yes, I realize it’s a geeky Internetoid concept now, that we see in this case of Jason Calacanis, the blogger, that reporters from RL media asking for telephone interviews, for example, are challenged that they “don’t represent the public” and have no authority. Like…bloggers do lol?
Of course the free media has already represented the public’s right to know. The failure of a new generation of tekkies schooled on the Internet and fatuous social media junk thinking to get this is really a grave liability for this generation that will have a huge impact that will ultimately bite them in the ass.
>(btw, are you just now ditching your “Herald” friend, Tenshi? Hahaha, what a world.)
Tenshi has never been my friend, anywhere. I don’t know what she means by her “friend” in her ranting on SC, it must be someone else.
Being in the “community” called the “Herald pool of reporters” confers no tribal bonhomie and espirt de corps that you might imagine. Uri barely tolerates me, for example, and has never bought me a RL drink, not even a Diet Coke. Pixeleen recently bought rats and let them loose in the Herald office and they nibble at my Lime Tostata chips, which has been really icky.
shockwave yareach
Jun 7th, 2007
Prok: Never been to second citizen, no. I base my views on you solely on what you yourself write, here and here alone. You seem to strongly dislike anyone who can do something everyone else cannot. Or at least you dislike businesses which some of these creative types form, even though they provide a number of people real money for their labors. I can’t help but wonder if you dislike Honda because they can make a car while you (and I) cannot.
That a kid can come out of nowhere and start building with the same tools everyone else has, and make something marketable, shows a very level playing field to me. And a pretty sharp newbie, too. The system may not be perfect, but it’s far closer to it than RL. You would not believe the cost of the tools needed to be an electronic hobbiest or professional these days.
Ouchquack
Jun 7th, 2007
Prok… I love you… but 3700+ words?
I made it through the first 1000 or so, and really liked what you had to say. Even your opinions.
But, my god, 3700 words? At some point that’s abusing your readers and it detracts heavily from what you are saying. You are better than that.
Nacon
Jun 7th, 2007
Prok said “Actually, I do, but it’s not for me to persuade you.”
HAHHAHAHA! I was expecting you would say that. Now let me dig you up from your grave.
Is the FIC people, that you made up, always against you, is your “community”?
All the Herald people which you said “Being in the “community” called the “Herald pool of reporters” confers no tribal bonhomie and espirt de corps that you might imagine” is your “community”? (duh, from your statement, no)
All the people who rants and posts against you in Herald is your “community”?
All the people from SC forum is your “community”?
All the people you play with at Tingo or Sligno, whom only want to win more money… is your “community”?
All the goons and morons from W-Hat, for some likes to dress up like you with a Nazi uniform on… is your “community”?
Clearly, you don’t have any “community” except one… The people who rents from your lands… is your community.
Oops! shouldn’t you call that “Business Portal”? If renting is not your business, then what the hell is it?
Now let me push you back in your own grave where you’ve gotten into.
Prok said “Again, this is merely your tendentious and bilious judgement, not “reality”.”
Right, that’s what you thought, but my judgement is merely based on your own judgement about how they should do their business. Ever heard of term “the Sucka Punch”?
Prokofy Neva
Jun 7th, 2007
>Prok… I love you… but 3700+ words?
I made it through the first 1000 or so, and really liked what you had to say. Even your opinions.
>But, my god, 3700 words? At some point that’s abusing your readers and it detracts heavily from what you are saying. You are better than that
Don’t be silly. Nobody is required to read my long texts. They can skim anything longer than their hand if they have attention issues.
And I simply disagree. I’m not here to play Joe Pulitzer Prize Winning journalist for winning news stories in the mass media vein. I’m here to keep the public record. At the opening of a controversial Linden project, I’ve travelled to many of the sites, talked to their developers, and recorded what is happening.
I’ve also recorded the reaction on the forums, and outlined all the policy issues. I think it’s great. I like to think I could follow in the fine traditions of I.F. Stone, whom I knew and used to talk to occasionally. He would have those densely-packed newsletters in columns with voluminous documents he’d dig up from testimony on the Hill and such — I’d like to be the I.F. Stone of Second Life, but of course, I’m a mere pale imitation. If only Izzy were alive today. He’d love to pour over chatlogs and mine them, I have no doubt.
I think it’s an important service. It’s not for everybody, and that’s why they can stop reading after the first page with the nut graphs. And if they keep reading, they can skim headlines in bold.
If it weren’t for the descriptions of the trips around the portals, and the policy recommendations, it could be half as long. Or it could be a 3-part series. But who would want a three-part series?
Normally I put long pieces on my own blog precisely to avoid having people like you bitch. But I feel some issues are just so hugely important for the public to know about and weigh in on that I post them here.
Jessica, you suffer from a very bad case of tekkie literalism. Pan out, broaden your mind, and try to grasp that both are true, and neither are contradictions and they are in the same genre. To what purpose your trying to pry them apart and claim some discrepancy in their particulars, when they are in the same genre???
1. Madames troll Welcome Areas to recruit dancers and escorts. Or existing dancers recruit new dancers. They catch them, take them back to the club, hire them.
2. The Time reporter happened to get hit on by one of these touts, brought to a club, and propositioned. Go and read it.
Now, both of these are the same thing in essence and in outcome -- newbies are shanghaied by girls or madames trying to get them into clubs, and get them paying escorts OR get them into sexual relationships that may not initially be about payment, but involve getting the girl a house, clothing, etc. Potential clients of the girls are also shanghaied and propositioned. *Same genre*.
Both of these types of incidents spell out the same thing: clubs and girls with little empires of sex work and sugar daddy relationships as well as pimps recruiting both girls and their potential clients from WAs. My God, why on earth is this so hard for you to admit??? Seriously, what is you PURPOSE in trying to pry apart two examples illustrating the different sides of the same *genre*, merely to be a little annoying mosquito trying to focus on the different facets of these two shanghaiing incidents???
shockwave, you still aren't getting it, though it was already spelled out, so let's try again, shall we?
>Prok: Never been to second citizen, no. I base my views on you solely on what you yourself write, here and here alone. You seem to strongly dislike anyone who can do something everyone else cannot.
No, that’s silly. I admire all kinds of people in SL who do wonderous tekkie and artistic things. Here’s the difference: those who do this, and yet behave like dicks to other people, arrogant assholes, people who behave badly.
Example: I am putting a picture into SC, and it won’t go in, I’m forgetting exactly what the trick is from Photobucket, which I haven’t used in a while, and on SC, where I don’t post that often, except in self defense, and where picture uploading isn’t the routine it is for all those half-assed kitty posters.
So as I’m trying to put this in, and refreshing a few times and not getting it, this loser who lives in his mom’s basement, Taco Rubio, this loser whose chief claim to fame in SL is making the Upskirt Museum, is sitting there with nothing better to do than refresh his own page, watching me to struggle to upload a picture. He waits until it is in place, then snottily and arrogantly posts something like “Theeerre you go! The Internet is sooo hard, isn’t it!” with dripping sarcasm and superiority.
What a dick! I mean, honestly, can’t you get that? It’s not about *all* technically proficient people. It’s about people like THAT, people like Taco Rubio who shine on this superior shit, and take great evil glee in the fact that you might have a hard time with some little bit of rote technical learning on the Internet ilke IMG or URL or whatsis on a picture. I mean, Jesus, like it’s a big deal to try to humiliate or ridicule a person for??? That someone would have time, and the evil energy of will to harass you like that? They need to be slapped for behaving like that. Can you see the issue?
>Or at least you dislike businesses which some of these creative types form, even though they provide a number of people real money for their labors. I can’t help but wonder if you dislike Honda because they can make a car while you (and I) cannot.
That’s just plain retarded, and you are being dense and literalist in your thinking. Why would I care if Honda can make a car and I can’t? The world exists as a vast exchange of goods and services. If anything, the FIC can’t accept that diversity of goods and services and some of them, like Cristiano, are always beating up on land barons (in that regard it’s funny to hear him rant about Catherine Cotton’s critique, when his has been even more hysterical).
That SL is so stratified and hierarchical is an aberration. That some people find themselves feeling superior is an aberration, not the norm.
>That a kid can come out of nowhere and start building with the same tools everyone else has, and make something marketable, shows a very level playing field to me. And a pretty sharp newbie, too.
No, not really, because he can master the tools, but not get into the star machine and the FIC. And what’s to be resented about him, if he does get to the top of the heap isn’t his skills or his Horatio Alger story, but his being a dick and being condescending and stepping on others. It’s all about the evil glee.
>The system may not be perfect, but it’s far closer to it than RL. You would not believe the cost of the tools needed to be an electronic hobbiest or professional these days.
Yes, we all have a cheap hobby with SL.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 7th, 2007
Um, ever heard the term “windmilling”?
I don’t play Slingo or Tringo; never have, never will.
I participate in all kinds of communities of all sorts. It’s not for me to persuade a non-entity on a forums who imagines he has delivered “suckah punches” *stifles horse laugh*.
Nacon
Jun 7th, 2007
Prok said “It’s not for me to persuade a non-entity on a forums who imagines he has delivered “suckah punches” *stifles horse laugh*.”
Well that’s too late now, don’t you think? Cause you already posted. (idiot)
Prok said “I don’t play Slingo or Tringo; never have, never will.”
Yeah, I know, thanks for proving my point. (double sucka?)
Prok said “I participate in all kinds of communities of all sorts.”
Care to list them out before you truly say what you believe about your “community”?
Prok said “Um, ever heard the term “windmilling”?”
Yup. Kinda a pity in your case, actually. All that ill manner to have attention-desire in forum and posting crap.
Keep posting, Porky, it’s funny.
shockwave yareach
Jun 8th, 2007
Prok:
then your issue is with people behaving like assholes. Not all those people in the oft mentioned but never seen FIC. I have no issue with that – SL does seem to have more than its fair share of twits and punks in it. But whoever this Taco is, what about him makes him part of this uber-techy FIC? The ability to upload a picture? His being an ass to you? Or does he have a company which has access to hidden parts of the SL servers’ databases?
Not everyone with tech skill is a jackass and not every jackass is someone with tech skill. I’ll admit there is a sort of heirarchy in tech circles, yes. It goes:
knows nothing
beginner
amateur
journeyman/pro-am
master/professional
expert
In general, folks limit their tech talk to those one above or one below their own level. This isn’t because of an elitest attitude so much as it is difficult to communicate well if the skill level is too far apart. For example: Amateurs can demonstrate getting started ideas to beginners and help them learn enough to grow and progress, whereas an expert has moved so far beyond such times that he’s hard pressed to remember basics which are now second nature to him.
You don’t find 20 year tenured professors of English teaching 1st grade reading – it’s the exact same thing. You can have people who know nothing come up and ask for help, sure. But about the only thing the experts can do to help the virgin programmer is point them to primers and examples and tell them to learn the basics. This isn’t egalitarianism though I can see how one who is outside the tech world could misconstrue it as such. It’s merely a huge difference in skill level.
And quite a few of us teach scripting and building to newcomers. Taught a physics lesson yesterday after installing the elevator in RCFM, in fact.
Faerie Hax
Jun 17th, 2007
You said: …”The language/country sims, if they stick close to what people actually want to do, will likely do well, but it might turn out that the last thing that people want to do coming into SL is hang around on their own country’s island, they may wish to leave it as quickly as possible.”….
The language and country based sims have one big advantage over “regular” sims: timezone.
As an Australian many so called “popular” places are deserted when I visit them and hold events at times that are impossible for me to attend. So in desperation I started looking up Australian places just to find places with people in them who weren’t camping.
If the language/country sims are half decent then they have a large advantage when it comes to attrcting people from their own timezone!