Not that there’s much of anything in there just yet, but hopefully my ‘freebie’ will do as well through slapt.me as it has been doing through xstreet. Which reminds me that I need to finish putting together 2 more freebies I’d been planning…

It is frustrating that at present there are still many things I do not see on Slapt.me, but I do plan to start using it as a starting point for searching just to give it some support.

Your point that Slapt.me is about much more than adult content is well-taken; clearly, however, the adult materials are going to be an important, and potentially contentious part of what you carry. I am greatly reassured by your suggestion that the Market Place will not tolerate items designed for sexualized age play, and that it will abide by LL’s own determinations about what is or is not prohibited in Second Life.

And I look forward to some of those forum debates.

I have sent you an IM in world

I agree with you that LL heavily advertise Xstreet, however we are not Xstreet we are slapt.me and over time I am sure people will come to us as well as they get fed up with the restrictive practises that LL seem to be applying in many areas. Also Xstreet has been around for a long time and is well established even before LL brought them out. So here at slapt.me we have a lot to prove to you merchants and customers, so that we can earn your trust and respect, but that does not come overnight

As you rightly say it never hurts to have another outlet for your products as a merchant. Believe me when I tell you that we are working very hard at ensuring that slapt.me is being marketed hard and aggresively in the market place. Our growth rate is getting better steadily we are seeing a 50% growth rate each month in users on the site, we have a sign up rate of an average of 20 people a day and that has climbed since last month as it was an average of 10 a day. Our merchants are starting to report sales of their items as well.

Its not going to be massive sales each and every day at present we are not so silly to think that However we are seeing growth in all areas and as long as that continues then I know I am doing something right

slapt.me will only become a success via its merchants and customers, as you guys and girls are and always will be the life blood of the site as I have said and always will say that if it was not for the merchants and customers then slapt.me is just a bunch of code on some expensive servers that I own lol. That is why we are listening to everything that you tell us good or bad, we will discuss it in the forums and work with you all to facilitate any changes we need to make to make slapt.me even better. We will always be open and honest with, we have nothing to hide from anyone, Honesty is our policy here at slapt.me, if its on the table then if we are doing it wrong we can correct it and if we doing right then we can make it even better

We have just started our 3rd month with being open as a market place and if things continue growing as they are in all areas, then I truely believe slapt.me has a rosey future, as long as we continue doing what we are doing and working with you all, to develop a site that you as merchants and customers can be proud to be a part of

“6.a:The following is a definition of what is NOT covered under these guidelines, and that which is not allowed to be uploaded or posted on this website under any circumstances:

* Explicit sexual material depicting minors (person(s) under the legal age, mental, or physical capacity to give consent)”

We WILL NOT tolerate this material on our site whatsoever and in any form as it could potentially open a can of worms for our company, even though we are based in Holland. Sexualised ageplay is NOT and WILL NOT ever be allowed on slapt.me.

Adult content however is allowed, if it is legal and allowed in SL then we will not censor it on slapt.me. We will welcome anybody to the site as long as the few rules that we have are followed, but slapt.me is NOT all about adult content and adult content merchants as you can see from the many things that are going onto the site now from various merchants. We are like Xstreet was before LL started to slap all the adult content rules on it. Its been said that it is paypals fault for the adult section on Xstreet, however after running a successful RL online adult product shop before we sold it on, we used paypal for most of our transactions for RL dildos, vibrators, etc. etc. and only once did paypal ask us to remove a product from sale via paypal and that was a vacumn bed of all things lol so paypal are not so anti adult content as I can attest

As far as the age verification process, what we have on our wiki is what has been known since the open BETA started with the age verification system and was blogged about extensively then. In fact I even asked Cyn Linden at a Brown Bag meeting I was at, what LL intended to do about the fact it was so flakey, and she replied that LL cannot do anything about it. We had hoped that by using the slapt.me wiki and making an open mockery about the verification system LL would rethink it, but we should have known that they wouldn’t attempt to fix it

We also state in our TOS that:

“2.a: Eligibility to hold an account with slapt.me.

This Agreement must be completed, understood and agreed to by an adult of at least 18 years of age who holds the Second Life avatar Account the account is being created for. By accepting this agreement you represent that you are an adult 18 years of age or older and hold the relevant Second Life account.”

and also before going anywhere on the site from the main page we warn:

“18+ Warning

This web site contains mature content designed for and by adults. There are discussions and images which should not be viewed by those who are not considered adults in their particular geopolitical reality. If you are under the age of maturity, dislike or do not enjoy images, products or topics having to do with 18+ matters or are incapable of separating artistic fantasy from reality, Please leave this site.”

Only SL avatars can sign up and use slapt.me due to our sign up proceedure, where they have to validate their account against an in-world terminal before they can sign in and use the site. The same in fact as Xstreet. We cannot do anything more than this I am afraid, however if LL change the rules then we will adapt slapt.me accordingly, but we will not censor people as censorship is a bad way to go IMHO

We are not here to buck the rules aginst LL, we feel that we can offer merchants an open and honest environment to sell their products as Xstreet once offered. We are also not a hobby outfit, we are a legally registered company here in Holland and subject to the same legal rules as any other company here in this great country and we own our own dedicated servers here as well. Holland is just a bit more relaxed about things than some other countries We will also ensure that as LL changes the rules, we will adpat within the definitions of their rules whilst staying totally independent. We will not take sides either on matters as I have said, if its legal in SL then its legal on slapt.me

Thanks for the kind comments on our openness but this is how we set ourselves up. We believe that all parties and groups that are legal in SL have a place on slapt.me, it is not my position to judge anyone, even if at times our opinions differ and we hope that with this openness people will join us and be able to have a voice once again and discuss what is important to them within SL without being censored. So I look forward to seeing you on our forums as well for some interesting debates

LS

That said, I’ll probably be making an account on Slapt just because more exposure can never hurt, but I honestly don’t see how any independent shopping site could rival Xstreet. The only advantage you really have is less censorship on adult items, which is important, but the majority of the SL population doesn’t really care.

Some detail from one of the group’s founders on this would be greatly appreciated.

I also would like to say a word or two in praise of Slapt.me, and in particular, of Lord Sullivan. I am far from being entirely in sympathy with much of what Slapt.me is endeavouring to support — namely the violent pornography and content that falls within its mandate — but I have to commend Slapt.me for its principles of openness and accessibility, as well as for its responsiveness. When I discovered, some weeks ago, that the position of the SL Left Unity Feminist Network on the new Adult content regulations had been mischaracterized in the Wiki, I mentioned this to Lord via the SL Residents Answers forum. He immediately removed the misrepresentation and went so far as to note that there was available space on the Wiki for other groups, not excluding a feminist group that was likely to be opposed to at least some of the content endorsed or supported by Slapt.me.

I was impressed. This kind of openness will undoubtedly serve the Market Place well; more importantly, from my perspective, it speaks well to Slapt.me’s sensitivity to the issue of “community” and democracy overall.

Well said Stroker! I haven’t known Constanza for very long but she seems wonderfully capable and willing to listen to the needs of her customers, as I am sure the rest of the team is too, and I also believe that this site will one day outperform XStreet. Let’s hope the SL community will all pull together and help make this happen

We are not a fly by night set up and intend to be here for the long run as an independent market place not under LL control, even Blondin Linden commented on the slapt.me wiki and said what an excellent resource it is we are a fully registered Dutch company and run our operations from an excellent data center here in Amsterdam.

We will not sell out to LL as SL merchants need a market place such as ours, as a place they can help shape and be proud of and we will always listen to the merchants and customers because without them slapt.me is just a bunch of code on some expensive servers