Akimeta had the fortune of working with Stormie Frua recently in the creation of her sim, Trashy Cats. Two main build areas were created to spec based on the general concept Stormie was looking for and the style of work she wanted to house inside. The surrounding area was also landscaped by Akimeta.

You can also take part in some of the broadcasts on the SLCC sims, named SLCC 1 thru 4.

Sell orders over the past few weeks have been elevated to begin with, and were made worse with the lay-off announcements from Linden Lab earlier last week. While best sell orders averaged between $259-260 for the better part of a year and a half, orders at 261-262 became common place over the past week. Today, L$/USD crept up from 264 to 270, to 280, as high as L$303/USD until orders were quietly cancelled, going from $303/USD back up to around $280-281/USD.

Things are still stabilizing and it remains unclear whether the remaining small orders will be resolved by the end of the day – Orders span from 280/USD up to 262/USD rather thinly, but there still seems to be a lot of movement, albeit in small steps.

Was this fueled by panic though? Or was there more to it?

Having watched the numbers climb over the afternoon, one or two noticable orders frequently appeared and disappeared from the market. They would always reappear at a significantly higher rate – far beyond the existing best sell rate – always in quantities that were sure *not* to be filled very quickly, especially since buy orders have been relatively low. Seeing these higher numbers caused others to put their sell orders in at relatively poor rates of exchange as well, driving panic in the marketplace. My own speculation on the matter is that it was very deliberate and intended to ramp up the buy order numbers so as to get an abnormally cheap buy rate to purchase L$.

So what does this really mean for consumers and business owners?

I think the knee-jerk reaction is for folks to try and cash out as soon as possible  – I see a lot of people putting in small sell orders – $50-200K orders at a time, when the existing best sell rate doesn’t even have a high volume ($3-4M-ish). Consider this – a volume of $80-90 million L usually takes about a day and a half – sometimes less than a day depending on the time of the month – to run through.  To see many small orders – at amounts not all that much different at a slightly worse rate than the existing best rate – shows that a lot of people are panicking because they quite possibly think the sky is falling and don’t know what else to do but get their money out as soon as possible. Realistically, however, if those same people just chose to allow L$ to sell off naturally, they would still get their USD within the day.

It’s also likely people will start pricing their items higher to account for inflation – this may be a poor choice, however, as higher prices despite a lower L$/USD value are likely to discourage sales. On the other hand, what is likely to spur sales is either no change in cost to the consumer (in which case a cheaper L/USD exchange will mean cheaper cost to the consumer) *OR* a sale of existing items to increase the likelihood of impulse buys (with the decreased L/USD value doubling the incentive!).

It’s highly likely that, by the end of today, we will still have a rate that is substantially higher than the L$264 we started off with, but above and beyond all this, it is important for folks to calm down, stop thinking about the SL Apocalypse, and either take measures to improve movement in the market (increase sales) or to support fellow residents and get a good deal while you’re at it.

So there you have it. Grab your towel. Relax. Support the SL market if you can, and most important of all, Don’t Panic.

It asked about things like advertising budgets, total monthly income from business, advertising on sites like XStreet SL, third parties, in-world classifieds, graphic ads and targetted ads, and has raised some very pertinent concerns relating to privacy and intrusiveness of advert content.

On website advertising:

I’ve always found the ad offerings on Xstreet to be poor.  The ads are sized to a 15 year old standard that doesn’t take in to account the fact that consumer computer screens are now much larger than 640×480 or 800×600.  They’re simply too small to focus on the content  – the best ads i’ve seen at that size have always been for individual products only.  Additionally, they don’t offer more modern animated graphics; animated gifs do not use a very wide gamut of colour and this severely impairs the quality of the ad and the perceived quality of the product being sold.

I also found the pricing for Xstreet SL’s banner advertising to be ill-proportioned to the returns.  Click-throughs always were far lower than expected and once impressions ran out (typically within hours) the advertising run would be done.  There is no control over the rate of exposure.

I have advertised elsewhere – specifically on SL Universe because the graphic sizes allowed are larger, different formats are allowed, and the merchant is free to choose the degree to which their advertisement is shown to their audience over a week, two week or monthly period. Additionally, SL Universe is built around an invested community and word of mouth; this seems to do far more than simply slapping up a sliver of a banner somewhere and hoping for the best.

On in-world advertising:

I currently run a small number of classified ads. They put my stores on the radar for the items people want, and that’s the bare minimum I use them for. I don’t have a budget for trying to drive huge numbers of traffic to my stores and I am dubious as to whether it would translate to sales in the first place. Every week, 8 merchants spend a ridiculous amount of money to get on the top 8 in search…  this is something well outside of my reach or inclination to participate in. I have also felt the need to avoid those top 8 stores as their popularity breeds ubiquity, which I dislike.

For the moment, the majority of my classified ads are $50 -51L. There IS one that goes as high as $1001L, but that’s only to keep my business on the first page of listings in the classified tab.

As far as in-client advertising, I am very much opposed to any ads outside of search and classified listings.  There’s a big reason for this – as not only a business owner but a consumer as well, I would prefer my SL experience to be as unencumbered by advertising as possible. Ads that target keywords (such as interests in a profile, chat history) or demographics (private info that is SUPPOSED to be kept private) are highly intrusive, not removable and NOT the impression of my business i wish my potential customers to have.

The new huge sidebar is already unwieldy and intrusive… adding to that mess would only make things worse.

On targeted advertising:

As I mentioned above, targeted ads were a big part of the survey. Specifically, it touched on issues such as targeting ads towards both avatar and real gender, as well as RL location and age.

Personally, I don’t feel good about this at all.

These are all items SL users agreed to give LL in confidence that they would be kept private. On top of that, as avatars in Second Life are often used for a variety of purposes, targeted advertising based on one or two factors may not at all be appropriate.  Additionally, the more a given population is assaulted by unwanted advertisements, the poorer their impression of my business will be.

The ONLY area i would be comfortable with targeted advertising would be association of previously viewed and previously purchased items as long as confined to areas where this was previously already offered, such as XStreet SL.

General thoughts:

Overall, I think a big part of this is a cash grab to try to directly monetize the viewer.  It also really overlooks the fact that a large number of areas within the existing system continue to be gamed and made useless by unscrupulous merchants. Adding more venues for advertisement, such as the MOTD and additional ads offered directly through the viewer will be the road towards pushing users away from business as well as the platform entirely.

I think there IS merit towards focusing on advertising, however special care needs to be taken in order to keep personal consumer details private and inaccessible to third parties.

There are also areas where SL needs fixing rather than plastering over. Consider:

- Search relevance still correlates to traffic numbers. Traffic is STILL gamed for this reason and will continue to be, regardless of whether bots and camping chairs are removed or not.

- Search relevance does not associate terms in titles and descriptions with items actually sold on the premises – as such, keyword gaming continues to be an issue.

- The biggest boon to merchants is word of mouth, be it through SL sponsored means, third party websites or from Resident to Resident communication. The new blog/forum software has pretty much removed what close community there once was on the old forums and is basically a disorganized mess very few people are willing to wade through to get the resources they need. Shutting down organized accessibility to SL as a community has been detrimental, in my opinion. Blogs aren’t an adequate replacement for forums, and forums aren’t an adequate replacement for blogs. The scrapping of the forums entirely and push towards mass use of a primarily linear format of communication has not been condusive towards community building at all.

Wow. How time flies!

Ozimals has finally passed from Open Beta to full release as of today! Official release happened at 12PM and the Magic of Oz and Ozimals sims have been abuzz ever since. Preview of bunnies is happening in the Magic of Oz location, while the bunny pairs themselves can be purchased at the Ozimals sim or on XStreet if you don’t want to brave the throngs of folks who have been barraging the sims all day. Be sure to pick up food and water while you’re there.

It’s been awesome watching the Ozimals team take my sculpts and textures and adding their magic to them, culinating in 6 breeds, even more varieties, and endless enjoyment. It’s been great working with you all and I hope the very best for the Ozimals!

With that said, while I do hold sympathy for these individuals, I can understand where Linden Lab is coming from with their changes (though the presentation of the changes really wasn’t all that well thought out in the initial blog post).

To me, listing on XStreet is pretty much like setting up a satellite store or listing in a web catalogue, through which potential customers can browse and access my store, either through a purchase or by hitting up one of the SLurls located in my listings.  The cost, even with the new changes, is less than the commission fee at some malls (occasionally edging up in to the 15-20% range). It will cost me about $860L a month – less than $4USD – to keep my listings active. This is far far less than I have spent on advertising with various third party sites in the past – and with Xstreet i have a relatively good indicator of sales from the website leading to sales in world.

I see a lot of people upset that their mostly Xstreet inventory will soon be crushed and they have no other source of L$ income… to that I say Xstreet isn’t a good replacement for an in-world business. It doesn’t offer the user the opportunity to intuitively shop around and compare pricing, or seek immediate input from shopping friends. It doesn’t offer the ability to see products ‘in the round’, and it offers absolutely no opportunity for the user to customize or effectively brand their set of products for an active marketplace beyond a very visually limiting set of vendor graphics.There are probably a bulk of other issues i could harp on as far as usability is concerned, but those can be reserved for an entirely separate article.

What Xstreet DOES do effectively is offer the ability to make impulse purchases in situations where they might not be able to access SL immediately.  As with most services, there is a cost for that convenience, and this is where Xstreet *must* consider itself a business (or at least a part of one) in order to function and operate profitably. Let’s not forget – a system based purely on commission fees nets far less where a large percentage of merchants list free or low priced items.  I will guarantee that you will never find a commission-based mall that allows its tenants to sell only freebies – it simply won’t support tier and does nothing to promote the visibility or quality of items being sold.

I understand the drive to provide free items to the community. I even offer a few freebies in-world myself.  I would however also be more than willing to pay for quality work and wish that the same held true for a larger populace .  The problem is that freebie culture is pervasive and almost becoming expected when the costs in time and money are not factored in. When it comes to freebies in SL, there’s an implication that the item costs nothing to anyone.

But in the end, is that really true?  It costs time to make it.  It costs the user time to find it. If hosted in world, it might be hosted on some sort of free land arrangement, but someone has to pay for the tier.  If hosted on SLX, why should this be any different?  While it’s cool that the creator will ultimately wish for a freebie to cost the recipient nothing, someone will nonetheless have to pay for the venue in which the item appears, be it in SL or on the web.

Stroker posted an abbreviated list of creators who had been stolen from, but encouraged folks who thought they might have been stolen from to check.  I did so and was thankful that my work had not been.

But as the week wore on, I’ve seen at least two other instances where theives have been caught red-handed trying to sell items that were acquired using the same exploit.

This, of course, doesn’t define all of the situations involving stolen material – there are many other ways in which items can be stolen – the degree to which this is going on far exceeds just a little recreational dabbling too.  Earlier this year I had the unpleasant task of following up on a large group of thieves who had a huge network of alts and associated groups for passing around stolen material. The list of names and groups I was able to confirm spanned two handwritten pages by the time i was done, and I’m quite sure I missed at least a few.

That was only one group – thieves pop up like gophers and just about as frequently. Within a few weeks, I had another case on my hands. I have heard some designers in busier fields (such as clothing or skins) have to file DMCAs daily for this reason.

So apart from filing a DMCA and hoping for the best, what can one do?

Law suits

Well, Stroker and Munchflower are undertaking a class action suit against LL… it’s been interesting to see how that progresses, to be honest. I’m not sure that it’s ultimately the best route to take, but I can certainly understand the frustration and need to see LL do something about theft. LL seems to be trying to put up a fight in the interim, but i really do hope the suit encourages the company to do the right thing and put in place a more definitive and enforced means of copyright and trademark protection.

Boycotts

Of course it goes without saying that everyone should do the responsible thing and boycott sellers of copied content… but this refers to something different.

Various other bloggers organized a two day boycott which insisted that content creators should shut down their stores in protest and not spend L$ on anything or upload any textures to aid in item creation during that time. The aim, ostensibly, was to make Linden Lab notice that content creators were unhappy and to attempt to impact the Lindex through a decrease in L$ purchase.

This would not be the first time such a protest had been put together. For those who were in SL back about this time in 2006, you might recall that some businesses closed shop in protest upon the discovery of Copybot.  LL did eventually change the Terms of Service and put out a blog notice saying that the use of Copybot for nefarious purposes was forbidden… but time’s passed, and it’s still here.

In fact there are a few  other tools around that circumvent permissions set by content creators, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be going away any time soon.  Moreover, a protest encouraging participants not to patronize genuine content creators for two days does nothing but harm the genuine content creators.  Conversely, requiring that participating creators not make any uploads to aid their business doesn’t make sense either.  Second Life has simply grown too large for any such protest to make much of an impact on the general populace, as large as the forum and blog community may appear to be. The Lindex also likely sees very little effect when any sort of boycott goes on anymore, also based on sheer volume.

Let’s not forget; whether a boycott runs or not, tier payment dates won’t go away in the interim. Which is more important? Closing up shop and punishing one’s self in a giant pity party, while losing potential revenue to pay for tier or being proactive about encouraging purchase from the real deal?

Anti-Boycotts

A short term alternative several other bloggers and content creators put together in opposition to this boycott had to do with special sales promoting purchase of original content.  In my opinion, probably a better choice.  I think most of the creators who did this have been pretty happy with the results.  Which is great and has really gotten awareness about buying original content over copied out there… but this is certainly not something that can be pulled off on a constant or long term basis.

What else?

If I could name a set of attributes these thieves always lack when compared to the original creators, it’s a conscience, creativity, skill or self-esteem.

They will take anything, new or old, which they believe will sell or will benefit them in some way, even if it means they do it just because they can. Or they might do it just to give away for free as some means of getting them higher on the social ladder amongst noobs who don’t know any better. They don’t care that real creators spend endless hours working on products which only cost a dollar here or there to the individual customer. They don’t care that those sales sometimes add up and can provide genuine creators with a reasonable sum of money, be it enough to cover tier, pocket change, rent, or perhaps more.

They lack creativity because they wouldn’t be monkeying other people and passing off this ripped content on their own if they had a creative bone in their body. If they had creativity, it would drive them to develop skill, which they also evidently don’t have, judging from the lack of additional work that goes in, or the overall shoddy job done to cover up the crime.

Their lack of self-esteem is covered up by a false sense of security that they can never be caught (this in part is part and parcel of the general ease by which alts can be created and start the whole process over again), but ultimately if they had self-esteem about their own content creation, they would spark creativity of their own and subsequently skill and motivation to fuel the overall creative process and make money of their own.

But these individuals will, more often than not, never reach that sort of understanding.

So here is where genuine content creators excel;  continuing to produce quality work that pushes the limits, establishing a reputation and recognizable product line, becoming involved with the community, enlisting in the help of fellows and patrons to fight theft, and lastly (but by no means least), holding Linden Lab to their legal obligation to the Resident base to protect intellectual content.

Bunnies

Most recently, the bunny project that I and quite a number of other creators have been working on for months was copybotted, modified in an attempt to subvert a DMCA takedown, and re-uploaded.  The copied product was slated to head in to beta soon; all functionality described was practically identical to our product – the bunnies even hop about the same way.  You could click each bunny and have it return identical stats to the ones made by Ozimals – right down to breed, variant, food levels, energy, etc.

Talk about lack of integrity.

There are discussions elsewhere that branch off in many other tangents and demand proof, complaining that news of the theft is hearsay – I can assure you that there is very definitely proof. And much like is mentioned in that that thread on SLU, I can recognize exactly what mediocre modifications were done to my work after it was ripped off and re-uploaded. I don’t really want to discuss it in detail because 1) I’m talking about the bigger picture here, 2) Ozimals is still in talks with their lawyer and it’s not up to me to disclose evidence, 3) the content has been taken down as per DMCA, 4) i actually don’t really have the time to become mired in an internet debate with people who by necessity aren’t privy to all the information.

Suffice it to say that we ran in to a stumbling block, but we have no intention of letting it throw us off our path. I still have lots of stuff to work on for this project and should it be well received, I will continue to.  I’m optimistic for the success of the product and truly believe that it will do well.

I am a tad late writing about this – Last night, Ozimals’ Bunnies went open beta, with this release on Xstreet , which you can also find in world here.  The project represents hundreds of hours from the creative team (of which I am happy to be a part) as well as countless more from beta testers who have stuck with the program since closed beta opened up in September. If all goes well, the open beta will lead to full release within 7-10 days.

The enthusiasm concerning the bunnies has been really positive so far, and I hope the projects will see the success it deserves!

For more information, check out the Ozimals website or drop by their in-world store, where you can view some samples as well as join the update group.

HMVS Cerberus project for US Navy

Tamsin Davidson, Manager of Pivotal Galleries in Melbourne, recently dropped me some info about an upcoming art exhibition featuring one of the ships I reproduced for the US Navy some time back. If you’re in the area, the show runs from October 7-18 2009 and features a number of new and old paintings. It is being held to benefit recovery efforts for this historic vessel.

More info behind the cut.

You may know of the 1868 Ironclad Monitor HMVS Cerberus, currently a breakwater off Black Rock near Melbourne, that was the genesis of the design of most major battleships 1870-1906 & of the ongoing campaign to save, & eventually to restore, this unique piece of Australian, and world, maritime heritage.

Time is now very much running out for Cerberus in that she needs outside bracing to avoid a major collapse that will end all chance of saving her. As part of effort to save her Pivotal Galleries of Bridge Rd Richmond, in association with Friends of the Cerberus, is putting on a special Save the Cerberus Art Exhibition, 7-18 October 2009.

The Exhibition will include many new original artworks on aspects of Cerberus by leading contemporary Australian Artists, including members of The Australian Society of Marine Artists. A proportion of all sales will go to the Save the Cerberus campaign. Those who purchase a painting will also get a special certificate & complimentary membership of the ‘Victorian Navy’. Original paintings will be available for purchase from the Pivotal Galleries website & membership of the ‘Victorian Navy’ is open to those outside Australia.

The exhibition will also feature 19th Century paintings of Cerberus, photographs, a large model of the ship & artifacts from Cerberus, including a huge 10 inch shell. The Grand Opening at 6.30pm on the 7th October 2009 will include several VIP Guests & volunteers from the ‘Victorian Navy’ in full 19th Century Naval rig.

Pivotal Galleries & Friends of the Cerberus would like to invite you & your members to come along & support this worthy maritime Victorian charity. This is an opportunity for the community to really get behind the campaign to save a unique piece of Australian maritime heritage.

Links below contain further details.
Tamsin Davidson
Manager Pivotal Galleries

www.cerberus.com.au/index.html

www.pivotalgalleries.com/Base_Page.htm

groups.yahoo.com/group/RoyalNavy_from_1789/