I missed this little paragraph on my first reading of Rodvik's end-of-the-year message -- and then I saw it on my second or third reading and thought, hmmm, but it didn't really creep up on me until a few friends inworld started saying, "You know, it's not the certification thing that has me worried, it's this business policy stuff."
Exactly. Certification is bad, and widens the gulf between the classes of SL and shrinks the economy and makes it tilt way more toward that 1/99 percent stuff that Occupy Wall Street rants on about.
But what the hell is this other stuff?
"In addition, our service and quality focus in 2012 also means that we will be delivering features and policies that we believe will significantly assist merchants and landowners in running a business more profitably."
Now, that could be just some anodyne, innocuous thing about having accounts go back more than 30 days, the way the used to, in the early days of Second Life. Or some little thing like that.
But in the hands of the Lindens, you can't assume that.
That's because virtually every new policy they've put out has been devastating, debilitating and scarring to the business community -- and when it is a correction for past crimes (like the ad farms policy), it comes so far after the fact of massive damage that it only reinforces the sense of evil cynicism. My own take on their method is something I called PainPoint (TM) years ago -- and I think we can expect the same.
People make predictions that seem wildly off like mine (although they contain essential truths) precisely because there is so little articulation of the mission and plans from the Lab.
I mean, why put a vague and disconcerting statement like that out there?
It's not like there is some *other* virtual world with a realistic economy (!) that is peering over your shoulder breathlessly awaiting your every development to *themselves* come up with, an, um, boost to "significantly assist merchants and landowners in running a business more profitably" -- such that you have to keep *your* plan a big secret due to competition *snort*.
Come, now.
Deltango Vale is pulling his hair out on the forums. Although he's a prime-A forums asshole who has lorded over people and driven many people batty with his arrogant bullshit, he has a certain point when it comes to complaining about the lack of information and roadmapping, given the hard work that he has done for years, building pet schemes that soak gullible goofs like me into shedding their Lindens endlessly to keep fairies fed in their fairy glades, content with only the very occasional rare that might sell now for something like $250 in the farmers' markets (down from their glory days of $3000).
It's hard to believe that he might actually have *lost* money soaking his fellow avatars of their pet funds, but perhaps he lost *some*. Everyone has.
What would be fair, when you have people making and selling stuff like this online in a world is to consult with them, even debate with them these policies (and the Lindens used to do a lot more of that than now, certainly).
This new profit-making (yeah, right) policy will likely involve certification of merchants, too. The lure will be things like a faster cashout (it can take 5-10 days or longer to cash out from Linden Lab and many people have gone over to VirWox as a result -- they are efficient and instant), perhaps special advertising boosts as they already do for some special friends, perhaps special other somethings.
But you'll forgive me if I don't see anything coming down the pipeline that is *something that will actually make us a profit*. That is, make us lose less money or have to work less hard for it. Of course, there are some in the very thin layer of "Positive Monthly Linden Flow" businesses that make $2000 US or even $5000 or more, but that's not the vast majority of SL businesses which are more likely in the $10-50-500-1000 range, max, and usually at the lower ends.
I'm trying to think of what other awful thing might be coming such as to try to prepare for it. See, that's how you get with this dysfunctional and abusive relationship. Naturally, if you don't like it, you should leave, and some have.We get that. But some people do continue to work at the definition of insanity, banging their head against the wall, because they believe firmly that there *is* sanity somewhere in this set-up.
What would REALLY help people have higher profits? Only lower tier.The Lindens have absolutely no reason to lower tier. Their costs have not gone down. The price of server rentals is not about the price of steel objects that may have reduced in price in recent years. It's the price of their labour and expertise. It's the price of their building of the contiguous world with its real-time interactive, search, customer service, content. That is indeed what it costs. It costs that much. They have enough people who have shown up for that price. They have absolutely no reason to lower it. They announced that they're keeping it the same, merely to give people another year of stability, given the instability that their developmental spasms like mesh or the viewer tinkering cause. That's all.
Deltango whines again about VAT -- but that's ridiculous. Nobody should have to pay for his European socialism. He has to pay for that, not us. If he can't compete against Americans who have then lower costs for SL (in theory), he has to factor that if he is in this full-time, he doesn't have health or education costs that Americans have. Furthermore, serious, professional SL businesses can write off their expenses and therefore not have the expense of VAT that others who don't register and go through the documentation needed.
But is there anything else that would help people make better profits?
As we've seen the creator-fascists are willing to call for users being *locked out of SL* unless they switch to a viewer that can see mesh so that they can buy the meshies mesh stuff. Ugh!
But what else would work?
Here are little doable things -- they may involve programming, but it can't be that serious, and some of them only involve political will:
1. Better record keeping and history -- any business will stop losses, even if they don't increase profits, when they can manage the books better. It's a fucking chore to have to download the Excel file and then remember to rename it something that won't get overwritten by the next download. Banks give you three months or a year. Why can't LL? It doesn't really take up that much server space. They could even offer it, the way banks do, not as pages to turn but PDF files. But it would help to be able to see trends over time.
2. Tagging ability for accounts -- currently, in order to get your accounts to have some tag, you have to have the object you are selling or the rentomatic or whatever named a certain way. Then you have to manually watch for it. But it would be great if you could tag the accounts as you went through them, or could use scripts to tag items in basic ways, like "business expense" (when you buy something for your business) or "Christmas discount special" or whatever.
3. Fix search --still little and big problems.
4. Make it easier to find and make classifieds on viewer 3.
5. PUT ADVERTISING BOARDS IN THE INFOHUBS AND WELCOME AREAS. I've said this for 7 years. Put them along Linden roads, too. This could make a huge difference in both giving newbies "something to do" and giving merchants willing to serve newbies especially better access to customers. Idiots like Pussy Catnip or whatever the fuck her name is, is calling for the *closure* of infohubs (I remember when I had to remove her when she bustled all over ours and put prims teleporting people to her little newbie center and store parcel LOL -- that's what it's all about.)
But most people get it about the need for advertising hoardings, and they can be done tastefully. They used to be there! Even in their much hippier days, the Lindens had them in all the infohubs.
6. Make the cashout faster -- instant would be best. IF there is certification -- and I'm not for it -- then it shouldn't be accepted by merchants unless they get *at least* that. In fact, I'm for having this for those with X volume of sales anyway.
7. Make direct landing to your sim on a SLURL without having to go through orientation or infohubs. This is basic. Infohubs are good and should be kept. But customization should also be allowed. The Lindens wouldn't grant this before, and should. They wouldn't because they wanted control over the population. They wanted to groom and track them. The Communitiy Gateway thing that required a reg-api and approval by the Lindens with certain conditions, i.e. staff available 24/7, is not what I'm talking about. That might be good to bring back, too, but I'm talking about simply the ability to get past the bullshit at orientation that impedes so many people (and may be responsible for as many as 99 out of 100 not staying in SL, according to Tateru's sketchy sources). People with projects and programs and offerings should be able to land newbies right in their lap, without all the crap in betwee.
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