Aribeth Zelin

How I got to SL [back in the dim misties, before RL knocked me away]...

I didn't do MMOs even until I was in the TSO beta. At first, it seemed to have promise. I could have some land and build, then share it with others. Then the MMO grinders convinced someone that you had to make it a grind and force social - so it became a place where it seemed the only way to get anywhere is live somewhere with 7 other people and all this other crap.... So, I left, right as it went live. I wanted the Sims, not a grind.

Then I found the Second Life beta. My first reaction was that it was what TSO should have been. I remember being able to claim some land, and build whatever I wanted. But then I moved so I didn't actually get a normal account until spring 04. I played for a while on that account, then about a year later, RL seperated me from a computer for a few months, they changed my password, I no longer had that email and it wasn't until 09 that I got the account back.

I tried to come back a few times, but things had changed so much that I never stuck with it for long. Once I got my original account back, though, I finally stuck it out.

But builders of course come for social - if nothing else, the sharing of ideas, the sharing of builds are both social endeavors.

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Faerycat Designs In World -Marketplace 1- Marketplace 2

Beezle Warburton

I just fixed that again, myself.

Kaspersky's anti-banner is really enthusiastic.

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Little Lost Linden

I've seen a few make it into the Destination Guide before. Just last week a camping sim called Arab Girls was on the Destination Guide.

I still don't understand how they are filtering it, but I never saw QMRNA show up on the guide and it was the busiest bot sim for a month. Made it pretty high on Hamlet's top 25, but never to the guide as far as I could tell, but I could have missed it easily enough I suppose.

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Steve Decker

Thanks, I have not really paid attention to the market but I am about to finish a market place village, but I was going to mix in entertainment and ballroom dancing to help bring traffic in and see about getting any new attendance involved in hunts. But I am completely winging this project, it is the first village I have ever done. Let’s hope it is a temporary slump but I will work with the people help create a little buzz.

But what I have seen across the highway there is a little shopping mall and the only time I have seen the owner there is when a hunt was going on, but it just so happens to be a dead part of mainland and I hardly see anybody around, so I was wondering have people just run out of steam?

Eboni Khan

Personally, I always see excellent returns on my advertising on SLU. My campaigns in the past few months have been very successful and the Christmas gift card ad response was amazing. I think that the issue a lot people have with seeing returns on ads is the ads. SLU has the most eyes on of any SL site, probably more than even regular forums. If your ads are not working for you, you need to look at the ads. Dancing bimbos get a lot of attention

Lupo Ellison

My sales started a really bad trend in the 2nd half of the last year. In the end, I removed my two homestead bridges and docks store 2 months ago and removed all the Marketplace pages.
Don't know why I stopped the business. One day simply I did it.
I'm keeping in world, unsupported by sales, my 600m long Golden Gate Bridge reproduction, wich is on the Destination Guide and had more than 22.000 visitors since last august.
I'm building mesh on Blender and I'm a little frustrated because few people only see meshes properly, so I'm not sure to start a new mesh building business until all residents can see objects instead of spheres.
I think there is less enthusiasm/creativity in SL compared to the past times, or maybe it is only a personal state of mind.

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Lupo Ellison

Ann Otoole

Maybe look at the products too. People don't buy what they don't want. My sales are doing fine with no advertising at all outside of search keywords. If they want it they will find you. If what you have is not wanted then no sale. That is the first rule of marketing. (Eboni has lots of delicious must have so of course Eboni does well lol)

Elysium Hynes

God man you are totally obessed with arab sims.

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Grandma Bates

Whoa! God-Man is here? The same one as found at TOM THE DANCING BUG: God-Man, in "The Seeds of Discontent!" - Boing Boing ?

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"From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1+1=2." - Principia Mathematica, Russel and Whitehead, page 379 (1st ed.)

Maggie

I'm still trying to figure out his obsession with bots. I figured it was just a SL fetish thing so I wasn't going to ask.

DanielRavenNest

A general concern for too many bots is sensible. They don't go shopping, so give a false sense of the health of Second Life when you look at concurrency stats, and they add needless overhead to the Linden server farms. The Lab took a half step to deal with the concern by requiring them to register as scripted agents. But we cannot tell if a given avatar is registered that way, and bot users have a disincentive to register them because they then don't count for parcel stats.

An obsession with bots, though, is unhealthy. If someone is being abusive with bots (excessive use of sim resources), then report them, and let the Lab deal with it. If it's an unconnected private estate and they own it, they are paying for the right to fill it with bots, or whatever else they want, so should be left alone. LLL has shown by posts here that it is overexcitible - the frequent "Holy Moly" comments for example (I fail to see what is holy about the element Molybdenum). Some people are just that way. Annoying, perhaps, but harmless. Add it to your ignore list if you find it too annoying. I like SLU for it's diversity and only have one person on ignore (Mr. B, for being immature, rude, and boring all at the same time), but others may want to be more liberal with their ignore list.

Anya Ristow

The answer is, No, they don't. LL, shame on you.

The destination guide is directing people who have taken the time to try out their platform to creepy, lonely, frustrating, surreal experiences full of gesture spam, random words and a constant stream of stupid noises.

You wanna know why business is down? It's because LL can't be arsed to put someone in-world to see how the systems they put in place are made shit by hucksters who will fuck with LL's own livelihood for the hopeless pursuit of pennies in potential tips.

Elysium Hynes

Like any infohub them?

ETA: for people who find what they believe to be bots, report them as such and move on.

Naiki

I report non existent DG places to LL and they have them removed within 24 hours. If its somewhere thats bots only, drop the editor a SLURL and explanation. Dont know if it will get taken down, but works with missing venues that have closed and are still in the guide.

KrashBangBoom

Blame SLM! It is like a terminal disease. The only way to succeed in SL now is to cheat like crazy and to lowball on the marketplace. Merchants who cheat have to spend more money cheating so therefore you are seeing a drop in ad dollars while merchants who lowball do not have the income to afford ads. Add to this that Ads have almost no effect on sales because few people shop in world. As a matter of fact I found less ads increased my income drastically.

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I am extremely flexible as long as I get exactly what I want!

Alice Klinger

Ok there comes a(nother) honest answer to the question at hand.
Yeah, marketplace sales are rising rapidly.
Inworld sales are comparably slow and the difference is growing since ... viewer 2 became the default. But then again, events help. Advertisement helps.
And I was just too busy to produce new ads to post on SLU. I shall improve already! I am glad at least one keeps a proper forum open. Thanks!
Anyways, it is all viewer 2 and 3 's fault!!!

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Little Lost Linden

Indeed, it was a half step, and that is the main reason the problem still exists to this day.

Linden Lab believes nobody should be filing AR reports for bots due to the enforcement policy. If an unconnected private estate has the bots in order to game the traffic numbers, however, it is against TOS for the sim owner to do that. I guess it would have to be proven if the sim owner was attempting to game the numbers or just play with 30-40 bots for months on end. But when very large numbers of bots are on sims for months in the same place, many times it is because the sim owner is trying to game the traffic numbers in search, or the destination guide, etc. As of late, I really don't think they do the last part there anymore of monitoring the search results. I've had my account locked for reporting bot nests before, as have others. It's a unique predicament.

Enforcement Policy:
"Linden Lab routinely looks at search results, and will treat use of bots to gain an unfair search advantage as an abuse issue. You do not need to file an abuse report for violations; Linden Lab monitors the search results."
"Using bots to "game" traffic is not allowed. You may not attempt to gain an unfair advantage in search results through the use of bots to inflate the traffic for a parcel. This policy applies to both mainland and private estates since both are represented in search."
Linden Lab Official:Bot policy - Second Life Wiki

Elysium Hynes

Again dude if you find bots report them period. You sound totally obessed with bots, it´s none of your business how many people have on their lands, report them and move on, you are starting to sound like a stalker.