I don’t normally involve myself in the Linden policy changes, but the xStreetsl.com changes on pricing and in particular freebies has greatly stirred me up. That’s not news, most of the blogosphere is up in arms (or are they armed?) about the freebies policy. My viewpoint is not from a creator’s view, but that of a consumer affected by such a policy, however.
Below I have also included a couple of good links towards finding out more about the policy and how it may affect you also.
As solely a consumer and one who makes as much purchases through xstreetsl.com as through in-world stores and vendors, I’ve noticed a drastic and negative movement in my own shopping experience through xstreetsl.com since the announcement of this policy change on the SL Official blog last week. I’ve received notice after notice of some of my own personally favourite retailers pulling their stuff from xstreet, and I’ve consequently also noticed that I am shopping less myself.
Now, I’m not a freebie kind of person. I don’t search for freebies on xstreet, nor do I often search for them in-world. I don’t belong to the Freebies groups in-world, or travel the MM or lucky-chair streams, or camp out for several hours or minutes for the sake of a gift. You will occasionally find me waiting around or blogging about MM or lucky chairs that are relevant to my own interests, but on a day by day basis, I am a high consumer and payer for quality goods. I spend a lot.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the quality freebies and cheaper merchandise that creators have put up in-world and on xstreetsl.com. On xstreet I have previously found a fantastic metal campervan, and a really good barn prefab for free. Those ones which I have found, I’ve gone to take a look at the creators stuff in-world also. Whether they intended their freebies to work as advertising or not. I prefer to think that they were actually gifts to show the quality of their creations, and as a thank-you for my own interest.
What I will say is that xstreetsl.com gave me a better search and find facility than anything I can find in-world. In-world, I often struggle to find anything I want. Even when I know the retailer name I’m looking for, I would give it only a 50% chance of me finding the store SLurl on searching for that store name.
Take my current quest for ear-muffs, for instance. In-world the search facility is just about useless, as it’s case sensitive and specific and therefore I can’t do more advanced searching. Trying to think of the possible permuations about how somebody may have put the word ‘ear muffs’, ‘earmuffs’, ‘ear warmers’, etc into the thing is privy to insanity and fruitless with it. And that’s if the designer thought to include the words in their store advert in the first place.
Even when my lucky choice of keywords bears fruit in the in-world search, chances are that when I arrive at the store itself, the goods have been long-gone and taken out of stock. Of the five stores using ‘Ear Muffs’ in their search words, four of them no longer appear to sell these at all. I wasted all of several hours on Friday tp’ing around on a gooseless wild chase in-world.
On xstreetsl.com, if I search for ‘ear muffs’ and find them there, at least I know I can buy the product off that page. Immediately. And I can compare immediately between retailers and features. And in doing so I am introduced to designers and new designers who I may never encounter in-world. But now the newer designers are about to be hit for higher fees on xStreet also.
No, with many cheaper products and freebies being pulled, xstreetsl’s whole value has dropped for me. Already, and only a few days after the announcement. With so many content creators now understandably boycotting xStreetsl.com because Linden deigns their goods are not selling enough, the market for everything from dresses to prefabs to – yes, dare I say it – ear muffs, just got horrifically worse for this laptop pixel shopper.
[Update] I have added a link to the official blog thread, where you can post a comment. What worries me particularly on that thread is the fact that the discussions in principle, plus the Office Hours announcements are suggested by the Lindens that these have taken place on the Merchants forum for Second Life. As a consumer, that means I have little chance of even knowing about such policies and their potential impact on me, if such changes are announced and discussed in a forum I’m not part of.
So, diatribe over with, and now onto the links.
- You will find the xstreetsl.com policy changes discussed all over the net and blogstreams.
- A good discussion of the issue, which also bullet points the changes and supposed objectives of the decision can be found at Ordinal Malaprop’s blog.
- There is a website setup to fight the proposed changes called Fashion Without Freebies (the name seems to counter what they are about, in that I actually want fashion – with – freebies) but…There is a petition on the site also.
- Or You can simply add to the thread on the official blog
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