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Linden Lab Bought the Web-Based Marketplace for Second Life Because Actually Shopping in SL is Such a Laggy Mess (Comment of the Week)

SL Marketplace Amazon

Good conversation on the SL Marketplace and the argument that it helped "kill" Second Life by becoming an Amazon-like web giant that crushed in-world stores — including this comment from oldbie insider Flipper PA:

Disclaimer: I was the founder and coder of SLBoutique.com, one of the original web-based SL marketplaces. I eventually sold it to an in-world company, that in turn, sold it to Linden Lab to become part of the current SL Marketplace.

Some of the impetus behind the original marketplaces (SLExchange, SecondServer, and SLBoutique) was to counteract the "scourge" of in-world malls. There were many complaints in the early days of SL about in-world shopping areas (and clubs) creating massive lag, being eye sores, and generally not being aesthetically pleasing. Resources were especially precious back then, and malls with every box set to be a light source with scripts in them could bring a sim to a crawl. Someone with a 512 square meter plot could tank and entire sim – and not maliciously, just with a badly built shop.

I also wasn't aware that anything had "killed" SL. I haven't been an active resident in years, but it still seems to be quite a vibrant world to me, unlike Multiverse, Blue Mars, and Entropia. Second Life has succeeded where very few have: Second Life is coming up on being operational for TWO DECADES. That's pretty incredible.

To his last point, it is pretty incredible that Second Life has been operational for nearly 20 years, and "killed" is fairly hyperbolic. (Unless we more narrowly mean killed as in "killed any prospect at substantially growing the userbase".)

As for the in-world shopping experience being laggy and an eyesore (which is usually the case), I think that also points to serious design/community management failures on Linden Lab's part:

Little or nothing about the user experience of in-world shopping has been improved  by Linden Lab, which remains a counter-intuitive mess. This has forced SL merchants to create their own (often laggy, often user-unfriendly) systems, which add even more complexity to what should be the most broadly appealing aspect of the virtual world. (I'm surprised Linden Lab hasn't at least launched a bounty program/contest that awards SL merchants who create the most appealing, low-lag, and easy-to-use stores — a quick and affordable short-term solution.) So the fact that the SL Marketplace is easy to use once again points to unaddressed shortcomings of the virtual world itself.

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5 responses to “Linden Lab Bought the Web-Based Marketplace for Second Life Because Actually Shopping in SL is Such a Laggy Mess (Comment of the Week)”

  1. Acacia Merlin Avatar
    Acacia Merlin

    You and I must be using a different Second Life. I get to a lot of shops, and I find many to be nicely designed. The various daily sales provide a guided tour to new businesses and old favorites that I had forgotten about and that I’m delighted to find still exist. I often use Marketplace to quickly scout options and then go to the in-world shops to make the purchase and see what else they have. I’m rarely bothered by lag or confusing procedures for buying. We’re lucky to have a both/and way of shopping, just like real life. Buy online or go to an actual store (many of which aren’t that beautiful either). Also Area Search is a very helpful tool for finding specific items in shops. I really can’t see the problems, and I love supporting the creativity of our community. It’s someone’s livelihood after all and my entertainment.

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  2. JubJub Forder Avatar
    JubJub Forder

    They bought XstreetSL to integrate into Second Life. The other brands they purchased to close them down and remove all competition to the new Marketplace.

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  3. Ryan Schultz Avatar
    Ryan Schultz

    Seconding what Acacia Merlin said up top…

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  4. Summer Haas Avatar
    Summer Haas

    Everything in the above article represents misinformation. At least the commenters so far know what they are talking about.
    JubJub is correct about how that purchase went down. It had absolutely nothing to do with the inworld shopping experience. Linden Lab was not happy that Xstreet was also a competing Linden Dollar exchange and that you could purchase with US dollars. They wanted all the transactions under one roof so they bought all the 3rd party sites and killed off the small ones.
    Also, light sources in SL are client side and can in no way bring a sim to a crawl. The flag on making a prim have a light is about as much data as making a prim red. Once the prim properties are sent to the client they are done unless a script changes those properties, even then scripts only execute if there are server resources. So by design, what the interviewee claims is not even possible.
    If in world shopping was killed by marketplace, explain why the Arcade needs 3 sims, Equal10, Uber, Fameshed, Callabor88, etc all need 2 cam sims which are all packed for 2-3 days solid after the event opens. Some special events are impossible to get in for non premium members for well over a week.
    Once again this is a classic example of people who may have had some technical relevance in the past not having an effing clue how things work these days. This seems to be the case with a lot of people in the SL technical/scripting community. They make ridiculous claims about how things are laggy/unusable, claim no one shops in world. You asks them about it and find out they have some potato computer and never leave their sim, yet they project their opinions as fact when in reality everything they say is based on some years old experience they had one time crawling out from under their rock. Its annoying AF and I’ve about had enough.

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  5. FlipperPA Avatar
    FlipperPA

    Hey folks! Just a few things to clarify.
    – SLBoutique and SecondServer never had Linden dollar exchanges.
    – Second Server, IIRC, was shut down by Adam Zaius before any purchase.
    – The reasons for the Linden Lab purchase of shop.onrez (SLBoutique was re-branded) was after my involvement had ended. I’m sure there were many reasons.
    – Light sources were set on a prim – the setting is stored on a server. The rendering lag happened on the client side. In the old light box days, these could make an entire sim useless, and they would need to be rendered on all clients within view distance, even if not in view. I forget the exact setting, but debug mode had a way to show these light sources. It was refined over time. This was such a huge problem that the “full bright” feature was eventually introduced.
    @Summer, I tried to make it clear that I have no clue how things work these days, and was talking about “the early days of SL.” The original article was referencing events from 15 years ago. My apologies if I didn’t make that clear enough.

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