Eye on the Blog: Good-Bye Xstreet Freebies

The Xstreet SL Experience:

The Xstreet SL Marketplace is not meant to provide a replacement or even identical experience to that of shopping in-world. Instead, it serves as a specialized shopping experience which makes shopping & selling easier and different in many ways. All of our research and your feedback demonstrates that. Since it is clear that the increasing quantities of free, cheap and stale goods are hindering that experience for shoppers and merchants alike, we will take action to counteract and balance them within the marketplace, for the benefit of all. To be clear: we believe in a free marketplace and will not implement price controls on what merchants can charge for their goods.

The Roadmap:

We will enact the following new controls for the Xstreet SL Marketplace within 90 days, with at least two weeks' notice, in order to improve the shopping experience:

Monthly Listing Fee for Freebies of L$99:

• Listings for free items will now be treated as a marketing/promotional tool and thus will have a price.
• L$99 is the price of our least expensive listing enhancement and so we will start there.
• Depending upon desire for this marketing opportunity and perceived value given such demand, we will adjust the price as necessary to maximize this value and keep the freebie listings from becoming bloated again.
• Expected Delivery: 30 - 60 days
  

Minimum Commission of L$3 on all items priced L$1 or greater:

• We will enact a minimum commission of L$3 on all sales of non-freebie listings.
• Since Freebie listings are now considered marketing and are charged as such, they will not incur this fee.
• A L$3 commission will raise the commission on all listings under L$50. This was a range suggested by residents, but it turns out that this is the price range where there is a very high transaction volume and low commission income which combine to cover the costs of those transactions.
• We may adjust this minimum commission as we see its effects on the marketplace. L$3 does not cover the full cost of a transaction, but the goal here is first to manage freebie growth first.
  
• Expected Delivery: 30 - 60 days
  

Monthly Listing Fee of L$10 for all items L$1 or greater:

• All non-freebie listings will now be charged L$10 per month to remain listed in the Xstreet SL Marketplace
• Currently, less than 20% of Xstreet SL listings make at least one sale per month. This displays just how much clutter of unsold items exists on Xstreet SL.
• Doing this will provide an incentive for merchants to remove listings which are not selling, while keeping this fee low enough to have a minimal effect on listings which are selling and are desired by shoppers.
• By reducing the overall number of listings on Xstreet SL, the shopping experience will drastically improve which will please our shoppers and be a boon to the business of all of our merchants.
• Expected Delivery: 60 - 90 days
  

Separate freebies into their own category:

• There is already a freebie section on Xstreet SL. This section will become the place to browse for new freebies.
• We will remove free listings from the browsable categories and keyword search results on Xstreet SL.
• Expected Delivery: 60 - 90 days
  

Timeline:

• We will provide at least 2 weeks notice before releasing any of these changes.
• We expect to enact these controls within the time window 30 - 90 days following this roadmap announcement.

* * * * *

Read more in the complete blog post by Colossus Linden Here, or join the discussion Here.

The swallowing of Xstreet and OnRez, a bittersweet move

So, Linden Lab has finally seen the light about the advantages of World Wide Web integration with Second Life as a complement for information and transactions. Buying Xstreet and OnRez definitely is in their interest.

Now, what should we make of it? There is a fairly large number of issues raised by this. Forget the basic questions such as the timing of integration. There are more important things at stake.

The first one is clear: technological integration and the merger of accounts with the Second Life grid will make business simpler. No need to sign up for an account on a different site and to manage it separately in order to have a Web presence. Doing away with the time wasted to deal with a non-integrated platform could mean less hassle for merchants.

If LL handles this properly, there also is great potential to overhaul the clunky Web presentation in Xstreet and slap better options for Web storefronts. The example of more refined OnRez storefronts should be a good source of inspiration. More flexibility could even make this better. Also, Xstreet's terrible search engine could also be upgraded or replaced for better shopping experience.

As you can see, Linden Lab has a golden opportunity to provide much-needed change. If they aim for greatness and make their e-commerce platform amazing, this might even eliminate the need for external Web sites that many of us currently have.

On the other hand, better integration with the grid can come with a huge tradeoff. Will the new Web platform inherit Second Life's stability problems? Even if you couldn't make a purchase at Xstreet when the grid was down, you could at least surf there in “just looking” mode.

What about culture? There were a few differences between management of SL and Xstreet. If Linden Lab has angered many of us with a variety of bad decisions in the past, Xstreet has been more user-friendly. Will mismanagement show its ugly head on the integrated Xstreet?

Another large question is money.

With the buyout, Linden Lab has conflicting fee policies. At the moment, doing a transaction in Second Life costs nothing but holding land is the main source of spending. In Xstreet, you pay 5 Linden dollars for each 100 of sales. Will LL abolish the Web fees to make business easier, leave it as is, or increase them? The first solution would be the only right one. We already pay enough money on tier and accounts for mainland owners, shouldn't we given a break at some point?

If LL abolishes the currency exchange on Xstreet, it will be a bittersweet move, too. Its PayPal mass pay was much appreciated for instant money transfers. At the same time, a savvy user can squeeze more net money out selling Linden dollars on the official Lindex. Trying to find a matching buying order at specific rates on Xstreet can take much more time... if it happens.

My last note is a bit cynical: did Linden Lab have defensive motives when acquiring Xstreet? When its bosses rebranded SL Exchange into Xstreet, they stated that this was an occasion for them to look beyond SL, should other virtual worlds become more interesting or complementary in the future. Was this buyout a way to make sure that we are all tied to Linden Lab?

That's food for thought, my friends.

Xstreet SL Marketplace Sale????

Dear Dana Vanmoer,
Congratulations! An item you have listed on the Xstreet SL Marketplace has been sold! See below for details.
Regards,
Xstreet SL
Now When i read this in my inbox this morning I was rather confused, Xstreet? What the hell is Xstreet? I have never head of it yet they are selling my items from SLeXchange????
So in some trepidation I followed the link and found myself at a site that looks and feels like SLeXchange but is now called Xstreet SL!
It seems SLeXchange has rebranded, (might have been an idea to publicize the notion before actually doing it.) After some research I found a couple of forum posts about the upcoming changes, posted on Sept 10th:
"That's right, we're changing our name! As you can see in the logo above, our look and feel won't change so you won't have to learn anything new or adjust to a different look. The Xstreet brand will cover services similar to SL Exchange for any virtual worlds we decide to work with. The name "Xstreet SL" is specific to Second Life and we'll use different suffixes for other grids and worlds. Different types of services which we have yet to launch will have different names altogether."
The Lindens , it seems are stepping in to help with this grid wide change as there must be thousands of SLX branded items inworld at any given time Linden lab will replace all these textures with the new Xstreet SL ones:
"Because there are so many SL Exchange-branded items in Second Life over which we have no control, Linden Lab has agreed to help us with mass texture replacements. Sometime in the next couple of weeks all existing magic boxes, signs, and terminals in-world should automatically display our new brand."
The question begging an answer then is why? And this is also answered in the first post:
"When SL Exchange was formed it was never intended that we would operate solely within Second Life. "SL Exchange" is a service name owned by Virtuatrade, LLC and the intention has always been to create new service names as we expand into other areas.When Linden Lab announced the changes to their trademark licenses earlier this year, I have to admit - first I ignored it, then I got angry. Over time however I realized that the change presented an opportunity to renew and clean up our brand image and prepare for future business opportunities that we hadn't thought of when starting out."
So if like me you start getting unknown mail or suddenly no longer get mail from SLeXchange (check your spam folder and allow mail from Xstreet) at least you will know why!
If you are worried I would suggest reading the FORUM post to clarify if you need to do anything.

Dana Vanmoer