XStreet Forum Transcript

Introduction

Today's topic is XStreet - Linden Lab's goals and feedback from Solution Providers. Our guest: Chris Colosi - Colossus Linden, who manages our eCommerce initiative in the Business Development group.

Chris Colosi (CC): We wanted to play more active role in eCommerce - have it supported with tools and scripting. We want to help this industry prosper. It's all about customers finding what they want & discovery - which makes residents and merchants happy.

We acquired XStreet and OnRez, and will shut down OnRez so we have one unified marketplace. We have resources working on improving and better integrating XStreet into SL. We have a team working on tools and on reporting on sales. This group’s focus will be on eCommerce as a whole, in world as well as the web marketplace.

We forsee different types of stores in XStreet to address different audiences. And we think XStreet creates new opportunities - besides the sales of products, the capability for Solution Providers to package and sell services as products in XStreet, and possibly also as a directory for Solution Providers.

Questions

With that, I'll open it to questions.

In-world clickable browser?

Neil Nielson: in-world clickable browser?

CC: Acquiring XStreet is part of a larger eCommerce initiative for Second Life - a browser is important but doesn't directly fall into eCommerce team - it would provide an easy way to get access to XStreet from in-world. Or maybe we’d achieve this by integrating with search. How do we tightly integrate and get core features up and running is our initial goal.

Customer/Enterprise marketplace

Louis Platini: from a point of view of a solution provider, would there be a difference between a marketplace for customers and "enterprise customers" ?

CC: We are thinking about potentially a separate storefront or set of categories - possibly look at separate enterprise storefront. On the enterprise side we're looking at better ways to filter content & to filter out non-PG content. How do we best cater the experience to the appropriate audience, as well as potential differences to content? We'll be driving a lot of traffic to XStreet as the location to go to when you want to buy anything. Most of our effort will be focused on integration and improving the basic functionality of the site. We welcome your input into what will be appropriate for the XStreet directory. We look forward to your input on the features and tools that make sense to provide to you as you sell to companies.

Localization

Pocarles Carter: Will you localize the marketplace (French, German, etc...) ? CC: XStreet is currently localized in English, German, Portuguese and French, selectable from any page on XStreet. Text pages are localized; product description localization is done by the lister, and has some impact on position in search. Later in the year as part of expansion, we plan to include localization and language-specific stores, focusing on languages where we have our largeest user bases. Our initial focus is driving up use by current Second Life accounts. But we think XStreet has future potential to drive in new shoppers from outside SL as well.

Web Storefronts

PM Sands: Thanks for this meeting. Here is a feature request: This past year, I have seen some small personal websites have Amazon store modules, where they sell a collection of various Amazon items. A similar ability to allow residents to resell various Xstreet content creators items on their personal website/blog would be great for all. As LL already has a paying relationship with Amazon, Amazon would probably be willing to help with such reseller Amazon webstore software.

CC: Storefronts: we do want to build capability for a merchant to have a customizable storefront based on XStreet to showcase and sell their own products, so they can use XStreet as the engine.

Neil Nielson: right, API into our clients websites would be essential for RL clients! In world have resellers resell product through a vendor in their store and they get a commission - but through XStreet I can only sell my own products. Amazon's model let's them sell other's products they can customize in their store. I thought of a way to do it, but had to hand code it for every reseller.

CC: Great idea, not sure what we'd have to do from an engineering standpoint, but we're happy to get contents spread as far and wide as possible. Does the store get a referral fee? (Yes) I don't know that we have a referral fee in place, but I will talk with Engineers about adding it. We'll have to see how it fits into our pipeline and how much engineering effort it will take to build this. I'll be moving things as rapidly as I can, but we have a lot of work to do just to bring this product in house, so it may be a little while before you see any significant changes.

Include in-world locations

Kim Anubis: I'd like to suggest that the listings include links to merchants' in-world shop locations, or at least to their avatar profiles.

CC: I believe that most merchants already do. According to anecdotal data (this is an estimate from XStreet, don't have direct data) 3/4 of shoppers who discover an item to buy via the web marketplace go inworld to make their purchase - we absolutely want to drive traffic to inworld business as well as the web marketplace.

SL accounts & identity

Louis Platini: What are the ideas about identity on Xstreetsl ? Use also the same (SL) account ?

CC: This is a change we're looking to make; XStreet currently validates against SL accounts. It's a big barrier having to create account and use inworld ATMs - we want to change that so once you're logged into SL you're also logged into XStreet with your SL account. We need a way to implement L$ payment from our site - all this back end merging is likely to take 6 months or so. We're still scoping projects to see when we can get there. You'd have the same account, L$ balance, and US$ balance in both SL & XStreet. We would also like to modify the gift capability so you don't have to have an SL account to buy and gift to an SL account.

All transactions in L$

Kim Anubis: Looking at the LL FAQ about XStreet, it looks as if customers are going to have to do all XStreet transactions in L$, correct? My clients would be more eager to use something like XStreet if they could make their purchases in L$. So would I. L$ are problematic for RL clients, especially for big-ticket items. I won't sell products to clients for L$, and I have clients who cannot purchase L$ due to their organizations' policies. Well, as an example, Colossus, say I want to sell someone an item that costs $500 US. No RL organization wants to do a deal like that in L$. I won't accept L$. It's a bookkeeping and tax reporting problem. Along with big-ticket USD/real-world currency transactions, there would also have to be some sort of purchase contract functionality -- an agreement about rights, etc. I rely on hard-copy contracts for things like that, not the permissions system.

CC: Anyone can buy in US$, but all transactions are in L$. XStreet purchases L$ and does the transactions in L$ - the merchant always receives L$. We plan to keep the system working like that. In some areas, like purchasing ads, we're considering moving to direct purchase by US$. We already accept payment in other forms, but inworld only L$, and XStreet is just an extension of SL. As long as to the user it appears as US$, does that address the problem if the backend to the merchant is L$? We may consider transactions completely in US$ for Solution Providers and an enterprise store - we have more risk dealing with US$. We will need to talk to XStreet about why they haven't accepted US$ and to our fraud department. Lots of issues here- will follow up and look into this.

Link alt accounts?

JL Zinner: would there be a way to link all of our alts (like OnRez had) so we don't have to relog to alter an item? I use different alts for different types of products professional vs non professional

CC: Is there a reason you use alts, rather than using a single account as an identity? I will check XStreet restrictions on linking to alts. If we thought it would increase value and listings, we'd consider linking alts, but it may take a little effort to determine what the functionality is and how we'd implement that. We'll listen to the user community to see how important this is and what functionality they want. Yes, you're looking to have different storefronts for different audiences, the functionality of using alts is understandable. Will need to follow up to get a better idea of the required functionality. RIght now it's 1:1 linking, but we'll take a look at what's feasible here.

Gift vouchers

Neil Nielson: gift vouchers great idea, also for part payments!

CC: Great idea, we want to be able to accept coupons (system wide); also to allow merchants to put a sale on one product or all products (while controlling for permanent 'sales'). We do want to allow coupon codes both to drive traffic and to track it through coupons. This feature is not currently in the roadmap, but is on our feature list.

Gifts from people without SL accounts?

Ashira Vella: can you make it capable to purchase a gift for someone with an SL account but not "validated" on xstreet? as of now if they arent you cant send them anything

CC: Since we want to give XStreet access to all our SL account information, we should be able to enable this. It may take a day or two for new users to show up in XStreet (we may have to batch process new accounts), but we're currently looking at what it will take to implement this and will let everyone know.

Payments in US$ or L$

Alice Klinger: Just in case you didnt know guys, the current XStreet system has in the listing window an option to either receive payment in lindens or us on the seller side. same on client side. yes ok but will the usdollar option be deleted from the current system then?

CC: My understanding is that everyone receives payment in L$. I'll look into it. There is a US$ balance you can keep - just like SL, but my understanding is that any purchase you make is first exchanged into L$, and the purchase actually happens in L$.

Need for receipt tracking

Kim Anubis: My clients -- and I -- need a record of where those dollars go once they're in the system, though, Alice.

CC: We're looking at reporting in the system. Do people not just see the L$ transactions, but the whole transaction? Do your clients use credit cards or EFT? Is creating an XStreet account a problem for your clients? We're looking at the user experience and required functionality.

Project marketplace?

JL Zinner: On the developer side - it might be nice to have something like elance - where potential clients can post projects that they would like to get bids on and then can purchase though there. And as Kim mentioned tie in contracts too.

Alice Klinger: yeah some additional project market place like getafreelancer has might be nice. with escrow payment and stuff

CC: I've seen and thought about this - I think the marketplace works best when there's a price assigned and there's a 'product' that can be resold to multiple clients. For bids, there is not a system currently in place in XStreet. We will take a look at this functionality.

Corporate XStreet accounts

Kim Anubis: Would be really cool if there were a corporate XStreet account, so that an organization can purchase things and have a record, rather than having to associate it with an individual avatar. That's why I ignore permissions and use a hard copy rights agreement instead. :)

CC: I'd like to have that in SL as well, we want to make this a more professional tool, and are just starting to define the requirements. It's easy to develop a seller account; on the buyer account, it's an issue if someone marks content as no transfer or no copy. If it's purchased by a corporate account, do all accounts associated have permissions for the object or just the corporate account? We need to determine how that works with current SL permissions. In an enterprise catalog, we may have different pricing and permissions to address this, and involve an agreement on purchase.

Conclusion & Summary

CC: Thanks very much for coming today and for the feedback. We want to look at user cases around US$ transactions, corporate accounts, and alt account management (which may fall into a system of 'corporate' accounts). We'll also take a look at bidding systems (elance and getafreelancer).