User:Brooke Linden/April User Group 4-6-2011

Here is the transcript from the April User Group.

[10:02] Brooke Linden: hi all

[10:02] draconis.neurocam (draconis.neurocam): hello brooke

[10:02] Argus Collingwood: hihi

[10:02] Digital Transmitter (cube.republic): evening brooke

[10:02] Marie Wonka (marie.resch): hello Brooke

[10:02] Digital Transmitter (cube.republic): summer time

[10:03] Brooke Linden: today i'm going to give some brief updates

[10:03] Brooke Linden: and then answer questions related to the april update forum post

[10:03] Brooke Linden: and then additional questions

[10:04] Brooke Linden: colossus will be taking questions again

[10:04] Sharayah (sharayah.munro): who do questions go to? Colossus?

[10:04] Brooke Linden: here's the link to the update http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Marketplace-Update-April-2011/m-p/790935#M2019

[10:04] Brooke Linden: so a few updates related to some upcoming fixes that have been discussed on the forums

[10:05] Brooke Linden: we have an ssl issue with our new ad server that we are working with them to hopefully resolve by this week

[10:06] Argus Collingwood: excellent

[10:06] Brooke Linden: maturity fix will that affected some users with their viewer preference not being pulled into marketplace has been delayed until next week

[10:06] Brooke Linden: to deal with the ssl issue

[10:07] Brooke Linden: and some work related to the delays in deliveries some of you all were reporting early in the week

[10:07] Brooke Linden: any questions on these?

[10:07] Brooke Linden: if not i'll move onto some questions about metrics

[10:08] Brooke Linden: so i got some comments on metrics on the forum post

[10:08] Brooke Linden: 1. seasonal decline

[10:08] Brooke Linden: so, it's very common to have a decline in commerce in the spring

[10:09] Brooke Linden: however, it may not be a trend on second life, so i just need to be more clear when making statements like that or just refrain

[10:10] Brooke Linden: another comment was about the downward trend i mentioned over the month and how it was possible to then still have growth

[10:11] Brooke Linden: our growth did not decline, but our trend in gmv was downward (which is also common on marketplace to happen over the course of a month)

[10:11] Catwise Yoshikawa: hi

[10:12] Brooke Linden: do people need additional clarification on metrics?

[10:12] Argus Collingwood: other than seeing the raw data prolly not

[10:12] Brooke Linden: to clarify, our growth slowed as our gmv declined

[10:12] Brooke Linden: ok

[10:13] Brooke Linden: so let's look at what's coming next

[10:13] Brooke Linden: we're focusing primarliy on direct delivery (formerly known as ais delivery)

[10:14] Brooke Linden: we updated the name b/c ais is used by the viewere

[10:14] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): meaning no more magic boxes?

[10:14] Brooke Linden: yes

[10:14] Sharayah (sharayah.munro): is a viewer 2 client absolutely necessary for this?

[10:14] Digital Transmitter (cube.republic): ...what from the asset server via avis account?

[10:14] Brooke Linden: ais is an internal service

[10:15] Brooke Linden: used by marketplace to allow us to get rid of magic boxes

[10:15] London Junkers: what is the advantage to get rid of them?

[10:15] Digital Transmitter (cube.republic): so it connects to an avatars inventory, or do you set items from your inventory for sale via a web client?

[10:15] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): yes why must we change?

[10:16] Brooke Linden: per the update

[10:16] Brooke Linden: later this month i will be sending out more details on direct delivery and how it will work

[10:16] Brooke Linden: but i'm not going to go into details right now

[10:17] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): is a certain viewer required for it to work?

[10:17] Casper (casper.warden): one question, will the direct delivery service be accessible to third party systems? Or will it be restricted solely to SL Marketplace

[10:17] Brooke Linden: we are making this change due to the fragility of the magic box delivery system--as many merchants can atttest to

[10:17] Catwise Yoshikawa: but we need to use viwer 2 for that?

[10:17] Casper (casper.warden): well, they were pretty stable before the change to the new marketplace, actually

[10:18] Brooke Linden: there is nothing in direct delivery that will cause problems with 3rd party viewers

[10:18] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): smiles!

[10:19] Sharayah (sharayah.munro): but do we need a viewer 2 client, or will any version work?

[10:19] Catwise Yoshikawa: ^^

[10:20] Argus Collingwood: we are concerned about our inventories due to loss of items and massive sizes of some of ourd

[10:20] Brooke Linden: we have no reason to believe that other viewers will have problems

[10:21] Brooke Linden: but we have not tested

[10:21] Catwise Yoshikawa: that's it Argus...

[10:21] Brooke Linden: as i said, i'm writing up a document to explain how ais will work

[10:21] Brooke Linden: goal is to get that out later this month

[10:22] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): will you post a link in the group, please, Brooke? I don't always read the blogs :-/

[10:22] Digital Transmitter (cube.republic): I'm guessing this will have an effect on the whole copybot debacle, with items easily traced and linked to indivuals accounts

[10:22] Brooke Linden: note that you can all sign up to get rss notifications when i add a new post to the forums

[10:23] Brooke Linden: there are instructions on a sticky

[10:23] Brooke Linden: the other top priority is search and discoverability

[10:24] Brooke Linden: freebies, best selling, overall relevance--these have all been topics we've seen discussed on the forums and ones that we are and have been looking at

[10:24] Brooke Linden: we'll be continuing to prioritize these

[10:25] Brooke Linden: we are aware that there are improvements than can happen here

[10:25] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): I know we sort of bitch a lot, but I will say I really like the box for keywords that is invisible to others :)

[10:25] Brooke Linden: and we also know we have not been great about communicating what we can about search and how it works

[10:25] Brooke Linden: lol

[10:26] Sharayah (sharayah.munro): (not exactly Invisible - just an extra step to discover what keywords someone is using, and why on earth they are using said keywords)

[10:26] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): oh...hmmm

[10:26] Argus Collingwood: view source

[10:26] Brooke Linden: so i'm working on writing up some details on that should help there

[10:26] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): and here I thought they were confidential

[10:26] Brooke Linden: any more questions on search?

[10:26] Brooke Linden: most of them are

[10:26] Brooke Linden: i'll share what i can

[10:27] Brooke Linden: if you look at the april update, i linked to what we currently show about in world search

[10:27] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): I know Linden can see them but if I have some fabulous keywords, I'd rather my competition not copy them *laughs

[10:27] Brooke Linden: it will be something like that

[10:27] Danica Blaylock: chuckles

[10:28] Casper (casper.warden): I have a question about how trademark rules apply to keywords. Is it against policy to use, for example, "Coca-Cola" in a keyword, even if the item and description are not branded with the trademark?

[10:28] Catwise Yoshikawa: and how we see if someone is spaming keywords? ;-) there are lot of people using words totally unrelated

[10:28] Dakota (dakota.linden): Anyone can see the keywords by using their browser to view the Page Source of the page

[10:28] Brooke Linden: so moving on, on promotions: just to re-iterate that the dash deal is a test

[10:29] Colossus Linden: Hey guys, please send your questions to me. I'll pass them on to Brooke

[10:29] Colossus Linden: Otherwise the main chat gets very hard to follow with many discussions going on at once

[10:29] Catwise Yoshikawa: yes, I know...but there were people asking to make it visible only to Lindens ^^'

[10:29] Brooke Linden: and we've not divereted engineering resources,

[10:29] Brooke Linden: sorry for those who missed the deadline if you wanted to participate

[10:30] Brooke Linden: i got more questions on general and hot topics, so i'll move onto those

[10:32] Brooke Linden: question on when adding extra manager to a store will be possible: Q3 or later based up on current priorities

[10:32] Brooke Linden: when will we send emails to profit partners and when will people be able to toggle on/off sales notifications?

[10:33] Brooke Linden: we'll be updating our notifications with direct delivery

[10:33] Brooke Linden: to allow more flexibility and make sure we're notifying all the people who need to be notified on sales related activities

[10:34] Argus Collingwood: like reviews?

[10:34] Brooke Linden: item review notifications: these are on the list, but behind direct delivery and search

[10:34] Brooke Linden: ;)

[10:34] Argus Collingwood: :)

[10:34] Brooke Linden: oops :)

[10:35] Brooke Linden: had a question about inworld vendors connecting to stores

[10:35] Brooke Linden: great idea

[10:35] Brooke Linden: not currently on the immediate plans

[10:35] Brooke Linden: something we should definitely think about

[10:36] Brooke Linden: got a question on will we remove freebies from page 1 of search results or have a freebie category

[10:36] Brooke Linden: agreed, freebies need to be treated differently

[10:37] Brooke Linden: and should not get in the way or people who are charging for items to make a sale

[10:37] Brooke Linden: a category is interesting and may be an option

[10:37] Brooke Linden: there are some other ways we can handle this in our search results as well

[10:37] Brooke Linden: but we will either separate them out or rank them appropriately

[10:38] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier) grumbles about freebies

[10:38] Catwise Yoshikawa: right now 0L items are first on some categories

[10:38] Brooke Linden: another question that came up was on the shopping cart fix--items left in your cart at a discount price are still left at that price when checking out

[10:38] Brooke Linden: even if the merchant has changed the price

[10:39] Brooke Linden: this is actually something we've got pretty high up on our list of priorities, but it will need to come after some of our search work

[10:40] Brooke Linden: another question: can the marketplace help encourage reviews?

[10:41] Brooke Linden: we certainly can :-)

[10:41] Brooke Linden: again, not something we'll jump in right away, but this is something we've had several merchants ask for

[10:41] Brooke Linden: other questions?

[10:44] Brooke Linden: knowledge base instructions on how to add a review can be added--i'll follow up with the doc team and see why this isn't there

[10:45] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier) nudges Kyle Linden...whispers "hey, no sleeping during meeting"

[10:45] Lizzie Gudkov: heheh

[10:45] Brooke Linden: okay, so i've got one more announcement to make

[10:46] Brooke Linden: one additional question

[10:46] Brooke Linden: ans support for direct delivery

[10:46] Brooke Linden: we're looking at how we can replicate this kind of reporting--i need to delve more into how this works today to see what we can do

[10:47] Brooke Linden: okay, so last announcement

[10:47] Brooke Linden: based upon some comments on the blog and the way we've had to start running the user group meetings, we're going to try doing this next month with the forum update only

[10:48] Brooke Linden: so no in world meeting

[10:48] London Junkers: lol

[10:48] Brooke Linden: what this will allow is: people from multiple time zones to get data

[10:48] Brooke Linden: as, i will take the time i'd spend during this meeting answering and summarizing questions

[10:49] Brooke Linden: i'll be consolidating the data in one place--people won't have to look in chat logs, etc

[10:49] Brooke Linden: and, as you all can see, discussion is very difficult in such a large group setting

[10:49] Casper (casper.warden): yes, second life doesn't really lend itself to social interaction between avatars

[10:50] Brooke Linden: so i know some people may not like this, but let's give it a try

[10:50] London Junkers: do we have any choise??

[10:51] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): forgive my ignorance, but where do I need to start reading on the forums?

[10:51] Brooke Linden: i'll be soliciting feedback after doing the updates for a month or two and see what the overall feedback is

[10:51] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): am not really a forum person but I will start checking there

[10:51] Brooke Linden: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/bd-p/Merchants

[10:51] Hoof and Horn (hoofandhorn): (I'm the same way, Pri.)

[10:51] Brooke Linden: is the merchants forum

[10:51] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier): thank you

[10:52] Brooke Linden: if you want to subscribe to any posts i put up via rss

[10:52] Brooke Linden: you can read this poist

[10:52] Brooke Linden: *post

[10:52] Brooke Linden: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Welcome-to-the-Merchants-Forum/td-p/707745

[10:54] Argus Collingwood: we will miss the face-to-face & give and take but it will help reach a wider bae

[10:54] Pri Genesis (priscilla.bouvier) nods... I will change my habits

[10:54] Brooke Linden: thanks--yes, that may make it not as effective

[10:55] Brooke Linden: we'll find out

[10:55] Brooke Linden: on that note, if there are no other questions

[10:55] Brooke Linden: i'll go ahead and end

[10:55] Sharayah (sharayah.munro): LOL, there are always quesitons, but we would be here till midnight!

[10:55] Brooke Linden: notes won't be posted until later today

[10:55] Brooke Linden: true

[10:56] Brooke Linden: as i've got meetings straight on through the day

[10:56] Argus Collingwood: when does dash start?

[10:56] Brooke Linden: sorry transcripts

[10:56] Brooke Linden: our first one will be next week

[10:56] Sharayah (sharayah.munro): thanks for your time Colossus and Brooke

[10:56] Brooke Linden: thanks all for attending

[10:57] Marie Wonka (marie.resch): yes, thank you

[10:57] Brooke Linden: bye

[10:57] Catwise Yoshikawa: guess I'll like the forum meeting :p

[10:57] Argus Collingwood: ttfn

[10:57] Catwise Yoshikawa: thanx