The Lab with a thorn in its side

A couple of blog posts yesterday exemplified a side of Linden Lab that I'm not comfortable with. The first related to private messaging on Xstreet, as blogged here. The second related to fashion, more to the point a microsite and spread about Modavia fashion week and the designers involved, as blogged here.

On first glance the changes to private messaging on Xstreet appear to be well intentioned. After all the forums are moving to the new flog (it's not a forum, it's not a blog). So moving the messaging system makes sense, right kids? Unfortunately there was this nifty little feature on Xstreet whereby whilst browsing a merchants goods you would see a "Contact Merchant" link. This allowed customers to easily contact the seller of the item. However this was tied to the old Xstreet messaging system so yesterday it stopped working. Now, fair enough, they may not have considered this use case, however once it was pointed out to them the sensible solution was surely to roll back the changes and delay them until such time as "Contact Seller" could be linked to the new messaging system. Instead Linden Lab appeared to spit their dummies and remove the "Contact Seller" functionality completely. There's still no mention of this change in the blog post. Pretending it didn't exist doesn't make this a good decision.

Then we come to hi-res Ficness fashion. Let's just for a moment get in our time machines and go back to September 2008. Nobody Fugazi blogged about the showcase and I commented:

"Fashion shouldn't be in there at all, it's just plain wrong in such a competitive business sector for some fashion stores to get a Linden boosted perk like that.

I was browsing showcase last night myself and popped along to a couple of hot spots, the places weren't bad at all but I don't believe Linden Lab have the drive to see this through, which will mean some places being there for a long time."

That comment still holds true today and this new microsite for the merchants involved in this fashion show, where you can buy their wares from the Second Life site , the microsite was designed by Linden Lab, so what's going on here? The FAQ states:

"The Second Life Fall Fashion 2009 Lookbook is a Flash-based microsite designed by Linden Lab to host designers who were featured by Modavia Fashion Marketing in the inworld event, Modavia Fashion Week, which was held in Second Life between September 8-17th, 2009.  Modavia Fashion Week will be held in the spring and fall each year, which coincides with Fashion Week in New York City, though there is no guarantee that Linden Lab will be involved in future Modavia Fashion Marketing events.  Modavia Fashion Marketing is not associated with Linden Lab in any way."

Wait.... "Modavia Fashion Marketing is not associated with Linden Lab in any way" ??? Why on earth then have Linden Lab designed a website for them? Why on earth have Linden Lab sent an email to its customers promoting this fashion show? There is a fee for participation in this show, was there a fee involved for Linden Lab designing the microsite and promotiong the event because inworld designers pay Linden Lab some mighty fees for classifieds and don't get a blog post, email to customers and microsite created for them. XstreetSL merchants pay for features and promotions and don't get a blog post, email and microsite created for them so why do Modavia Fashion Marketing get these perks?

Linden Lab could simply have chosen to blog about this event after it happened or linked it with other fashion shows as part of the RL fashion week under a common banner. I'm sure there would still have been some complaints but they wouldn't have been anywhere near as justified as the complaints now of Linden Lab playing favourites. Linden Lab have own their own web based marketplace in the form of XstreetSL, spending time and resources on this fashion show and this microsite is simply mind boggling.

I'm consistent on my view that there are areas Linden Lab should stay out of, I was critical of their message of the day promoting large estates, again that undermined other estate owners. I am suspicious that they have another land favouries policy in the making that will soon rear its ugly head. I don't like seeing fashion in showcase and as I expected showcase hasn't been kept up to date, old stores are still in there, there's no real rotation, ok some new places have been added but Linden Lab clearly don't have the resources to run it correctly.

There are ways and means of promoting Second Life without playing favourites, Blue's Eureka blog has potential still and he can relay his discoveries of going to different sims in the same way a travel writer details their visits to places. If such a blog is regularly updated then a fair few places end up being promoted and uncovered to a wider audience, that's the way to do it.

Playing favourites is something Linden Lab seem keen to do, it's something I find pretty unethical and I'm always disappointed when I see it in action.