Bizarre Xstreet office two hours

I attended the first of today's three Xstreet office hours, the other two will be held at 4pm SLT and 8pm SLT today. I must say it was a rather bizarre experience. For a start the first item on the agenda was a new homepage, this was an added item to the agenda and it showed, to quote Grant Linden: "At this time I don't have any visuals to share. When we do I can gather more feedback."

There was talk of new tags and departments but there were no real bones on this item, it felt like an excuse to fill time. This could have been summed up quickly by stating a new homepage was on the way but there was a fair amount of discussion about not very much. Plenty of people were suggesting they wanted to talk about other more pressing issues, but those weren't on the agenda, the mood was summed up well by one attendee: "why are we talking here about something that doesnt even exist when there is a bigger issue you created on your last office hour?" Indeed, there was so little meat on the bones of the subject on the agenda that it seemed very odd.

Other comments were being made in chat: "not to be rude but im sure most of us are here about the big changes on xstreet not about the homepage redesign" which prompted Pink to call order "Let's stay on topic folks. Our groundrules here are that we stick to topic unless entire room wants to change the subject." at which point someone called for a vote, which was then ignored. Of course people wanted to talk about the listing fees, this was inevitable, however on we moved to ....wishlists.

Now this was not a popular subject, people wanted to know why they were even on the agenda. Just to add insult to injury Colossus told us: "As a first phase, which we will be launching soon, we have created a shop on Facebook as a widget within our Second Life fan page" Facebook, really, Facebook who recently announced privacy improvements that went down like a lead balloon. The comments on the facebook blog have been littered with people complaining that they don't want to display to the world their fan pages, which is exactly what you'll need to do to use the wishlist feature on Facebook. Maybe the Xstreet team are seeking some sort of shelter by aligning themselves with another unpopular decision by a third party company but the privacy concerns regarding Facebook, fan pages and what people are now being forced to share in public are something Linden Lab should be aware of.

Some people felt wishlists were a nice idea, others felt they were a waste of space, my own view is that people will sell services for goods on a wishlist....if you know what I mean. However most people seemed to feel that wishlists were certainly not a priority and raised concerns over Facebook and privacy issues.

The final scheduled topic was search, a new search feature is being introduced, this actually seemed to be a worthy topic of discussion so why it was last was a bit of a mystery. The idea will be that if you have a five word search, if the result doesn't have more than half of those words, then the result won't be returned. This should be a positive move. However when the subject turned to search people asked why you can't include and exclude keywords, you can, you can use + to include a word and - to exclude a word but instead of working on making this information easier to find, they seem to want to develop wishlists.

Still people persisted in asking why we weren't discussing the big issues, then Colossus surprised us by announcing something that will certainly give Xstreet an edge in the website shopping stakes: "I will mention that 1 major project which we announced would be on the roadmap when we first acquired Xstreet is underway now. That is a merging of L$ accounts on Xstreet SL and in SL so that users will no longer need to transfer L$ using the in-world ATMs"

Now I'm sure that those who find they generate traffic from having Xstreet ATM's won't be singing about this, but it's a long overdue process and although no exact date of when this will be delivered was available, the fact that it's now underway is positive news and something Xstreet badly needs.

However people kept pressing and then at a point when the meeting should have been over someone asked: "can we please have an answer? are you going to have a meeting about the added fees or not?" Now all eyes turned to the Lindens in attendance, the skies darkened, a crow crowed, and then Pink answered: "No, we are not." At this stage nobody rioted, nobody ripped up chairs, no pitchforks were forthcoming, allowing Pink to continue: "Now, hear me out, in principle, we are going forward with the fees. that said, we have not decided all the details of implementation and the literally, thousands of emails, notecards, and posts on the subject have done a a good job of summing up the concerns, so we are listening on the details of implementation but in principle we *are* going forward with fees for freebies and for listings on XStreet."

Now to be fair the Lindens stayed to discuss the issues they weren't going to discuss for a further forty five minutes, although they evaded getting into any sort of discussion as to why the changes were being made, they did stay and listen. The natives were restless and rightly so. The justification for the listing fees and charging people to list freebies and then giving them a vastly inferior service has been weak, but it's always hard to defend the indefensible.

So it looks very much as if the charges will be implemented, the Xstreet staff seem to have failed to realise that merchants are also consumers, they talked of how their aim is to bring sales to merchants but those merchants who leave Xstreet will have a very bad impression of Xstreet and simply won't want to spend there. There are far better and less damaging ways of achieving the aims of the freebie roadmap, there's nothing wrong with admitting you're wrong after seeing the feedback, the freebie roadmap is the wrong path, it's still not too late to change direction, but it seems pride and stubborness are more important than addressing very valid feedback.

The meeting wasn't rowdy and there was no fighting or cursing. The Lindens did stay much later than they needed to but the feeling afterwards was still one of frustration.