Honesty in Advertising: Ancapistan Stock Exchanges
Based on an anonymous comment, I decided to poke around after a few days and see if there were actually 'bots' hanging out over the ANCAPEX exchange. There were avatars - whether they were bots or not is indeterminate - but they most certainly were camping over the exchange. While a common tactic in gaming Second Life's flawed traffic ratings, these wisely seated avatars might be there for some useful purpose.
Maybe they're counting traffic, for example.
As I commented in this post, AnCapEx is also putting their competitor's names in advertising - something which others reported to me anonymously. One user said that someone named 'Eclipse' kept pestering them in IM when they mistakenly landed there on the way to VSTEX. She said that when she told them that they should take the name of VSTEX in the advertisement, and that the reply was along the lines of 'we don't fix their ads'.
World Stock Exchange, SLCapEx and VSTEX do not have advertising, with good reason: The classifieds in Second Life are of dubious value, and WSE is, of course, still closed.
All of these things are... grey. They don't break any laws or the Terms of Service - unless you consider Trademark law - but it is funny to note the disparity in advertising tactics by AnCapEx.
Does gaming the traffic and advertising system give them more benefit than the tradeoff of upstanding and respectable behavior? Is it really beneficial for all of those alts to be logged in? Is it really worth it? It seems that they think so...
Technorati Tags: Business Metaverse SecondLife SL Capital Exchange Stock Exchange VSTEX WSE Ancapistan Capital Exchange ACE AnCapEx Intlibber Brautigan BNT
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VSTEX statement
Not everything that's unhetical, unfair or wrong is against the law. Still in our eye, that doesn't make a thing everyone could do without a regret.
The use of the name VSTEX in BNT/ACE and whichever advert coming from them and their subsidiaries is unauthorized and it serves as far as we can see, the only purpose to mislead investors. Illegal or not, it's just immoral.
Samantha Goldflake - Director
VSTEX Communication and Public Relations
http://www.vstex.net
Samantha's crusade against Intlibber
Not for nothing, but I'm sure someone searching for vstex could distinguish between it and ancapex. If not, they shouldn't be investing anyway. You are right, ancapex shouldn't use others brand names in advertising. However, to me it would have to do more with clarity of classified ads rather than a threat to steal traffic. I wonder if other SL industries practice such advertising or if this is a by product of the hyper competitive and throat slashing nature that the SL Stock exchanges and their leadership have displayed historically. Can't we all just get along?
I find it interesting that vstex rarely has something to say or comment about slcapex but always has a comment for amcapex. Instead, they seem to follow and copy slcapex (showing top ten, waive or reduction in relisting fees). Even mention slcapex in the announcements. Didja get authorization to use their name on your website?
Crusade or the truth
Do you ever notice that Intlibber thinks everyone is out to get him, from griefers to LL. He is generating false traffic numbers and using exchange names of more popular exchanges in his ads. Don't forget about Cliff going around to other exchanges and telling all the listed companies to come to ACE. I guess when your on top the little guy tryied to beg, borrow and cheat to get to the top of the mountain. Intlibber is very shady. Let me inlighten you on something, I have known for a while.....
Do you remeber CGI. Well CGI was owned by Jasper Tizzy and then was taken over by Patrickj Ah, but what was not told by Patrickj was that when he was invited to the CGI group there was about 20 full mainland sim still in the group but before Patrickj desided to take over because he was the top share holder he sold off 80% of the land below market value to JR Unknown. What happened to that money I guess you have to ask the parties involved. The 3 sims left over went to Intlibber when CGI merged with BNT. If Intlibber knew about the original 17 sims being sold before for the merger only him and Patrickj know that answer. But at that time Patrickj was on the board of BNT.
Whats done in the dark will come to light.
I wonder...
how come whenever I post something about ACE, most of the times I get comments from anonymous people. It happens both here and on SLReports.
One may not want to register, but he can post a name at the bottom of his comment, as I was doing before registering here.
That said, the problem is not with traffic, which we don't care about. The problem is with generating confusion in the investors/misleading them.
About me commenting frequently on the ACE, well. My comments are always self explanatory, I think.
When it comes to SLCAPEX, it must be noted that we've always had a positive stance towards both the SLCAPEX and the ISE, since we believe that we have a lot to share with them when it comes to business ethics and fair competition.
It must also be noted that I do follow the SLCAPEX forums and I post there once every while (time is the issue, otherwise I would be a regular there).
Last but not least, when SLReports had the last Board of Directors election, my name was put forward (I wasn't unaware of that) and now I proudly sit in the SLReports BOD. Over at SLReports there are a lot of people very close to SLCAPEX (I'm not saying this in a negative way).
I talk frequently with people from SLCAPEX, or close. It's a good and enjoyable relationship. We share common grounds and we do agree on several principles.
About us copying them, there's not such a thing. Waive, reductions in relisting fees? Well, in a competitive market, when one lowers the prices, usually other follow. And we've been disclosing top 5 shareholders no matter the percentage of their holdings into a company for a long time now. SLCAPEX was not showing top shareholders with less than 5% of the company.
Now they removed that limitation, while extending the disclosure to the top 10 shareholders. Did they copy us on the 5% part? They sure didn't. Those are strategic decisions that an exchange may or may not take. We wanted to extend to the top 10 shareholders quite some time ago, but that's a sensitive area for many "top" shareholders.
If a big exchange like SLCAPEX does it, we can follow and avoid/limit negative comments from claims of "privacy violation".
Not to mention that I publicly stated many times that we'll happily adopt any rule that could make markets more fair and transparent, as we invite others to "copy" our rules if they think they are good.
About our use of the SLCAPEX name in our public communication, it was pretty obvious that we were giving them proper credit. The SLCAPEX name was not used in a misleading or deceptive way.
Last but not least, I was talking with Bogart Beck just about an hour before reading the comment I'm replying to and it was a very pleasant and interesting chat. More to come...
Samantha Goldflake - Director
VSTEX Communication and Public Relations
http://www.vstex.net
Dunno if it could be called a 'crusade'
Everything she's said in the comments on this site related to business practices seems to be dead on. I've verified her claims, and I don't have an axe to grind.
As far as her not commenting on SLCapEx - well, maybe they haven't done something like this to VSTEX. Perhaps you could convince Arbitrage to work on an experiment? Do something bad to VSTEX? Let me know if he accepts your suggestion.
Second Life Consultant