Wholesalers of the world unite and take over

I'm mightily impressed with the support I received from Linden Lab this week regarding some microparcels with banlines next to my mall. They were owned by the notorious Governor Linden, so after a nod and a wink I found myself in possession of said parcels for an absolute bargain price. I won't name names, but thank you!

There's an interesting article by Mitch Wagner over at Information Week about where Second Life might be heading.

All the usual issues are raised, performance, concurrency, questionable figures, nobody quite knowing what the platform is for. It's an interesting read, which is generally what I expect from a Mitch Wagner article. However it still leaves an empty feeling of a platform that is a jack of all trades and master of none.

There are some issues that just won't go away and one of them is simply group limits. Whatever has to be done to sort out group limits needs to be prioritised. I pay for extra groups, I use Hippo for that purpose. If Hippo can come up with a solution then Linden Lab should be able to come up with a solution. I mean no disrespect to Hippo there, they're innovative, subscribe-o-matic has been here for quite some time too and shouldn't be forgotten.

Whether Linden Lab completely revamp the group system, introduce paid extra groups, have message only groups, provide more roles, they simply need to improve this feature, it's a key tool.

Then there are issues such as broadcasting, broadcasting should be massive in Second Life and yet we're tied so closely to quicktime but Linden Lab should be actively engaging the news corps because if there's one thing this platform is good at it's discussions. There are lots of discussions going on, from the banal to the fascinating. Bring on the meaty debates and issues.

Yet everything isn't in the hands of Linden Lab, the users have responsibility too and two areas that need embracing are employment and distribution.

Forget the direct slurl, that's not really going to grab a noob, however an employment opportunity will. Where are the jobs? Outside of dancing, jobs are few and far between and yet despite the android like expectations, people can't stay awake 24/7, especially not us thirtysomethings. We need to develop a more professional approach to business practices and let go of the strict reigns we hold around the necks of our business. We need to trust other people to carry out tasks and empower them to look after themselves without having to resort to camping and money trees.

Creators need to create, innovators need to innovate, strippers need to strip....hmm how did that one sneak in there? Where was I? Oh yes distribution. I've been observing a wholesale business this weekend, and the results are rather impressive. Wholesale in Second Life is often seen as a dirty word. There's a snobbish attitude amongst some that only creators should sell but distribution channels can reward a creator and empower others.

One designer in particular has caught my eye with a limited edition model of full perms clothing. They're sold for over L$3,000 per individual item, with only five ever being sold. I must have seen at least six of these items sold over the last couple of days, that's a sales figure of over L$90,000. Not bad for a couple of days. Then others go away to try and recoup their fees and make more money in a trickle down effect. Some of them will want to rent land from me landlords, and we might go and buy buildings from someone else and this creates a cash flow throughout the economy.

Why are people so reluctant to engage in the wholesale distribution model? Why are people hanging onto control of their products when RL has examples of business models galore that rely on distribution, creators of the world you're good at creating, let the marketeers move in and help with marketing. There are creators out there who never really see the light of day because they don't want to grasp the concepts of marketing and yet, with a little help, they could be smiling and enjoying a very happy Second Life.

Second Life is a big space, in some ways too big and in space nobody hears you scream, but with some subtle shifting and a slight change of culture we can see concurrency regularly go above 70K with engaged users rather than a lot of people popping their heads in and thinking "WTF".