Browsed by
Tag: Mar’s musings

Mar’s Musings: When marketing tactics backfire

Mar’s Musings: When marketing tactics backfire

Technically, this post should be headed “Mar’s mutterings” because I’m not a happy bunny. Granted, I may be taking this way too seriously, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand in SL it’s merchants who add me to lists and groups without my knowledge, with the purpose of spamming me with IMs. If there’s another thing that I think is a dubious practise at best, it’s bribing people for Marketplace reviews with the promise of freebies. That said, onto the post.

I was slightly peeved to find myself being sent an Object IM yesterday by someone from whom I purchased a couple of cheap items on Marketplace a few weeks ago. Since I was offline, the message went to my email address, and – oddly – it ended up in my Spam filters there. On clicking it (normally I don’t click into spam, but this was clearly an in-world message) I saw the following message at the top from Gmail:

Why is this message in Spam? It’s similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.

I clicked ‘find out more’ and lo and behold, one of the reasons that what would normally pass for any old Object IM from Second Life (we all get tons of them, from Midnight Mania messages to group notices etc) might end up in Spam was the following:

Behavior of other Gmail users, such as many people reporting spam from a particular sender.

This doesn’t surprise me, as – on teleporting to the location of the object when I logged in today, I was immediately sent another Object IM. Followed, one minute later, by another. These IMs came, first, from a welcome mat (although I didn’t touch it; I’m always flying when I teleport, and the mat was on the floor) and, secondly, from a Marketplace Magic Box that had been renamed to include the owner’s Marketplace URL. I was also sent two notecards: a welcome one, and one containing information about the subject of the Object IM.

Hop behind the cut to see why I get so bloody annoyed about this stuff.

Merchants, take note: these tactics make me NEVER want to buy from you again.

…

Read More Read More

Mar’s Musings: Flippin’ heck, that’s a bit primmy, son!

Mar’s Musings: Flippin’ heck, that’s a bit primmy, son!

I’ve spent a few hours hopping around the grid, picking up some items to show my faithful blog readers, but got the shock of my life when I rezzed one freebie skin fatpack package. In fact, I was so stunned, I hit up Twitter to boggle about it:

I kid thee not. While the packaging looks awesome, 181 prims is… a trifle excessive for packaging. Many people only have a handful of prims free; enough to rez a box or a sculpted or mesh bag. I’m not knocking Ramya Skins, by any means; but holy guacamole, lower the prim count on your packaging a little bit, peeps!

What newbies to Second Life now see

What newbies to Second Life now see

UPDATE: Since this post is attracting an inordinate number of spam comments (all of which are being caught by my spam filter, but it’s still a pain to keep emptying it) I’m disabling comments on it.

Hi peeps!

Normally a post like this would go onto my Ponderings blog, but since it’s related to the newbie experience I’m putting it here.

Every now and then I create a new alt, to see what the ‘Welcome to Second Life’ experience is like. There was a time when it was pretty stable and didn’t change. You first rezzed at an Orientation Island with a tutorial HUD on your screen that directed you to do things, told you how to walk, to drive vehicles, to chat to other people, to buy things, to change your looks; basically how to do the important stuff you’d want to do in a virtual world.

The welcome experience has gone through several iterations since then, but they always included tutorials on the important stuff. Until now.

This is where Mar’s new alt rezzed:

Now, put yourself in the shoes of a complete newbie (remember how confused you were when you first rezzed?) and hop behind the cut…

…

Read More Read More