100,000 Items Listed on SLBoutique
SLBoutique is a shopping site for all things Second Life. Started by SL resident FlipperPA Peregrine in early 2005, the site has steadily grown since then, with residents listing items for sale, and SLB’s in-world operation delivering them automatically to purchasers (similar to other SL shopping sites like SLExchange and SecondServer). Yesterday, SLB saw a resident list the 100,000th item on the site, which marks some kind of retail milestone for both SL and SLB, and is probably a good indication that SLB is the largest such site going.
The event was noted on the blog of Christian Westbrook, one of the Electric Sheep, who sponsor this blog and who bought the SLB site (and hired Flipper) sometime earlier this year. The item itself is the theme from the television show The Boondocks, which can be purchased for L$100 (about 35 cents) for use with a portable media player created by resident Heir Maelstrom. (Maelstrom seems to be doing a brisk business in such presumably copyrighted works, as he is also offering more than a dozen other such songs on the site.)
I’m assuming that SLB is the largest Web-based shopping site for SL, but really I have no way of knowing. It would be nice if such sites started giving us a sense of how much business they’re doing. Transactions per day in terms of number or L$ would be outstanding, though I doubt such information will be released any time soon. (Unless it’s out there and I’ve missed it.) I don’t believe such sites have much to lose by revealing a bit about how much business is being done there. And the information would be invaluable to those building the metaverse and studying its development. More than $46 billion in non-travel eCommerce was done in the first half of 2006, according to a recent report from comScore. It would be great to have similar metrics with which to track the virtual world.
Heir Maelstrom’s media player
Feeds
hi all,
Its great that the SL boutique now reports to have 100,000 items, possibly adding 3 from me next week:)- BUT i have to really question whats going on when the item reported is “someone” elses copyrighted material. AND its being Charged for..35 cents. As an early seller of digital assets for almost a decade, I legally own what i sell. Second Life and the boutique and those “making” economies around it really need to nip this in the bud. or Virtual worlds will go the way of napster and kazaa. You CANT build a business on stolen goods…. and im afraid i see too much of it in SL offered for sale. This is not PLAY money/ or fair use “play value” of a “comic character” in City of Heroes (google it) it’s just common theft and will in the end help destroy the metaverse you all seem to want to inhabit.
The more you pump slboutique the last credibility you have. If you knew anything about how it works out, SLBoutique is completely irrelevant as compared to Slexchange.
You’re letting your sponsorship corrupt your reporting.
hey, if there’s any information out there as to the fact that SLExchange is da bomb, then bring it, cos I’ll gladly post it here. Anyone is welcome to submit news.
This page, though:
http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=3
says SLX has 70,000 items.
Also, I’ve pointed this out before, but anonymous posts do little for one’s own credibility. Facts, on the other hand, do a great deal, so please do forward any you come across, as I’d be glad to see them and share them with readers.
Do they count the $0 sale of the SLBoutique.com boxes or terminals themselves as among the items sold?
I would tend to agree with nocredibility. Just because you get press releases from your sponsors and they have good ad men and copywriters to pump copy to you and the others don’t doesn’t mean you couldn’t do a little clicking and asking around to report on the others, too.
Well,
As for posting news and getting some press for virtual worlds, im all for it:) more power to 3pointd.com and mark:)—-Case in point a little Post Siggraph PR of my own-
http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=cat&category1=Commercials&newsitem_no=17600
but my issue of “copyrighted” materials being “sold” in SL by non licensed vendors still applies and should be the focus of this articles response. I “could” be wrong , but i really doubt that the “Boondocks” animated TV show soundtrack or the brand new “Millenioum Falcon” I saw for sale in SL are indeed properly licensed products for commercial sale.
Within a few days StarbaseC3 designs/properties will go on sale within SL, even offering 3D CAD printed “models” of the first spacecraft designs. I have initiated the sale of them at the offline SL exchanges/boutiques and will be looking into their practices deeper. I hope to do good biz with them:)
Im taking this first step to test the “commercial” viability of bringing my 3d online Sci Fi brand into another VR system- Second Life- but dont want to find that Im just entering into a walled garden of copyright offenders:)- Obviously, I’ll find most SL users good and honorable folks, but SL and the Boutiques/venders around it are private companies designed for profit, and thus it should be clear that this sort of thing must be dissaproved of, and stopped internally, before the copyright owners of the items for illegal sale force the “enablers” of IP theft, such as SL and the merchants around it, to pay up, and or close down.
i suggest one google kazzaa and its recent payments to the RIAA.
larryr
cube3
My word. Don’t tell me that FlipperPA is presiding over the sale of other people’s copyrighted works? He, who comes down like a ton of bricks on girls merely selling their copies of SexGen beds *legally* under first-sale doctrine at yardsales? Wow.