By Stone Culdesac

In a recent post on theGridLive, Prokofy, from the Second Thoughts blog, chastised me for not asking any questions about the new OnRez browser the Electric Sheep Company is creating, because she says they are going to change search for everyone who uses it. I didn’t really get what she was so upset about until her most recent post in which she says the search function in the OnRez browser will be the same as searching from the ALL tab in the Second Life client, which, as we all know, sucks. If there is no way to narrow it down to people, places, events, etc, then it will always suck and new residents will get tired of it and move on like they do now with the regular client. And if the shopping search is like the shop.onrez.com site, then people won’t be happy with it either, as they haven’t figured out what most online merchants already know, you show each item and allow them to pick a color on the item page, instead, they list each color in the search so you end up with results that are all identical except for the color, and that is not very useful at all to anyone that I know. If they want a real shopping destination, then they need to use their own site and figure out what is wrong with it.

But I guess the main thing with this new browser will be how it actually handles search, if it is as Prokofy says, then it will suck for the new users to search for anything in Second Life even worse than it does now with the regular client. As one merchant in the comments said, about two thirds of their traffic comes from search, most of the rest is word of mouth with some classified ads and other listings sending very few visitors. This could be big for Second Life merchants and it will be one of the first things many of us will be looking at when the browser is available, I will show some side by side comparisons and talk to some merchants to see if they see any increases in traffic on the 24th and thereafter.

Check out Prokofy’s post, What’s Wrong with the Sheep Search and the Killing of the Inworld Economy, as she goes really deep into the reasoning on why Linden Labs would allow ESC to do what they are doing, and some of the happenings behind the scenes. One of her more interesting points is the fact that prices on some things have increased 10 fold, but the value of the linden has remained the same and does not gravitate to it’s natual value, she says, “That most of these people then are facing depressed wages and an economic slump and a world awash with freebies and tombstone objects from oldbies, and frustrated in entering the market, and then leave and never make the middle class, is a subject Lindens or corporations or their metaversals never contemplate.”

She has several related articles, this one, Do You Need Real Estate to Make a World? talks about how open sourcing the server code will devalue the land, and a couple more on the Electric Sheep company and the search function in the OnRez browser, Don’t Buy Classifieds or Search Ads This Week! and Greed Shepherd’s Big Fleece: The Sheep Grab the Search.

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Recently there have been comments and blog posts talking about the expected price increase of the tier rates from $195 to $295, SecondLife Insider has a post on it today, and the blogpost at Second Life says there have been many comments about it. Linden Labs said previously that the prices would be good through 2007.

After a town hall meeting with Zee, LL committed to giving residents a minimum of 60 days notice before they change pricing plans on them. This contradicts other reports that the inflation will occur in November. All signs point to some time after the 1st of the new year. It would be nice to receive clarification from them, though! Source: LL to raise tier rates from $195 USD to $295 USD “soon”

In a response on the Second Life Blog, Robin Linden says there will be no price increases in Q4, but you can expect a price increase next year, as they are already looking at it.

We have no immediate plans to raise the ‘grandfathered’ island pricing. This doesn’t mean it won’t change at some point, but certainly not in Q4.

We are evaluating changes to the configuration of premium /basic subscription models and to mainland tier pricing, but have no specific plans, and again, we don’t expect anything to change in Q4.

We are also reviewing some pricing changes on the LindeX associated with rolling out more international payment mechanisms, but the variety of global payment mechanisms make this very challenging, and we don’t expect any changes in Q4. Source: No Q4 Pricing Changes Planned

With the prices of computers and web hosting going down, you would think price increases wouldn’t be necessary, as they should be making more money per sim now, but I can’t say that for sure.

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