Tried a little experiment at FaceBook. Fail. I had a faceBoook account under my real name for a few years, but never paid much attention to it. It just struck me as a "cleaner" version of that train-wreck called "MySpace". Over those couple of years I've received a few "friend" requests, of those 90% were people I know or knew way back when. But once "friended" that was about the extent of it.

Today, November 5th, 2009 is the big day that has Linden Lab quaking in their boots, biting their fingernail, holding an unruly bladder. At least, that's what the "Artist's Voice" campaign is hoping. I have to say, it's difficult to make me laugh out loud and it always is a pleasure when something like this comes along.

Allow me first to make this clear: I am not dissing, degrading, slamming-on or in any way intending to insult anyone who is a part-of this campaign including participants and the organizers. Plagiarism in Secon... (Ahem!) Excuse me. I mean content theft (a serious misnomer) is "rampant" in Second Life (not.) There are many creators in Second Life who are fed-up with it, and of those, I suspect a very tiny percentage are actually affected in any way. Rather they become emotionally hysterical and jump on the old bandwagon.

I've been copybotted myself. but I don't waste my breath, effort or blood-pressure whining about it. I adapt and move-on.

Okay, so part of the this campaign is a simple boycott of 'business dealing' in Second Life, the intent to send some kind of Message to Linden Lab. Firstly, Linden Lab already has heard you. They hear you every day. Participating in this campaign only hurts you, but does help me so by all means: please do.

Look, people - not uploading in an attempt to get Linden Lab to even notice really isn't going to do anything. Firstly, a number of participants will upload anyway, even if it is only because they forgot they were even boycotting.  But the fact is: Linden Lab won't feel a dent.

As for no blogging, well that's good. Then more readers might come to me to get some of that SL-Addiction fix. I'm all for it. As for the no-purchases, again Linden Lab won't feel a dent. Neither will most merchants from who you'd have purchased from. It's a simple matter of buy-from-me now or buy-from-me later. Either way you'll buy from me or it was never a sale anyway.

The big one that gets me is the "No Sales!" thing. Do you really think Linden Lab cares? But the real question is: how many of your participants are actually going to take their vendors and XSL boxes off-line or block access to all their sales boxes? I mean really? It's an effort to do that, and the intended result is to explicitly not make any money. In other words: working to refuse money anyone might want to throw at you.

I just don't see that happening. In fact, I am willing to bet real money that if you go through the list of participants, then visit each point-of-sales location for each one, you'll find you can purchase their wares just as easily today as you could yesterday and the day before and the day before and so on. Any participant who actually practices most, if not all of these 'boycott steps' is only hurting themselves.

However, if any of them sell thrones (my own primary product) then I say go for it. Because when the customer can't buy from them, they'll likely come to me.

If you, dear reader, want more detail on this futile effort, you can get the details here: About the protest.

A huge problem many retailers in Second Life have is that their products are not seen by many potential buyers who want that product and are willing to pay for it. This is because of the urge many creators have to present high-resolution, detailed "product art". Because these textures are nicely detailed, high-resolution images, they take a long time to download and they are in a queue with everyone else's high-resolution textures... all waiting to download to the shopper's viewer. Hence: the 'gray box city' at every market, mall and most landing points. Add bots and campers on the sim to the mix and your customer might never see what you have to sell, an imperative reason to list all your products on XStreet SL.

There are two kinds of customers: the hunter and the gatherer. The gatherer gathers. They are the window-shoppers who browse around, store-to-store looking for anything that catches their fancy - impulse-buyers. In Second Life, unlike first life, gatherers are likely one in a thousand - or only once in every 100-shopping jaunts for each of us. Hunting is far too easy. There are two things to sell also: services (your talent such a photographer, disc-jockey, land-leasing, etc.) and products (anything I can put into my inventory.)

When asked 'what do you do in Second Life'? - a bevy of answers will be returned based largely on who it is you ask. When asked "what is there to do in Second Life?" - again, a multitude of different answers. There are the common ones we all know of already: Build things, Visit places, role play.

Pixel-sex.

...but only barely are freebies better than bots. They are still eeevil no matter what, primarily because they create ridiculous entitlement attitudes, which are often rude.

Shopping in Second Life is seriously hit-or-miss because the entire grid is like one gigantic strip-mall, infesting the virtual landscape the same way those pesky "Borg" infested planet earth for a fleeting moment in that Star Trek movie called "First Contact".