I Want to Half Thank Linden Lab

Last week 1/20/09 LL announced it had bought both Xstreet SL and OnRez on their blog.

Unlike many people I was not upset by LL owning them. I was not calling it a monopoly. I did not care if they would keep the quicker exchange from L$ to US$. The idea of putting Xstreet on the home page and making it part of SL made some seance to me after all SL's search in-world sucks.

What did get my panties in a bunch was the part about closing down Onrez in 3 weeks (2/11/09) (22 days). I did not care about them closing the one that did not charge a commission; that is called business. I cared because I, like many people, use Onrez for their vendors.

LL asked on their forums for input from residents about what they wanted. After a full day of posting, 64 pages and 930 posts they closed the thread. The only thing LL said about the vendors missing from Xstreet was, "We understand that the Onrez vendor system was a feature that the Residents valued and we are looking at the best approach to a networked vendor solution."

Well it's all fine and dandy that they are going to look in to it. But I have 325 items on Onrez and many of those items I sell in-world with their vendors. It was as if LL was telling me in 3 weeks we are going to take away one of the ways you sell stuff.

Heck I would have not cared if they had said we bought both and plan to close Onrez but we won't until we see what features are missing and need to be added to Xstreet first. I would have waited for them to add vendors to Xstreet and just keep using Onrez for their vendors but I did not have that choice.

I can't wait for them to look at the best approach. I can't hope they add vendors to Xstreet before the 22 days are up. I can't even wait now if they said they would have them up by the day they close Onrez. It takes time to move items. It takes time to set up vendors.

So I only had one choice and that was to look for another vendor system. I had all but forgotten I had signed up for an account on the site Apez.biz over a year ago. It was one of the projects I had said I will some day use. I guess what stopped me was the idea of spending all that time setting up to sell my stuff on a third site so it just never happened.

Well I went back and looked at them again. (The truth is Marykay went there from a list of other options I had sent her and told me "It looked promising.") I went there to check them out again and to my delight they had improved a lot since the last time I was there.

1. They had the web interface I wanted that Onrez had.
2. They had servers/drop boxes just like Onrez. In fact Apez's look cool!!!
3. They were for the most part FREE. At least for me. They have free vendors that charge a commission or you can buy a commission free vendor for $L1740. Most of my stuff is commission free anyway because I sell it for only 1L$ and you can't take a commission from that. Besides Xstreet has taken a commission from sales all along, so I was not losing any thing.

So for the most part they were the same as what I was losing from Onrez.

And then it got better! For the most part Onrez had two vendors, one with search and one without. (I say they had two but they really had four because they had black and silver in both types.) I used the no-search one. It had less prims and only sold my stuff.

I was happy with the Onrez vendors until I saw what Apez gave me. Vendors, vendors and more vendors.... Flat vendors, angle vendors, one to 20 prim vendors, vendors with preview, vendors without, vendors with info buttons and vendors without.

The Onrez vendors were great but lacked some things -- like preview screens. With the Apez system I can pick the vendor I like for a particular product line. For example my zodiac shirts are all the same for each sign. Right now I have one vendor for each sign and people can page through to find the color they want. With Onrez that would be four prims used each time. Now I can use the Apez two-prim vendor (FP0 two) that is flat panel, zero previews and only two prims (after all they are only cycling through different colors of the same shirt).

For other products I may want a preview to show other styles and now I have that choice. Heck I could even sell my paintings in a vendor now. I currently have two servers with almost 100 paintings in them and more on the way. If I wanted to use a vendor to sell them I could use the FP17 200 -- flat panel, 17 preview screens, able to handle 200 items.

Some other nice stuff they do is throw in a few preloaded vendors with different stuff in them like clothes, animals etc. that match the categories on their web site. What you are doing with these is selling other people's stuff and getting a commission. People are always buying those "business in a box" things. Well this is even better because it can earn you money without having your own content. This is not something I can use in my store now but it sure would have been nice to have when I first started out.

Now in conclusion I want to get back to my title "I Want to Half Thank Linden Lab." Even though you (LL) basically told me -- and hundreds if not thousands of other Onrez vendor users, many of whom are loyal premium members or even land holders in Second Life (I pay $75 per month in land fees) -- oh well you have to give up your vendors on the 11th of February. And with nothing more about it from you than "We are looking at the best approach to a networked vendor solution." A solution that may never happen, may suck (just like in-world search) or may come along evenutally, but not in time for the closing of Onrez. However your making me look helped me find another option and rediscovered Apez, and in so doing I found a great vendor system that even if you tried you could only copy.