Commerce Office Hours/2010-01-19 10:00

* [9:58] Teleport completed: from 
* [9:58] Connecting to: in-world Voice Chat...
* [9:58] Connected undefined: 
* [9:59] Colossus Linden: Hello Darrius
* [9:59] Darrius Gothly: Howdy Siz and Meta.
* [9:59] Darrius Gothly: Heya Ciaran
* [9:59] Frasky Fizzle: lol yes i am
* [10:00] Darrius Gothly: (I cammed your smokes .. sowwy)
* [10:00] Meta Linden: Goood morning all. Yay for coffee on a wet monsoon morning.
* [10:00] Darrius Gothly: Oh? You got the rains we sent up that way?
* [10:00] Frasky Fizzle: :D thats ok (nice and dry here in NY)
* [10:00] Meta Linden: we got all of them. I think a few folks sent some down our way from up north too.
* [10:01] Flip Monday: Good Morning/afternoon/evening :)
* [10:01] Darrius Gothly: LOL When it rains ... (Oh I just could NOT resist ... )
* [10:01] Darrius Gothly: There you are. Howdy Siz.
* [10:01] Alexxa Despres: Hi Ciaran ;0-)
* [10:01] Frasky Fizzle: hi Flip
* [10:01] Siz Linden: hi there - we're getting some nice snow in Boston.
* [10:01] Flip Monday: Hey :))
* [10:02] Rachel Darling: "nice" and "snow"...isn't that an oxymoron?
* [10:02] Cherry Blossom: Tree: Falling Blossoms OFF
* [10:02] Darrius Gothly: LOL I was running around outside in shirt sleeves .. enjoying the sun. Now do you hate me?
* [10:02] Darrius Gothly: LOL @ Rachel
* [10:02] Rachel Darling: smiles and waves to everyone
* [10:02] Rin Tae: likes snow ^^
* [10:02] Frasky Fizzle: lol no least someone is enjoying warm weather
* [10:02] Siz Linden: I like the snow. Great for skiing.
* [10:02] Darrius Gothly: I'll email you a ray or two later. Deal?
* [10:02] Colossus Linden: Good Morning everyone
* [10:03] Colossus Linden: It's raining in San Francisco
* [10:03] Darrius Gothly: On the left-coast today Colossus?
* [10:03] Colossus Linden: We're going to wait a few more minutes before we start to let folks wanter in
* [10:03] Colossus Linden: Yes Darrius
* [10:03] Darrius Gothly: Ahh .. the joys of commuting, eh?
* [10:03] Frasky Fizzle: :D deal
* [10:03] Yoshi Zhangsun: blimey what happened to the ninja suit? :P
* [10:03] Colossus Linden: I've spent enough Winters in Boston.
* [10:03] Darrius Gothly: Hope you smiled at the TSA people.
* [10:04] Rachel Darling: seconds Colossus
* [10:04] Frasky Fizzle: no u smile they may notice you
* [10:04] Darrius Gothly: One was enough for me.
* [10:04] Darrius Gothly: LOL @ Frasky
* [10:05] Darrius Gothly: Good lord Colossus. What did you do to your hair?
* [10:05] Colossus Linden: haha
* [10:06] Colossus Linden: I purchased a few
* [10:06] Colossus Linden: I've been checking out various avatars on Xstreet
* [10:06] Colossus Linden: I'm trying out some new looks.
* [10:06] Darrius Gothly: I like the new look. I'll let you keep it I suppose. LOL
* [10:06] Colossus Linden: Lots of you have told me it's time for a change :)
* [10:07] Darrius Gothly: Howdy Pink!
* [10:07] Yoshi Zhangsun: are you finding it easy to browse colossus?
* [10:07] Panacea Pangaea: Definite lack of tiny seating here :-)
* [10:08] Darrius Gothly: LOL
* [10:08] Colossus Linden: Yoshi, there are lots of improvements that I want to make in order to make it smoother.
* [10:08] Pink Linden: don't I know it Panacea!
* [10:08] Colossus Linden: For me, it's easier than shopping in world, but isn't yet optimal
* [10:08] Colossus Linden: Alright, in 2 minutes we'll get started (10:10)
* [10:08] Yoshi Zhangsun: yeah same, i like xstreet for shopping, im often to lazy to hop around lol
* [10:09] Darrius Gothly: Colossus .. when you say you have lots of ideas .. a couple questions.
* [10:09] Pink Linden: (hi all and welcome. If there are off topic questions just IM me.
* [10:09] Yoshi Zhangsun: but its good to know youre using the site as a consumer, so you can improve the experience :)
* [10:09] Darrius Gothly: Did those ideas come from inside only .. or outside LL too? And .. any chance you'd share some of them so we know what's coming?
* [10:09] Yoshi Zhangsun: hi Pink
* [10:10] Colossus Linden: Alright folks. Glad to have everyone here. Welcome
* [10:10] Colossus Linden: Today's Agenda:
* [10:11] Colossus Linden: 1. Look back at 2009
* 2. Second Life Search update from Liana Linden
* 3. Q&A on Search
* [10:12] Rachel Darling: specifically in-world Search, is that correct?
* [10:12] Rachel Darling: rather than XStreet search?
* [10:12] Darrius Gothly: Using the GSA?
* [10:12] Colossus Linden: If everyone could hold questions for designated periods (I'll let you know when those are), it will help us keep moving
* [10:13] Colossus Linden: 1. Look back at 2009
* [10:13] Pink Linden: and again, off topic stuff please feel free to IM me. operators are standing by!
* [10:13] Colossus Linden: 2009 saw some big achievements and excellent growth
* [10:13] Colossus Linden: We started the year by acquiring Xstreet SL
* [10:14] Colossus Linden: Additional gifting functionality was added before the Valentine's Day rush
* [10:15] Colossus Linden: We converted the Xstreet SL login to use Second Life user names and passwords which drastically improved user acquisition on Xstreet
* [10:16] Colossus Linden: We spent a large portion of the year working on back end integration with Second Life. This coming year, we're hoping to focus more on front end features which will have more obvious effects
* [10:16] Colossus Linden: We also ran a whole host of promotions throughout the year which drove shopping in-world and on Xstreet SL
* [10:17] Colossus Linden: Our various "lookbooks" got a lot of praise
* [10:18] Colossus Linden: I'll summarize some growth results now and I'd like to point you all to T Linden's Blog post on the 2009 economy wrap up for some more great details -- https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/01/19/2009-end-of-year-second-life-economy-wrap-up-including-q4-economy-in-detail
* [10:18] Colossus Linden: In 2009, residents saw US$55M in gross earnings which grew 11% over 2008
* [10:19] Colossus Linden: The economy, measured as resident-to-resident transactions grew 65% over 2008 to US$567M
* [10:19] Colossus Linden: Mind you, this was while most real world economies were struggling. I consider that a great achievement.
* [10:20] Cherry Blossom: Tree : Falling Blossoms OFF
* [10:20] Colossus Linden: Finally, on Xstreet, the gross merchandise sales volume hit L$1.6B, US$6.1M in 2009 which was 74% growth over 2008
* [10:20] Pink Linden: T called a lot of attention to the virtual goods business and its size which helps bring attention and shoppers into second life.
* [10:21] Pink Linden: that helps benefit merchants of all sizes.
* [10:21] Yoshi Zhangsun: its good to see youve started some advertising now too...
* [10:21] Colossus Linden: We will continue to work on growing this business in 2010
* [10:21] Pink Linden: we have Yoshi, and it's showing really promising results.
* [10:22] Colossus Linden: Thanks Yoshi
* [10:22] Rachel Darling: where is that, Yoshi?
* [10:22] Yoshi Zhangsun: youtube is where ive seen it
* [10:22] Ciaran Laval: Ann Otoole captured a screenshot of an ad on Youtube
* [10:22] Colossus Linden: So, there is your quick summary of 2009. I'm going to move right to search to insure that we have time to cover the scheduled topic. If we have time at the end, I'll return for general questions
* [10:23] Rachel Darling: blinks
* [10:23] Rin Tae: numbers about the money made in the virtual goods economy and the volume of transactioas will surly bring more people wanting to be part in it ... howevr customers for those goods will need a different sort of advertisment .. and I guess LL has finally started to do soemthing here as was jsut mentioned
* [10:23] Colossus Linden: So, now I'd like to introduce Liana Linden
* [10:23] Liana Linden: waves.
* [10:23] Darrius Gothly: Hello Liana
* [10:23] Rin Tae: hihi Liana
* [10:23] Ann Otoole: Welcome to the shark pond Liana
* [10:23] Liana Linden: Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me here. Taking my cue from Colossus, today I’d like to share some info on Search, kind of a summary of 2009 and a look ahead at 2010, then take questions.
* [10:24] Colossus Linden: hands baton and shield to Liana :)
* [10:24] Liana Linden: First, a little introduction--
* [10:24] Liana Linden: I’ve been with Linden Lab for 4 years, and I’ve been a Second Life Resident since 2005. I’ve worn several “hats” at Linden, refocusing my role as the company and platform evolve. For the last year, I’ve been the Product Manager and Business Lead for Search and Advertising.
* [10:25] Liana Linden: So, what has that year of effort gotten you, the Residents? Well, much of the work has been behind the scenes, preparing for customer-facing improvements in 2010.
* [10:26] Liana Linden: In 2009, we built a team around Search. Previously, we’d never had a focused engineering and product team for Search, with the obvious results—no traction on large-scale improvements, let alone regular bug fixing. There were simply too many competing priorities clamoring for those resources.
* [10:27] Liana Linden: That has changed. We’ve brought in team members from Yahoo! who bring deep domain expertise in search and technology from Google. We also have advisors on staff who come from eBay and Amazon and contribute their experience in merchandizing and search tools.
* [10:27] Liana Linden: The other, very important thing we did in 2009 was to work our way out of some technical dead-ends in Search.
* [10:28] Liana Linden: We are in the process of moving to a much more agile, web-services based framework that will allow us to improve and maintain Search on a much faster release cycle. You will have seen the effects of some of that backend work show up on search.secondlife.com last fall, and we’ll be introducing it in the Viewer soon.
* [10:29] Liana Linden: So, looking ahead...
* [10:29] Liana Linden: I saw a question go by about Search on XStreetSL, and I'll hit that first. While we’ve mostly been focused on inworld Search, the Search Team will be gradually taking on responsibility for XStreetSL search as well.
* [10:30] Liana Linden: My preference is to under promise and over deliver. But I’d like to give you a sense of our direction for 2010.
* [10:30] Liana Linden: Some of the main things we're working on are:
* [10:31] Liana Linden: Improve inworld Search relevance and counteract gaming techniques
* [10:31] Liana Linden: Simplify inworld Search UI
* [10:31] Liana Linden: Improve the Advertising options for merchants (Classifieds, Xstreet, etc.)
* [10:31] Liana Linden: Whew! That's a lot of text to absorb.
* [10:31] Darrius Gothly: When you say "improvements", do you mean "speed of returned results", "relevancy of results", or "higher volume sales as a result of search?"
* [10:32] Liana Linden: I'm happy to start Q&A, so send your Qs.
* [10:33] Liana Linden: Darrius: Good question. My answer is "all of the above"
* [10:33] Ciaran Laval: Are im'ing then to someone or is it open chat?
* [10:33] Ciaran Laval: wow typo city
* [10:33] Rachel Darling: I'm a bit curious about the defintion of "gradual" in relation to your statement about taking over XStreet Search, Liana; we've been promised changes and fixes for ages, and told they were in progress or planned
* [10:33] Alexxa Despres: counteract gaming techniques? Usually waht happens is when SEARCH is revamped, it messes up IN WORLD SEARCH and then that gives people time to game the NEW Search. Then what?
* [10:33] Rachel Darling: and yet it's a critical topic we've been most vociferous about
* [10:33] Darrius Gothly: Which has highest priority then Liana? We know you have been operating on too few resources, so which did you attack first?
* [10:34] Cur Waydelich: When you say simplifications on search engine. Could you be a bit more concrete on what they are and how they will affect us?'
* [10:34] Ann Otoole: Is the Google Search Appliance on the latest version and if so is Self Learning Scorturned on and if so how will you prevent click-bot-nets from gaming relevancy?
* [10:34] Rachel Darling: I also have trouble understanding how you'll be managing both XStreet search and in-world search; they're highly different areas and technologies, I believe.
* [10:35] Ann Otoole: *Self Learning Score turned on
* [10:36] Rin Tae: besides.. they search for different things as the SLX search don'T need to include thigns liek people, events or locations .. so both searches would need a differnet approach to deliver the right results
* [10:37] Liana Linden: Rachel: There is a team already working on XStreetSL search improvements, and they are not slowing down on that. What will change is that the Search Team will also be turning their attention to it.
* [10:37] Darrius Gothly: So you are merging the existing Dev team with an outside team?
* [10:38] Liana Linden: Alexxa: Counteracting bad-faith acts of search gaming is an ongoing process that'll never be perfect. We'll keep adjusting search to create the best possible results for the widest audience.
* [10:38] Yoshi Zhangsun: the search is being put in place soon is that just going to be 'all search' changing or will the other tabs remain?id love to see some better filtering in the group search tab
* [10:39] Liana Linden: Darrius: I'd rate the priority as stimulating commerce through better relevance then search query speed second.
* [10:39] Darrius Gothly: ty
* [10:39] Ciaran Laval: Are you going to give us any guides on what constitutes bad examples of keyword stuffing, people are concerend they'll be punished for using repeat words as phrases
* [10:40] Liana Linden: Cur: Let me clarify, we're not simplifying the search engine, rather we want the UI (user interface) to be more intuitive and usable for all residents and all search styles.
* [10:40] Cur Waydelich: I understand that. What I wonder is if there are any concrete changes you know about today to it.
* [10:41] Rachel Darling: what kind of improvements are you working on or planning which specifically addresses the stimulation of commerce, Liana?
* [10:41] Liana Linden: Ann: Great question, and one that I'm not at liberty to answer. ;-) I'd just ask you to trust that we are
* [10:41] Liana Linden: going to combat new and old forms of ranking abuse.
* [10:42] Liana Linden: Skipping ahead to a people I haven't responded to yet --
* [10:43] Liana Linden: Ciaran: We very much want to provide better guidelines in the Knowledge Base, and you can expect to see the Search articles updated soon. Here's the first one 
* [10:43] Liana Linden: And, we'll be expanding that to include more specific examples, as you request.
* [10:44] Liana Linden: I've got a bunch of great notes from the recent blog discussion about points we need to make more clear. :-)
* [10:45] Liana Linden: Darrius: Exact team composition will evolve, but I don't think it really matters as long as the outcomes rock.
* [10:46] Darrius Gothly: It does impact schedules .. in a massive way. Also culture clash is a problem. But those are management issues.
* [10:47] Liana Linden: Yoshi: The next iteration of search will have the tools you're used to in the current version.
* [10:48] Yoshi Zhangsun: ok, thankyou. a big issue i do have with the 'all' search tab at present is classified ads dont show up at the sides. support staff often tell me its a 'clear cache' problem, but this happens to my friends too. will that feature be fixed any time soon?
* [10:48] Cur Waydelich: Will the old search engine still be around?
* [10:49] Ciaran Laval: oh and with the new ui will you actually give people tips on how to use search as I keep seeing people asking for features that are already here.
* [10:50] Rin Tae: yes.. a easy to find link to a 'how do I properly use search' description would be good to have right next to the field where people enter what they are searchign for
* [10:50] Liana Linden: Rachel: While it's taken Linden a while to pivot onto the issue of Search, let me assure you we are extremely focused on it as a key method of connecting buyers to sellers and generally strengthening the stickiness of the platform. I can’t give a whole lot more detail about that right now.
* [10:52] Liana Linden: Yoshi: That classified bug is a thorn in my side that I can't tell you how badly I want fixed! It's an intermittent problem that is being very hard to solve.
* [10:52] Panacea Pangaea: Would you be able to punlish any data on how search is being used? ... e.g. I wonder if Classifieds is searched as much since the new Dearch All was introduced.
* [10:52] Yoshi Zhangsun: :/
* [10:52] Panacea Pangaea: publish*
* [10:52] Panacea Pangaea: (scuse the typos :-)
* [10:52] Liana Linden: Ciaran: Along with the KB articles for merchants and others creating search listings, we plan to provide better tips for search users.
* [10:53] Yoshi Zhangsun: haha please add a page on finding the naughty stuff ...adult places are still feeling a little neglected since they were hidden away :P
* [10:55] Liana Linden: Panacea: While sometimes I'd like to punish data, it mostly just punishes me. ;-) But seriously, I've heard a lot of requests for us to /publish/ search data and am reviewing that possibility with the team.
* [10:55] Panacea Pangaea: 
* [10:56] Liana Linden: Great questions, everyone!
* [10:56] Colossus Linden: Alright everybody, we're coming to the end of our scheduled office hour session
* [10:56] Rin Tae: more data would be great .. it is the only way to really determine, if the investemnt in a payed advertisment really has a effect on teh sales
* [10:57] Panacea Pangaea: indeed
* [10:57] Darrius Gothly: Agreed Rin
* [10:57] Colossus Linden: Liana will be joining us at our other two sessions today, so if there are questions we didn't get to, feel free to attend one or both of those
* [10:57] Yoshi Zhangsun: so what is it we can expect when the search rolls out, just (marked) bots not counted in places traffic and a change in the current 'all search' tab listings?
* [10:57] Colossus Linden: They are at 4pm and 8pm PT
* [10:57] Pink Linden: And to be fair, Liana had a verMeta has been generously logging chat an we'll get chat logs up in less than 24 hours.
* [10:57] Liana Linden: Rin: Getting better ROI info to advertisers is a big goal for us in 2010.
* [10:57] Pink Linden: sorry, garbled chat
* [10:58] Colossus Linden: I'd like to thank you all for attending and hope you enjoyed meeting Liana and learning a bit about our search plans
* [10:58] Pink Linden: I started to say that Liana had a small team way back in the chat and then she said it too. 
* [10:58] Cur Waydelich: Has there been any plans on improving viewer stats on Xstreet? It would be great for a merchant to be able to look at hits data etc for the different products in a somewhat more easy way.
* [10:58] Rin Tae: speakign of logs .. have the chat logs of he last office hours been posted yet?
* [10:58] Colossus Linden: She and her team have been working hard and you will see some of the fruits of that labor this year
* [10:58] Yoshi Zhangsun: super
* [10:58] Colossus Linden: Rin, I'll check on that and if not, we'll get them up.
* [10:58] Colossus Linden: Thank you all again
* [10:59] Rin Tae: kk
* [10:59] Colossus Linden: I'll see some of you back here at 4pm
* [10:59] Meta Linden: yes the prior chat logs are up at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Commerce_Office_Hours and I'll get the transcript of this session up there immediately as well (re: Rin)
* [10:59] Colossus Linden: And please mention to your merchant and shopper friends that you see today that we have 2 more sessions and send them over
* [10:59] Colossus Linden: Thanks Meta
* [10:59] Panacea Pangaea: Gotta run ... many thanks :-)
* [10:59] Colossus Linden: Ciao all, enjoy the rest of your morning... or whatever it is where you are :)
* [11:00] Liana Linden: Thanks all.
* [11:00] Liana Linden: Ciao.
* [11:00] Siz Linden: thanks Liana for the search update.