Alright I know right now everyone has been all over this we need to embrace the Kitely Marketplace thing for a while now. However that being said, I want to take to the side and take some notes at some of the advantages and disadvantages of operating business in virtual worlds like this. The insecurities, the profitability, and the over all feeling I take from the whole ordeal.

So first off let me start off by saying, I might come off a little bias when it comes to Kitely. As I particularly don’t like how they operate, but as an American citizen I have all the right in the world to hold any opinion I wish to. That being said I will do my absolute best to keep my bias out of this and focus on what people are saying, and wanting to know, compounding it with what we are getting from Kitely operators and snippets.

Why should I use the Kitely Marketplace?

Why you should – As a content creator seeking to make profit or just get your item sold across the massive metaverse, this is one of your big chances to do so as it has a lot of attention and has the biggest potential to provide you with the ability to sell to virtually any grid.

Why you shouldn’t – If you are a merchant who cares about the security of your items then this may not be the best solution, but still a decent solution. If you allow your creations to be set as exportable, that means once you are in a new grid, or move it to any grid you or someone else you don’t know has access to, that item can now be downloaded, exported again, loaded up and changed owner and permission then given back out 1,000,000 of times. Something that should be explained in BOLD detail to anyone who enables such option.

Doesn’t this kill stores and malls from getting rented out in other grids?

To answer that question, it does, 100% same story as everyone had when the SecondLife Marketplace came into existance so long ago. Its echo’s are still there, I can’t tell you have many content creators I talk to in world who tell me they don’t even bother with renting shops anymore as it is just a waste of profits as they don’t bring in as much as the web store does.

When you talk to mall owners, sim rental companies, and club owners with shops in SecondLife the biggest thing you hear from them is how they now rely more on donations and residential living on their regions as no one really wants to keep in world stores anymore. Now not all inworld stores are gone, but a large majority have left little to no presence in world anymore.

You might be asking why I brought up SecondLife, well get ready everyone because I know a lot of you are going to hate what I am about to say, but we are now hitting that point where we are becoming SecondLife like in business and life in OpenSim. More and more grids are popping up as commercial grids, only real free grid left standing that focuses on users and has a large support base is Metropolis. The reason I leave OS Grid out is due to it is a testing grid, but it is still a good grid but primarily for testing purposes.

This issue goes deeper, I read that they are going to give grids commissions on items sold and sent to their grid, which honestly helps, but is more of a consolation prize if you ask me, as a small 5-10% of a 2 or 5 dollar sell is 0.02 or 0.05 per sell. Meaning the grids who loose the store sims will loose profit, on top of that, region owners that run malls will loose profit, and then may drop their sim and cause even more loss for grids.

So are you saying the Kitely Marketplace is a bad thing?

Yes and no, I mean if you want to get technical this innovation is a step into the future and should be fallowed by others. I think this method in particular is not the right way to go about doing it as it cheats land owners, and grid owners, and only profits Kitely and the content creator. That is not all bad, it is also something that I see as creating a major fix for several educational users, and grid owners who just can’t get content in their world themselves.

When I say not the right way, I can just think of a couple ways off the top of my head to allow residents to not have to register with foreign grids, and still sell across and keep the permissions, and creator information all the same even over the hypergrid. Just would require a little bit of effort and a neutral party to host a small hypergrid port location. All I am saying for now because I will explain it further on a later date.

Overall Opinion?

Well you are asking me something pretty tough now, and to be honest I normally would not want to respond the way I am about too. But I think it is a great step in the right direct, me personally I stick to shopping in stores, I do the same thing in SecondLife still. I can’t stand the marketplace, it is so over crowded, hard to find exactly what you want, and SecondLife the marketplace seems to crash several times a day, so much easier to go in world, look at everything, then go home.

So if you are an enterprise user, and a content creator who embraces the openness and don’t care about the security of your content being exported to foreign grids, then this is great for you! Though personally I would just setup my own standalone store and sell from there and just have people come to my store pick stuff up and leave.