Coldwell Banker Getting Cold Feet in SL?

Did I miss the memo on this? I wonder if Coldwell Banker, the much ballyhooed "real-life realtor" in Second Life, is the next to go -- or has already left. Their presence in SL seems to be markedly diminished.

I see signs that the vast empire of Ancient Shriner and Chrischun Fassbinder -- the CB reps in SL -- is crumbling. You may remember Mr. Lee's Hong Kong, whose ugly, stupid signs blighted the mainland for hundreds of miles in all directions for the last 2 years, with 16 m2 parcels anywhere -- pristine waterfront, beautiful mountainside, flat plateau, anywhere but by a road.

Worse, Mr. Lee's signs were set to sale for $9935 to help prod you into "buying back the view". Shriner prided himself on not being an extortionist (and was silent about his partner in crime) because he didn't put his parcels for sale, but instead just put up huge, tall towers with his ugly logo visible for miles. It's hard to believe these blight-monsters ever got any clicks, especially in cut-up ad farms on destroyed sims that nobody ever visited. Then, we all watched in horror as these two sign griefers and extortionists in Second Life got a huge pump up for a year from Coldwell Banker, a real-life company that chose them as their representatives in SL, and then proceeded to use their ill-conceived sign-network to advertise real-life houses. Ugh.

The concept never seemed to take off. By his own admission, Shriner had something like only 20-40 percent occupancy in the CB houses, because evidently they required deposits and an age check? I'm not sure why their neat, boring suburban tracts didn't sell, given the received wisdom that what most people in SL want is a neat, boring, suburban tract.

Something's up, because Chrischun Fassbinder IM'd me the other day, notifying me that he had now removed the prices from his extortionist 16ms (!), which have been in place for more than two years, and was now offering a "land swap". He gave me a link to what turned out to be an inactive forum with only himself as member and no takers. Meanwhile, he informed me that he'd be abuse-reporting me unless I removed a tree that was waving on to his micro-baron property. *Shrugs*.

I flew around today near my little outpost for newbie rentals in Mitta, where months ago I had decided to take a stand against the sign-blighting machine, when I found some land for sale, and put up a big 10 x 10 sign for my own rentals in the air, visible on Ancient's side and transparent on mine. I felt it was useful not only to compete for the business that was sure to pour in for CB *cough*, I thought it was useful to concentrate the mind wonderfully for AS and CF to see what it's like having signs in your face all the time. However, they're oblivious. They even blighted *their own waterfront* -- something everyone totally gawked at. Huh? They put that crap even in front of their vanity tower? Ancient put up a lame sign to counter mine, moving it every time I moved mine, that said "I Thought Ravens are Black" (my signs are green and blue).

Well, the vanity tower is no more, and it seems at least 3 of the sims formerly filled with vacant CB houses have been sold to CP Costello who has them for sale at a reasonable price, get 'em while they're hot.

There's still a Coldwell Bankers headquarters in the sim of Ranchero, which seems the only sim left. A search of "Places" turns up no ad, but there is still a paid ad in classifieds you can find in SEARCH ALL.

Is CB rolling up and out of SL?

I visited the Freebie Warehouse in Burns, a blighty, laggy mess that routinely hogs the entire sim's FPS and avatar slots and mandates the resetting of the sim constantly. I have a mall right next to Chrischun's Freebie Warehouse, and here, too, I'm trying the "here's-sign-in-your-eye" method to fight back against all the dozens of my properties that have been devalued and made unrentable sometimes for months due to his ugly Mr. Hong Kong (and this has happened to thousands of other people).

I noticed that the large Coldwell Banker ads that use to grace the Freebie Warehouse are all taken down. The ads were very unsettling, because at first glance from some meters away, they looked like somebody getting a boot in the face -- it was only when you came up close that you saw that it was a strange-looking graphic involving a guy's head coming out of a TV or something.

Mr. Lee's sign has been re-done with all kinds of newly-advertised features like the ability to track clicks and interest type (?) but his stupid leering grin still presides over the Freebie Warehouse. This is Fassbinder's loss-leader, as he claims neither to sell or rent land, but only sells the ad space -- and of course, the high-price land that went under it.

Wow, one of the really awful features of the Freebie Warehouse I just discovered by going inside of it, is that it traps avatars inside it by having all the walls show as textured walls on one side, once you are in, and one of them as a transparent prim on phantom coming in. So that way you can't find your way out, and keep getting waylaid by more ads. Ugh.

Code4Software, which is Ancient Shriner's company that does scripting and building for companies in SL, appears to be in business.

What I hope will happen is that David Kirkpatrick of Fortune, who did a lot of writing on Second Life and business in his day, much of it very astute, but some of it over-enthusiastic (on CB for example) will return to this subject and give it a proper analysis.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Coldwell has at all learned its lesson -- that you cannot chose as your representatives in the community two people who have antagonized most inworld property owners and driven them into either selling their own land at a loss or buying extortionist 16 m2 to "buy back the view". It amazes me that CB ever imagined it could build an ad empire on the bones of numerous people's destroyed property values -- something they would never have their company stand for.

CB came into SL with much froth about how they were going to make the real estate sector "honest," and cited their own noble RL history. But then they proceeded not only to needlessly trash other land barons who weren't their chosen evangelists, they implied that other land dealers were unscrupulous, and seemed absolutely blind to the cut-throat tactics of Shriner and Fassbinder.

Not having prices on the 16-m micro-baron land is a start away from the unethical practice, but it's hardly much better, because the implication, when you put an ugly, stupid sign on land, especially in a residential neighbourhood where few people will ever see it, is that you *might* be willing to sell it -- especially if that was your practice for years before. Fassbinder says now he will "swap" it, but that isn't really much better.

What he needs to do is make a public apology, and public announcement, that he will sell the land for a normal $7 or $10 per meter to anyone who has land adjacent or land in the sim. The clicks and ad income he gets from disfiguring the landscape and devaluing other people's land cannot be so great such as to justify the continue disfiguring of his company's image.

Oh, I'm well aware of the SL mantra of "I can do WTF I want on my land," and the Randian, Friedmanite, Ancapitstan sort of ethos which says land ownership must entail absolute freedom and disregard of the surrounding community in favour of personal expression -- and this is protected by the TOS.

So? The TOS also contains Community Standards with paragraphs against spamming, disturbing the peace, and interfering with the enjoyment of SL by other people. Why is it not ok to spam my IM box, but ok to spam the landscape I look at? Why is it not ok to fly around and grief an event, but ok to grief the surroundings and make land unuseable, unsellable, and unrentable? That's not only interfering with enjoyment of SL; that is destruction of property by blighting it and deliberately devaluing it. That's not capitalism; that's criminality.

Life in a society is about balance among personal and group rights. SL never, ever finds this balance, preferring to enpower the collective to mob and shun people they don't like on the forums; preferring to empower the individual to express his hedonism to atrocious absolutes on a land parcel. The TOS and CS don't need any changes. They simply need enforcement; they simply need adult supervision providing the balance between both kinds of rights.

Comments

[Blaccard Burks]

I remember we had a conversation about this and I told you that sooner or later that system is going to fold. Simply put RL business's are finding out that SL really isn't a place for them, and the silly metric systems these ad guys create are plain stupid. Its not like you see other companies taking ads with them and as the new continent unfolds people can purchase land cheaper until the new breed of sign greifers infiltrates the new sims.

I had contacted Shriner about a land swap and basically he told me "in Second Life you pay for the land, not the view". Oddly the mentality of these sign people is very warped because one would think the view of a sign along a road or high traffic area would be beneficial in some way to their "metrics". Most signs are walled in or blocked because they place them in the middle of someones property rather than a road that had a protected view... Shriner even puts my name in his description "walled in by Blaccard Burks" of his land parcel. Duh.. and if you read this Ancient Shriner...I'll still swap you for road side land...

Recently I had the experiance of dealing with 6 other sign people in an effort to get signs moved along the road in Samoa where I own most of the sim. The idea was to create a good flow of traffic that would benefit all. Only 2 sign companies relocated and worked land swaps. All others screwed around with me like some demanded payment, some extra land. Some ignored me. I laughed at the one idiot who totes " we have to educate people... we are not an ad farm".... yet would never take a swap to a better location. Silly mentality when they have no bargaining power since I can wall in the whole bunch.

In all fairness to Mr Fasbinder and Shriner they are very small compared to other greifers cropping up, especially in the new continent. SHAME ON LINDEN LABS for allowing the new continent have sims get ruined because of this ad farm outbreak. One started in Kraken and now I have noticed a huge outbreak of ad farms all over the new continent.

[Via]

I cannot understand why Linden Labs will not act in its own clear interest in this issue.