metamart

MetaMart 4, known now as the MetaHUD was presented to assembled Second Life tech heads, press and bloggers at the Metaversed Friday Geek Meet last week. Apart from the usual array of bug fixes and improvements to the popular shopping search system, a whole set of new functionality focused on 'grid marking', ie virtual bookmarking of land, and interesting places was unveiled. The new system competes directly with services such as SLoog and Gridmarker, both of which projects seem to have fallen by the wayside of late. Robbie Kiama, MetaHUD's driving force, said they were calling the new service MetaTravel, and that it would allow users to tag, and describe parcels of land in the virtual world, and rate them for others.

I've messed around with the 4.0 beta just a little today and it looks pretty slick, and I think at least in theory the idea of putting this added functionality on top of the excellent shopping search HUD should work, but i worry that the project will lose focus on it's core proficiency and that Giff, and the rest of the Sheep guys who'll launch their shopping HUD in the next few weeks will find the lack of focus easy prey. Only time will tell.

So what do gorgeous gowns, beautiful dresses and commerce driven technology have to do with each other? Not much generally, but at the Joysco Fashion show on Sunday evening the two came together in a marriage of convenience to provide Second Life's fashionista with an integrated entertainment and shopping experience hitherto unseen on the catwalks of the Metaverse.

Models on the catwalk wearing dresses designed by Rose Stardust

I was invited backstage by Rose Stardust, or Splendor by Rose designs, one of Second Life's upcoming young designers to see the show, and also to witness how her partnership with Robbie Kiama of MetaMart would give the audience a unique way in which to buy outfits they saw on the catwalk as the models walked by.

Rose Stardust and Savannah Glimmer look on as the models walk on to the catwalk

The MetaMart HUD, also exhibited at the Joysco GSG convention, is a shopping search engine with user comments, ratings and a whole bunch of other useful/fun features profiled here on Metaversed. At the start of the show, each member of the audience was given a copy of the HUD, preloaded with the dresses that would be shown on the catwalk. A neat way to demonstrate the MM technology, and give the audience a convenient way to buy what they saw.

Savannah and Rose pictured with MetaMart creator Robbie Kiama

I spoke to several people in the audience after the show, and they all loved the idea, and quite a few had made purchases. Certainly both Robbie and Rose counted the experiment a success. The buzz and atmosphere at the event was truly amazing. Attendees were chattering away excitedly about the dresses on show, and when asked, were happy to enthuse over the technological aspect as well. It certainly beat watching telly that evening...

Model Rubi Holmer poses for the Metaversed cameras

So if sex drives technological innovation, does fashion drive sales technology? Possibly. It's certainly a fun way to provide easy commerce at such an event and I can imagine similar use cases with auto shows and tech expos for example.

Backstage at the Joysco Fashion Show

Thanks to all the great women taking part in the show and to Rose and Robbie for inviting Metaversed along for the ride!

Late last year, Robbie Kiama, who heads up a four man team of developers working on the Metaverse Mart HUD released the first version of their shopping tool. He admits it sucked. It was slow, cranky and under populated with products. This week sees the third generation of the tool released, unveiled at the GSG tech expo, and despite its humble beginnings, it rocks! Its slick, useful and really fun to use once you get it set up and working right. I've even found a couple of things I've wanted to buy using it, and had them delivered painlessly without having to leave the comfort of my mountainside home in the Bel Highlands or even open a web browser The interface is slick, and despite obscuring the entire view when maximized, can easily be tucked into the corner of your viewer where it sits quietly awaiting instruction -- Meta Mart is shopping even men can love.

It does admittedly have a way to go in terms of products. Robbie tells me there are over 100 vendors using the tool now, and the active user count is over 2000. The more people use it, the useful it beomes. The Meta Mart HUD, which you can find here [SLUrl], is really made interesting by the fact that it lists items by popularity as well as your own favorited items. You can even search for items from the database using the chat interface -- Search results rely upon the network effect to increase relevancy by letting searchers rate items in the results. The system adds extra relevancy weight to those items in future searches.

There's also a very neat rating and commentary system on individual items. Much like web based shopping apps Second Life Exchange and Second Life Boutique, shoppers can rate and comment on individual products, which helps other users make buying decisions.

Sellers are provided with a "kiosk" within which to place items they wish to see appear in the HUD's search results, and MM take 3% of the total sale value as their cut of the transaction, forwarding the remaining 97% when an item is purchased and delivered -- Listing items is free, sellers just pay on transactions.

If you're like me, and you prefer to do your shopping sitting down, Meta Mart is a cool, fun way to shop. If also like me, you need the comfort of user comments, ratings and other crowd sourced relevancy to help you make shopping decisions, then you're going to love playing with the MM HUD -- Happy shopping!