Does anyone else have a bookmarks/favourites folder solely for the Marketplace stores they want to keep an eye on? Mine currently stands at (*goes to count ’em*) 171 stores, which is… um, rather a lot. Granted, some of those are probably no longer there, and I could really do with sorting them into sub-folders to make things easier when it comes to searching for a store I know I loved.
The reason I bookmark the whole store is simple: I already have 50+ pages of favourites on Marketplace, and you can only favourite single items. The two things I have long wished for with regard to MP are:
- The ability to ‘watch’ a store and have a page where you get updates on latest releases
- A wishlist from which people can gift you items you’ve favourited
No.1 is a pipe dream at the moment. There isn’t even an RSS feed for each store that you can add to a feed reader, and I can’t help but feel that LL missed a trick there. We can’t all belong to every inworld group, and if we joined the Subscribomatic for every single store whose products we were interested in… well, I know that at least my IMs would be capped within an hour of logging off. But, since LL get a cut of almost every MP sale, wouldn’t it be in their best financial interests to offer the ability to instantly see when a store has put new items on there for sale?
I do have something that I use for No.2, but again I think LL would have done well to include it as part of the main Marketplace site itself. My method is to use Clipix, which allows you to ‘clip’ items you’re interested in. It’s kind of like Pinterest, but with many more options.
With Clipix you create clipboards, which can be private, public, or visible to people you’ve added as contacts on the site. I have a RL private account there, and I have many clipboards for various things. For instance, I’m currently collecting ideas for how I’m going to decorate my spare bedroom (turning it into a study) so I’m clipping inspirational images, websites for colour swatches and furniture/decor etc onto that clipboard. With Christmas (I know I know) fast heaving-to, I have a clipboard for gift ideas for family and friends, and likewise an open one whose URL I give out to the people who ask the dreaded question which turns everyone mute: “So… what do you want for Christmas/your birthday, then?”
I’ve recently also created a Clipix account for Skell, and I’m in the process of making various clipboards for Marketplace. I have one for building tools I want, one for full-permission texture packs, one for sculptpacks and one for mesh, and then there are the ones I’m currently filling up: clothing, decor, homes, etc. Here’s the start of the clothing and accessories clipboard (which, I think, already needs editing, since I want to keep accessories separate)
I’m also using them to save images for build inspiration inworld:
It’s not perfect, since it’s just one more click to get to where you want, but it was getting more and more difficult to find what I had favourited in 50+ pages, so it’s helping me to sort that shit out.
Is it too much to ask, though, for an RSS feed of each store? *sigh*