On November 3rd, a blog post appeared from Commerce Linden, referring to a further Beta of Direct Delivery. Unlike the first Beta, this appears open to all merchants. The blog post, appearing in the Commerce section – which doesn’t appear on people’s account dashboards, states:

“To improve the quality of upcoming releases, we are launching a Beta program for the Marketplace. Starting today, Aditi will be used as the Marketplace Beta testing grid.* All merchants will be able to test new features and bug fixes at least five days before each Marketplace release. In addition to the Marketplace Beta release notes that are produced on the wiki, updates will be posted in the “Technical Announcements” section of the Marketplace Merchant Admin to alert merchants of current beta tests.”

The post continues:

“In December, all merchants will have the opportunity to purchase and list items using Direct Delivery on Aditi. We will be allowing a limited number of merchants to Beta test Direct Delivery in production before the official launch, which will not occur until after the New Year. If you would like to learn more about Direct Delivery, please see the updated Direct Delivery FAQ.”

This last paragraph will come as a relief to many, who were fearing LL might roll-out DD ahead of the Christmas season and inadvertently create issues for merchants as a result.

The full blog post can be read here, so if you’re a merchant and wish to find out more on DD, if you’ve not involved yourself to date, take a look at the notes for access the Beta grid (Aditi) if you not done so before, and head on over.