During SLCC 2011 Rod Humble mentioned that Premium accounts would be improving during the current months in terms of the benefits afforded to those taking out such memberships, and at “no extra cost”. Also during the convention, Vogt Linden indicated the Linden Homes may well be up for an overhaul as they weren’t perhaps performing as expected.
Quite what the changes to Premium memberships were to be, or whether changes to Linden Homes would be an immediate part and parcel of the changes or something separate, wasn’t made clear during the convention. It also sounded like the changes might be a little way down the road.
Well, in the latter regard, it appears that we didn’t have long to wait for things to start changing.
Today, Linden Lab have formally announced changes to Premium accounts, “starting with exclusive gifts and sandboxes”. Here’s a couple of extracts from the announcement:
“Premium members will regularly receive exclusive virtual items that you won’t find anywhere else. The very first gift is a stylish set of furniture crafted by Colleen Desmoulins of The Loft. The set features a sofa, tables, plants and lamps to enhance your home’s cozy factor. You can change the look of most of the furniture to fit your home’s unique style and decor — whether you live in a Linden Home or elsewhere.”
And:
“Explore your creative side or just get down to the business of creating without the distractions of a more public space in one of the many Premium-only Sandboxes in Second Life. There are four new, exclusive Premium-only Sandbox Islands you can access right now to give you more room than ever to bring your creations to life. Members can visit right now.”
I’m actually all in favour of seeing Premium accounts overhauled and improved – but I’m curious as to how the gifts such as the furniture mentioned above are selected. The words “exculsive” and “won’t find anywhere else” suggest the items have been especially commissioned by Linden Lab. If this is so, it’s probably going to raise eyebrows (and questions) as to how the content creators making the gifts are being selected, and whether they are being renumerated by LL, etc. This in turn could easily lead to some negativity and claims of preferential treatment / the creation of yet another FIC.
The idea of gifts needs to be carefully balanced in other ways as well: while they may encourage newcomers to sign-up for Premium, but give away too many practical gifts and there is a risk of being accused of “strangling” commerce. Take this initial offering: furniture. As the announcement states, the items could be used within a newcomer’s Linden home – so at a stroke, LL appear to have “prevented” any need for newcomers taking up Premium membership for having any need to go shopping for basic SL “needs”.
So while a welcome idea, this is going to need some consideration and thought as it rolls forward, lest it results in upset elsewhere.
Premium sandboxes are liable to prove popular among those that cannot afford to set aside prims / space for their building work, and as such are liable to be less potentially fractious.
As a long-term SL “resident”, these two aren’t enough to encourage me beck into the realm of Premium membership – not for the concerns raised above, but simply because I already have so many things in my inventory, it is hard to conceive of a “must have” gift I don’t already have, or would be willing to buy from a fellow content creator anyway. Similarly (and while I may be in a minority), I have all the private build space I need, so exclusive sandboxes aren’t an attraction.
Which is not to say I dismiss what LL are trying to achieve. Far from it.
Rather, this initial benefits seem aimed towards the “newer” user within in SL, rather than the “established” user base (where Premium accounts are in the minority). Ergo, if the hope is to encourage more “oldbies” to revert back to Premium / take out Premiums for the first time, it is probable that LL are going to have to offer different incentives to those of us who have been around the block a few times.
Nevertheless, beefing-up Premiums is a good idea, and a lot of people are sure to be watching what develops in this area in the coming months.
Addendum 1st Sept 4:17 PDT
Linden Lab updated their blog post to include a video extolling Premium membership, which I’ve embedded below.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
The incentives aren’t for me for the same reasons you describe. I see ll dipping their toes into something other than the virtual real estate model that’s kept second life afloat for so long. If premium users can generate an income for second life we might see MORE perks for us, the type of things, such as the atlas program, island barons see.
Personally, I would love to see my premium bonus tier or my stipe… err “money rewards” increased, or perhaps dedicated (not outsourced) technical support and billing.
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This is precisely my point in the latter half of this article :).
If LL wish to look at encouraging Premiums (and thus gain some additional income for themselves, allowing for stipends offsetting any inward flow), then what we have here to start with isn’t an incentive per se; rather, it’s a couple of nice-to-haves which run the risk of a degree of negative feedback in some quarters (but then, you can’t please everyone), one of which could well find favour more with new users than (again) established users (whether they have a free account or are Premium).
Obviously, this is just the tip of the iceberg as to what might be coming down the line; but if the aim is to encourage people to sign-up to Premium (and remember the vast majority of current users are on free accounts), now needs to be done to offer solid incentives.
Beefing-up support would be one way of achieving greater satisfaction among those with Premium, but again, there is a balancing act to achieve. Offering greater financial rewards might be another. But again, this is potentially a hard one to balance; those opting for quarterly / annual Premium options are already getting a “discount” compared to the monthly fee that increasing stipends would mean LL themselves could end up with little or no real financial benefit from the system, as what comes in folws straight back out in the form of stipend payments.
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I am in total agreement! I am a bit insulted over the furniture gift in particular, not because it isn’t good work but because everyone I convinced to sign up for a premium membership will have a sofa just like mine and no doubt most of them would put the sofas in their Linden homes. The gift certificate idea isn’t bad. It should have been a gift certificate for shopping in the Marketplace and the amount of the certificate should be dictated by the length of my premium membership.
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Premium has been looking for a purpose for years and maybe instead of trying to find things to bolt on and make it worth something, it’s time to junk it all together,
As a long standing premium account holder I’m more than capable of going to a store and choosing my own damn furniture. I do not need, or want to be patronized with goodies from the FIC. What’s next, a free bunneh? I own land, that was why I became a premium account holder in the first place. I do not need a public sandbox, even an elitist premium only one.
Give me real benefits for being a paying account holder (for my prem and all my alts), give me guaranteed customer support whatever happens, give me security in my investment and assets in world, give me a stake, give me actual value for money or forget it,
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I’m definitely more than happy to see that we Premium users haven’t been totally forgotten by Linden Lab 🙂 Let’s see what comes next…
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Re-visiting and revising Premiums is definitely overdue – and it is definitely good to see they are at least considering what needs to be done to make them more attractive.
I’d just like to know what the overall aim here is – if it is to make Premiums appear somewhat more attractive to incoming members, this initial approach of gifts and offers, etc., may well work. If the aim is to convert at least some of the vast number of free accounts to Premium (or “back to” Premium in some cases!), then they need need to roll something else out on the other side of the scales to balance -out the idea – which may well be yet what we see.
Certainly, I really hope this will be the case – although again, it’s going to remain a tough balancing-act for the Lab. But yes, kudos for them for at least putting Premium memberships on the agenda.
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Sounding like the Sims more and more each day. Just hope they don’t offer a toilet to piss in every 5 minutes! 😛
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I’ve been a premium member without a break since… well, about a month after I found Second Life. Even if I don’t spend the long hours I used to, it’s still so very much *my kind of thing* I wanted to kick in my little bit of support.
While the furniture does me little good, a sandbox with some minimal grief-protection (i.e., paying customers only) sounds like a dream as I’ve recently had to cut back on my land holdings.
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The sandbox idea seems to have had a more positive impact than the furniture from comments I’ve read on various blogs and the odd comment I’ve seen on Twitter.
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I would like to see more openess in processes like this, how do these merchants get selected would be a good starting point.
Oldbies may benefit if premium offered more options, plenty don’t want the mainland free tier, so that won’t tempt them back, provide something that will tempt them back.
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Agrred on both points. As mentioned abov, precisely how merchants are being selected, etc. is very much a eyebrower-raiser. I’ve no idea if this idea was put before merchants as a whole at the commerce UG, and the selection is based on those who applied (which strikes me as wishful thinking on my part), or if part of LL are still in the Jack Linden days of selective, closed-door meetings, which leads us back to the FIC theory touched upon above, sadly.
Also agreed on the Oldbies – more creative offerings need to be made to get the vast majority to perk-up and show interest.
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