On Tuesday, November 7th, Linden Lab announced their new Premium membership benefit, previously hinted at in recent blog posts.
In short, and with immediate effect, Premium members will have access to 90 days of L$ transaction history – almost 3 times as long as Basic members, who will retain access to 32 days transaction history.
The blog post also reveals and interesting statistic – quote:
Every day, the Marketplace alone sees more than 20,000 unique buyers purchasing more than L$16,000,000 worth of goods from more than 15,000 unique sellers.
Allowing for the caveat of “more than”, with a 5% commission on all Marketplace sales, this would indicate that the Lab is generating some L$800,000 in revenue from Marketplace sales, or very approximately some US $1,123,077 per year. While approximate, this gives some idea of the contribution the Marketplace makes to the Lab’s revenue stream.
Having an extended transaction history kept on file is something a lot of merchants will likely find useful, particularly when dealing the customer enquiries or issues. As such it will be interesting to see the feedback on this benefit.
Certainly, a benefit like this, together with those such as the extended access to concierge support, the increase in the number of off-line IMs Premium members can access on next logging-in, and the increase in group slots from 42 to 60 for Premium members, is likely to be a lot more welcome among a broader cross-section of Premium members than the “gift” type of benefit might reach, and liable to be far more practically used.
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