Linden Lab have slipped in a new offer to encourage the take-up of Premium memberships. For a limited time (i.e. this weekend), people can sign-up at a 50% discount – but only if they sign-up for the Quarterly payment plan and only for the first billing cycle.
While such quarterly offers are not uncommon – my ISP offers new sign-up 1/3 off their first quarter bill for phone & broadband charges, for example) – one cannot help but feel the Lab are perhaps being a tad tight-fisted here. While I can understand that Annual membership is hard to discount to the same degree – why restrict the offer to Quarterly only (and perhaps even why only the first quarter?).
The discount offer. The small print reads: “This limited-time discount offer is available only for memberships on the Quarterly billing plan. Discount will be applied to the first quarterly billing cycle only and all future charges will be at the regular Premium price.”
Why not offer a 25% discount on monthly memberships, applicable to the first 3 months alongside a 50% discount on Quarterly memberships?
Of course, there is a risk that, in offering such discounts, LL will annoy their established Premium members. But the fact is, currently, and the new additions to Premiums notwithstanding, there is little enough being offered to tempt established users with free accounts into jumping onto the Premium train; and while the various offers might appeal to incoming members, one feels that overall, people will – by their very nature – opt to go the “free” route first, rather than “risk” signing up – again, discount notwithstanding – to limit their exposure.
Both increasing the attractiveness of Premium memberships and promoting them to the user base is a good idea. One just wonders if there is a consistent and workable strategy behind it that will lead to success.
Linden Lab have issued a casting call for people wishing to participate in an upcoming web-based advertising campaign for Second Life.
The campaign will be similar to the Become Your Avatar banner ads campaign currently to be seen in relations to Second Life, but will also feature video as will as still pictures.
The Become Your Avatar banner ad campaign
As such, the Lab is looking for people who are comfortable revealing their “human side” alongside their avatars in SL with the aim of spotlighting the diverse and creative communities in Second Life.
If you’re interested in participating in the campaign please complete the official application form and get it back to Linden Lab no later than 12:00 noon PDT on Monday September 12th.
Good luck to all who apply, and maybe see you on the casting couch!
Since the launch of the social web Profiles by Linden Lab, one of the most requested features users have asked to see is the inclusion of a Twitter-like FOLLOW capability. At SLCC 2011 Viale Linden hinted that the function might be coming along.
And he wasn’t wrong.
Linden Lab have now launched the ability for people to “follow” others through the web profiles.
To use it, simply go to my.secondlife.com/first.last (where first.last is obviously your own avatar name) and log-in. Then select the profile of the person you wish to follow in the browser url bar (again “my.secondlife.com/first.last” – where first.last is their avatar name). This will display that person’s web profile, thus:
Note the FOLLOW button
Clicking the FOLLOW button will allow you to receive that person’s messages on your Feed page, allowing for any privacy options set – see below.
For those who use the web profiles Feed, this is a powerful new option, potentially delivering notifications of events, activities, and so on from others who pro-actively use web profiles and the Feed option directly to a single point they can review either in-world (if their Viewer supports web profiles) or on a single web page.
For merchants and entertainers, it presents another means of getting word out about events and goings-on by encouraging people to use their own feeds and then using the FOLLOW option.
There are a couple of points to note:
If the person has their Feed privacy set to FRIENDS/NOBODY, you will not receive any Feed messages from them regardless as to whether you follow them (unless they accept you as a Friend where FRIENDS is concerned)
The same applies to your own Feed – if you set your Feed privacy to FRIENDS/NOBODY, people will be restricted in their ability to receive your feed messages.
The system may yet be refined further; I’ve already suggested to Linden Lab it might be an idea to add something along the lines of a “Friends and Followers” privacy option. As it stands, it is a useful addition to web profiles, and one that is sure to be welcomed.
Linden lab have added a new category to the latest Viewer Search (V2 + TPVs): the ability to search for support items.
The support options can be displayed by either selecting SUPPORT from the drop-down list of search options at the top of the Search window, or by clicking on the SUPPORT option towards the bottom left of the window. Bother of these will refresh Search and display a set of six check boxes you can use to refine your search of support subjects (note that you will probably have to resize the window to see all six). These are:
Linden Lab Policies
Knowledge Base
Answers
Forums
Blogs
All wiki
By default, the first three options are checked as active. Search results themselves can be displayed either in your Viewer’s media browser or in your web browser, depending on how you have set your browser preferences.
Typical support search result displayed in the Viewer’s media browser
Overall, a useful and considered addition to Search.
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.
“I own three sims and have a Group of over six thousand plus people and…Customer Service won’t talk to me. So…I mean maybe y’all don’t have that experience or maybe y’all have 20,000…but how does a guy who’s never been to one of these conferences and is new get through when there is nowhere to go and Customer Services is … c’mon guys, it’s abysmal.
“I pay more for my Second Life than I do for my BMW – and they bring a car to my house, take my car away … they call me every day and tell me, ‘This is the problem’. I don’t get a call back [from Customer Support] for three weeks. I get nothing. I paid three hundred bucks just to come here to say that.”
The above comments were aired towards the end of the Social Life and Communities presentation at SLCC 2011, and were reflective of a growing frustration from sim owners and others at the lack of service from LL’s Customer Support.
This is not a new issue; Customer Support has been a thorn in Linden Lab’s side for a fair while. And not just Linden Lab, as anyone – Basic or Premium member – who has tried to raise a ticket and get a response knows only too well.
Such is the problem, that Rod Humble has, rightly, targeted Customer Support and Customer Services as something that needs to be overhauled. The problem seems to be the time its taking to see – or even read about – anything tangible that is being done, coupled with the fact that at times Linden Lab see it purely as a “usability” issue (the suggestion being that if people are given the right tools, the problem will evaporate).The comments passed by the frustrated sim owner above was met with more-or-less this pigeon-holing of his problems, which were seen in terms purely of griefing.
While it is true that many issues around sim ownership, etc., can most likely be eased through the deployment of improved tools from LL – this is only a small part of the problem, and the fact is that Customer Support really needs to be overhauled from the ground up, because it simply isn’t working.
In fairness, LL are probably working hard to get on top of things – at times, some improvement has been noted, even if it is unfortunately short-lived. But when one of Second Life’s oldest and most well-known content creation teams announces that they have disposed of 50% of the sims they run in Second Life, simply as a result of issues relating directly to Customer Support, then there can be no denying the issue is reaching a critical point.
Prim Perfect carries a report about Grendel’s Children, which has sold-off two out of the four sims it has been running for over four years and has been a star attraction within Second Life – not only for the quality of the products supplied by the team, but for the sheer magic of the sims themselves. Indeed, as the Prim Perfect article notes, such has been the fame of Grendel’s Children that even Philip Rosedale likened the success of the Grid itself to the success of Grendels when he said, “As goes Grendel’s, so goes the Grid”. Their reason for selling off the sims? Poor Customer Support.
I’ve been broadly positive about the change in approach and philosophy within Linden Lab when it comes to Second Life – and I still am. However, Grendel’s is a strong brand, it’s a known brand and one that has been making money in Second Life. As such, and while they are not planning on pulling out of Second Life entirely, divesting themselves of 50% of their land holdings simply because of ongoing issues around Customer Support is not a positive message to be hitting the airwaves where the Lab is concerned.
