During the pandemic, should Linden Lab.....

[ItHadToComeToThis]

-Do more to entice more people to join SL during this period. Given that some are self isolating alone. Perhaps adverts that clearly state "Isolating alone, join Second Life and never be alone again"

-Give a temporary reduction on the cost of owning a region / land. Similar to what they did a few years ago but perhaps half price purchase and two months at half price tier to encourage land ownership and possible new experiences for people to explore during this time (that are not educational institutes).

-Or..open up homesteads to be purchasable without a full region (never going to happen but worth a shot xD)

-Delegate a few lindens into the welcome areas to greet potential new players and help them (hopefully encouraging them to stay)

-Idk...ideas people ideas throw them out there

[bigmoe Whitfield]

3 hours ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

-Do more to entice more people to join SL during this period. Given that some are self isolating alone. Perhaps adverts that clearly state "Isolating alone, join Second Life and never be alone again"

-Give a temporary reduction on the cost of owning a region / land. Similar to what they did a few years ago but perhaps half price purchase and two months at half price tier to encourage land ownership and possible new experiences for people to explore during this time (that are not educational institutes).

-Or..open up homesteads to be purchasable without a full region (never going to happen but worth a shot xD)

-Delegate a few lindens into the welcome areas to greet potential new players and help them (hopefully encouraging them to stay)

-Idk...ideas people ideas throw them out there

Or..open up homesteads to be purchasable without a full region (never going to happen but worth a shot xD)

I got to be the downer here.   that's going to get very expensive very quickly and I'm not sure they have enough hardware laying around to feasibly do this. 

[Buttacwup Float]

I am still hoping that the option for owning a homestead without a full region is a perk of the uber premium account package they have been talking about.

[LittleMe Jewell]

4 hours ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

-Give a temporary reduction on the cost of owning a region / land. Similar to what they did a few years ago but perhaps half price purchase and two months at half price tier to encourage land ownership and possible new experiences for people to explore during this time (that are not educational institutes).

While I could possibly (though not high possibility) see a short term tier reduction, I can't see a reduction in purchase prices.  And yeah, definitely not seeing them allowing the homestead purchase on its own - at least not due to COVID-19.

[ItHadToComeToThis]

Well making land more accessible by any reduction for a couple of months would be a great help. Especially if they combined it with trying to bring new people in during this time. 50% off for two months for example or for the Duration might lead to a greater increase in land ownership and available regions for people to develop new and interesting experiences. This is the perfect time for them to try to attract new users as half the world is currently sat at home avoiding Covid19. 

[clivesteel]

* SL to make ALL land public. NO private ownership. All regions to be divided into 1/8s, cost of 1/8 rental per month - $2. 

* ALL SL 'abandoned land' to be reactivated with full script permissions.

* NO premium membership NOR fees required for last names - roll them out for EVERYONE, NOW.

 

[Drayke Newall]

4 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

Well making land more accessible by any reduction for a couple of months would be a great help. Especially if they combined it with trying to bring new people in during this time. 50% off for two months for example or for the Duration might lead to a greater increase in land ownership and available regions for people to develop new and interesting experiences. This is the perfect time for them to try to attract new users as half the world is currently sat at home avoiding Covid19. 

Cant see any form of reduction in price happening as LL just are to slow and just don't know how to market Second Life anymore. Only possible way this could be done is for maybe businesses that register can purchase at a discounted rate for the next 6months so as they can see the benefit for meetings etc. But even that will not happen.

Even better would be for those businesses to be able to register for a region that is already built with offices and meeting rooms for those businesses to use in this time.

8 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I got to be the downer here.   that's going to get very expensive very quickly and I'm not sure they have enough hardware laying around to feasibly do this. 

Why would it be more expensive? People have been asking for years for this and as far as I am aware homesteads are far cheaper to run that full regions. Considering there continues to be a decline in regions for many years, the hardware is still there to handle that and I would assume that could pick up any slack. Also hosting regions on the cloud (if they get a move on with doing so - should have been done a while ago IMHO) would be a benefit but the slowness of LL have once again stung them in the butt.

Where this time is a prime time for Linden Lab to get a huge marketing boost and possibly bring back the 2006 hype for second life with its vast improvements over the years as a showcase to businesses and users. I'm going to put my hat on the table and say that I'll eat it if LL actually manage to market this time properly or reduce tier, offer regions etc.

[Parhelion Palou]

I doubt that suggesting region purchases to new residents would be a good idea. Telling people who are just starting with SL that they can have land for only a few hundred dollars plus 100 - 200 dollars per month would end their time in SL. A full region is a lot to deal with too. Here's your land, now go buy stuff to put on it. Oh, and you'll want to learn to terraform too. Giving newbies a couple months of premium and a Linden Home would be a better start.

Linden Lab is already promoting the idea of SL for business meetings. It didn't work out in 2006-2008 and it won't work now. There are products that are cheaper and much easier to use. Those products don't require participants to choose an avatar name, learn how to navigate, set up headsets, figure out the viewer (not to mention having to download & install the viewer). It's too much trouble.

[kali Wylder]

The idea of using a natural disaster, like the  pandemic, to promote a business, even one we love, like SL, is abhorrent and really not a good idea at all.  I thought we'd already agreed on that in a similar thread recently.

[Lucia Nightfire]

SL should offer EVERYONE a free puppy/unicorn animesh pet!

[Mollymews]

20 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

SL should offer EVERYONE a free puppy/unicorn animesh pet!

agree ...mostly

everyone except for me should get a common. I should get a rare

😸

 

[Alwin Alcott]

2 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

SL should offer EVERYONE a free puppy/unicorn animesh pet!

we'r still waiting for the pony!

[Maryanne Solo]

DON'T mention charging for land that doesn't exist. This is one concept the real world simply will not cop.
Don't mention the word >parcel< in regard to land. - its enough to make one vomit.
Apart from that go for it!

[Garnet Psaltery]

8 hours ago, clivesteel said:

* SL to make ALL land public. NO private ownership. All regions to be divided into 1/8s, cost of 1/8 rental per month - $2. 

* ALL SL 'abandoned land' to be reactivated with full script permissions.

* NO premium membership NOR fees required for last names - roll them out for EVERYONE, NOW.

 

Nope.  Not even Soon.

[Targyn]

Maybe a discount on premium membership to help attract new people and give us SL vets a real chance to check it out.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

"Don't ask what Linden Lab can do for you. Ask what you can do for others using Second Life as a platform." - Abraham Lincoln

Edited March 27, 2020 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Maitimo]

None of these measures are a good idea in my opinion. All of them will reduce income to Linden Lab. And the very last thing I want to see is for them to go bankrupt right now.

What they really ought to do though, is blitz social media with advertising. Let people know that we're still here, still thriving, and no longer full of flying weeners.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Matty Luminos

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

1 hour ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

"Don't ask what Linden Lab can do for you. As what you can do for others using Second Life as a platform." - Abraham Lincoln

I was trying to figure out how to say this, except it was using many more words and not going so well. Thanks Arduenn

Off for some lockdown exercise now

(edit: Rather than focus on what you can do with money, perhaps a better hook given the monumental economic uncertainty would be a focus on what you can do in SL for free or very low cost. Then those who are inclined can find their own way into Linden homes or mesh bodies or whatever makes them happy.)

Edited March 27, 2020 by Bitsy Buccaneer

[Amina Sopwith]

21 minutes ago, Matty Luminos said:

and no longer full of flying weeners.

To be fair, I haven't properly re-immersed myself yet.

[Alwin Alcott]

9 hours ago, clivesteel said:

* SL to make ALL land public. NO private ownership. All regions to be divided into 1/8s, cost of 1/8 rental per month - $2. 

* ALL SL 'abandoned land' to be reactivated with full script permissions.

* NO premium membership NOR fees required for last names - roll them out for EVERYONE, NOW.

 

and no access for basics ? .. because somebody will get the bill...

[steeljane42]

2 hours ago, Matty Luminos said:

None of these measures are a good idea in my opinion. All of them will reduce income to Linden Lab. And the very last thing I want to see is for them to go bankrupt right now.

What they really ought to do though, is blitz social media with advertising. Let people know that we're still here, still thriving, and no longer full of flying weeners.

They'll have less income either way. If/when people will start dropping their land or whole regions because they have no spare money for SL. We will have to see the statistics for the next 2-3 months to see actual numbers for regions at least, but considering there was a small drop in regions numbers "as is", it's safe to assume it'll only be larger now.

---

I personally think "regions" are very overpriced in SL anyway (even if I still keep one myself), so LL could easily drop price if they wanted to. After all what is a "region"? It's a server's 1 CPU core, some drive space and some RAM, homesteads are even less so, since they share 1 CPU core between 3 of them and have less RAM available. No server with such specs costs 200$ a month to run, not even close. For ~100$ a month you can get a 8 Core Xeon CPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM and ~240GB SSD for your server that also has 99.99% uptime and live support (that is not limited to just a few hours like LL one is).

However high "land" price is a vital price of SL's economy, so I don't see them dropping it to "actual value" levels, it would simply crash the entire economy.

What LL could do - If they had plans to drop prices for land/regions for SL's 17th birthday, like they did for 15th and 16th ones, then it's really good time to do it now instead of waiting for early-mid June. It could help some people to keep their places through those pandemic times, while by June (if tier drop happens), it could already be too late for that. We don't know if LL planned to do another tier drop, though.

Edited March 27, 2020 by steeljane42
typos

[Maryanne Solo]

Saw an ad while random YouTubing for a virtual clubbing lifestyle.
It was pretty cool.

I didn't even realise it was SL at first. I'm like ooo whats this?
Well done LL.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

49 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

 After all what is a "region"? It's a server's 1 CPU core, some drive space and some RAM, homesteads are even less so, since they share 1 CPU core between 3 of them and have less RAM available. No server with such specs costs 200$ a month to run, not even close. For ~100$ a month you can get a 8 Core Xeon CPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM and ~240GB SSD for your server that also has 99.99% uptime and live support (that is not limited to just a few hours like LL one is).

If it was that easy and simple it's a godsgiven miracle there isn't competition for SL.
Think you forget a few things that cost money.

[steeljane42]

28 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

If it was that easy and simple it's a godsgiven miracle there isn't competition for SL.
Think you forget a few things that cost money.

Yeah, so all those companies that provide servers I mentioned above, are doing it for no profit whatsoever, right? They also have quite a few things that cost money. Electricity, server "farm" space, traffic and other bills, staff to pay, hardware upgrades and replacements, legal expenses, ads/promotions expenses as there is some good competition, DDoS protection, etc.

The only difference is LL have some developers and staff to work on viewer and/or server code, but they also do have other sources of income as well, unlike server hosting companies. Other than that's it's just a hardware running a certain type of software (SL), with exactly same expenses for physical maintenace as would any other servers have.

Edited March 27, 2020 by steeljane42

[Maryanne Solo]

Another Youtube ad for SL!
Cyberpunk Fair.
Very well done and kept my attention for its duration.

Congrats again LL. 😀