Should LL send out “we miss you” messages?

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

"Dear citizen, 

It has come to our attention that you have been spending way too much time in-world, thereby neglecting your real-life duties and responsibilities. Two thousand points have been subtracted from your social credit score. Please note that current balance is in the negative and that, consequently, your internet speed has been throttled, you have been barred from acquiring gasoline at gas stations state-wide, as well as from access to public transport. Contact your local credit score officer, who can help you provide with the appropriate community tasks in order to restore your balance.

Best of regards, your dystopian overlords."

No joke, btw. This system really exists in the People's Republic of China today.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/china-social-credit-system-punishments-rewards-explained-a8297486.html

As for the 'we miss you thing': that's so Facebook. I got those a lot, years ago, when I deleted my Facebook. I still don't miss them back at all.

Edited August 21, 2020 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Zeotetra]

2 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

not sure they still do it, but in the past it happened few times a Linden did send out small gifts

Ah never knew that!

2 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

make that many millions,  it was quite a few years ago they already hit the 1.000.000 registered accounts (2007) ..with the absurd high, but never logging, sign ups every day it must hit the ceiling by now.
https://www.cnet.com/news/counting-the-real-second-life-population/

Strange numbers

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

   Shouldn't they send 'Oi, you've been hanging around for AGES and never seem to take a break - get a life!'-messages to people ..?

An air horn would be good too hoonnnnnnk YOo time to take a break we, miss you but your eyes and fingers need a break too honnnnnnnnk end of message

[Gabriele Graves]

To answer the OP, I don't think it would be worth the effort.  The longer the account is dormant the more likely it is that fewer and fewer of those emails on file would still be valid.  In addition to that, the "guaranteed" offline group notice IMs sent to email and the existing marketing/notification emails from LL often don't turn up as it is.  If a person is taking a long break but does intend to return at some point, it might be annoying.  I have taken my share of breaks, I don't think any email would have made any difference to the time I decided to return.  If I did decide to leave permanently, a simple "We miss you" email wouldn't change anything.

[Lewis Luminos]

16 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

I occasionally get messages from games and online stores that say something along the line of, “We haven’t seen you in a while. Come on back and get 10% off”. Just wondering if you think this is a good idea for LL to bring back people to SL. Maybe send an email to people who have been away for a month and tell them about stuff happening. Has LL has done this before? I haven’t noticed any such messages on some of my unused alts. 🤔

I doubt it would be necessary, I suspect that half of the abandoned accounts are people who are still active on an alt, and the other half already figured that SL is not a good fit for their personality or their hardware.

I'm sure Linden Lab already know why new user retention is so low; the orientation process is very poor, the listed hardware requirements are years out of date, and SL is itself a niche product that won't appeal to 99.999% of the population at all.

 

[Ren Toxx]

It might get them some back, I don’t know.

Me, if they did this I would most likely think of anatomically hidden parts where they could insert their pleadings, and then I would look for the “Unsubscribe” and “Block as spam” mail functions.

[Garnet Psaltery]

I can see this causing some misery where an account holder has been away because they've died, and their RL partner is taking care of their email account.

[So Whimsy]

Personally I don't like these kind of messages, it always feels like the sender is trying to guilt trip me into returning.

[PermaRuthed]

Answer to the OP question, it's a no.  Something about a saying that goes "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink".

[Tari Landar]

18 hours ago, Drakonadrgora Darkfold said:

I dont see this ever happening. its just not realistic. there are literally thousands of accounts that have not been touched in years if not a decade  or longer that they would have to decide which ones to send to or mass email all of them.

what I do think should happen to make a more clear number of actual active accounts its put a moratorium on the age of un used accounts. that if an account goes unused in say 2-3 years its suspended and removed from all lists and groups.. at 5 years the now defunct account is disposed of.. deleted..erased from the database. if someone comes back.. after that long they need to start over.

maybe people would care more about keeping their account active more often.

This will be a hard pass from LL (and probably most residents too, for different reasons, I'm sure). LL used to actually do something similar to this, it's precisely how I lost my first account, possiby my second (I can't be certain if I deleted that one, or they did, but it was deleted nonetheless). It wasn't a very long lived practice, but lasted at least a few years. LL used to delete old accounts that hadn't logged in for a while. The amount of time between logins wasn't super long, it certainly wasn't more than 2 years, though. There was a time when you could get them restored merely by contacting them, but now LL requires that people pay $9.95 (I think this is still the amount, I might be wrong, though) for old deleted accounts to be restored (whether LL deleted it, or you, doesn't matter to LL). I can understand the fee, actually, whether or not I like it, I can understand it. 

LL stopped doing the "delete old accounts" thing over a decade ago because it went over like a ton of bricks and didn't really accomplish whatever they thought it was going to. It just created more hassle for them in the end, and still is when people do come back and even if they pay the fee for an account restoration, LL seems to still struggle with the logistics of it. How much gets restored is hit or miss and most definitely not uniform across the board. It's actually a total spaghetti mess of inefficiency, which even LL would agree with, they've said as much in the past,...it's already very convoluted practice that they'd prefer not to have to do (restoring old accounts). They aren't about to mak even more work for themselves, lol. 

[Alwin Alcott]

34 minutes ago, Tari Landar said:

 but now LL requires that people pay $9.95

i recovered nearly 15 accounts during the years, think i only had to pay once or twice, mostly you get "we restored ..." have fun 
Recovery these days is a lot easier, in most cases you can do it all yourself, just in some cases you need to use the old system.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 8/20/2020 at 4:06 PM, Bree Giffen said:

I occasionally get messages from games and online stores that say something along the line of, “We haven’t seen you in a while. Come on back and get 10% off”. Just wondering if you think this is a good idea for LL to bring back people to SL. Maybe send an email to people who have been away for a month and tell them about stuff happening. Has LL has done this before? I haven’t noticed any such messages on some of my unused alts. 🤔

I'm all for them doing this AND for then saying "And we are clearing your land if we don't see you in 30 days".

I'm really, really, REALLY tired of all these industry freebie account owners that Linden gave away at its hey-day 12-13 years ago who put out an ugly old Linden house or ugly plywood or some other stupid spinning thing and never logged in again.

Why do I say there is this category of account? That is, not the Charter accounts which Linden now labels "beta account" (they changed the wording). Because I can only extrapolate that the Lindens must have done this because otherwise, you could not explain why they won't abandon them. These are accounts of 10 years older, with land claimed ages ago, where the people are no longer in the people list. How can that be, that so many people would have hidden their names? and yet their land persists. Nobody pays for a premium 10 years in advance. Hence my theory that there are freebies handed out like this.

I assiduously ticket them and get the answer that they are "properly supported". Sometimes they say that the name is still visible (although it isn't at least to me in the list). Years go by. They are not logging on, as you can see from joining groups they are in. Yet they persist. I once got the Lindens to remove an ugly build from one of these (it was an ancient Linden house actually). But generally they will not remove builds.

In real life, you can lose land you don't maintain, especially in sparsely-populated New England states. They have statutes about how you have to mark your borders and show up on your land. Otherwise, neighbours startz grazing cows further and further and take your land.

So why not in SL? Maybe there's even a way for the Lindens to hide the builds or somehow "save the state" to reanimate it if the people come back. But something has to be done.

It also might get people racing back here if they got a message their build would be dumped. And then in embarrassment that they still have a cabin from 2007 on their land, they might get something new.

 

 

[Maryanne Solo]

"Make SL grate again!" 😹 

[JemimaRosenthal]

On 8/21/2020 at 2:13 AM, Orwar said:

   Shouldn't they send 'Oi, you've been hanging around for AGES and never seem to take a break - get a life!'-messages to people ..?

Naw the wife and girlfriend send them that message, nightly at 11 59 pm.

[cunomar]

The question made me laugh given LL promotes sims dedicated to making people quit , its all about numbers if its claimed theres 35,000 members online now you can bet your bottom dollar 30,000 of then are afk alts of active players used to keep traffic looking good .

Hang around when sim reboot warnings come and see for yourself when your ejected to someplace how many afk alts land with you and remain oblivious to the fact they got booted many hours later .

Its just the way it is , most forums boast a million+ users but if you read through stuff you will find the same maybe 10 people make up 95% of content .

[AdminGirl]

4 hours ago, cunomar said:

The question made me laugh given LL promotes sims dedicated to making people quit

 

I'm curious, what sims are these?

[theorangemikan]

To OP: No, or at least I wouldn't appreciate it. I would promptly mark the first "we miss you" email as spam so it would always go there. Sure that means I could miss out on important stuff, but those "we miss you!" emails - like I get from Penzu on a damn nearly daily basis, drive me up the wall and I almost relate it to a needy partner. I haven't forgotten about you Penzu, I'm just taking a break and seeing other sites for now. 

[cunomar]

On 8/23/2020 at 4:49 PM, AdminGirl said:

I'm curious, what sims are these?

I haven't been there for 2 years but if you click the world tab > destinations > adult as most newbies will its still there i assume because hundreds of alts live in suspended animation prison pods somewhere in the sky ? . The description has changed it no longer claims to be a newbie friendly safe zone for subs but it doesn't state "we will promote psychotic narcissistic sadists who have a dedicated interest in inciting rl suicide" . If you don't submit we will follow you from sim to sim until you quit seems to be the policy .

[AdminGirl]

30 minutes ago, cunomar said:

I haven't been there for 2 years but if you click the world tab > destinations > adult as most newbies will its still there i assume because hundreds of alts live in suspended animation prison pods somewhere in the sky ? . The description has changed it no longer claims to be a newbie friendly safe zone for subs but it doesn't state "we will promote psychotic narcissistic sadists who have a dedicated interest in inciting rl suicide" . If you don't submit we will follow you from sim to sim until you quit seems to be the policy .

Ohh fk that's messed up. Glad I never ran into that.