Nikki Bechir

Lindens Premium User "gifts" are cringeworthy in the extreme. A small group will use the sandboxes, and good luck to them. The vast majority however will not, so what possessed Lindens to try and make a virtue out of it? A nothing "gift". Add the "gift" of furniture and the mind boggles at Lindens groupthink, I have to wonder who uses that family's brain cell. Again a mircoscoptic group might possibly need furniture (no offence to the gifters), so what made Lindens offer such a useless item? Lindens should look at question why should people continue giving money for no real rewards. Increase the stipend for each year as a premium member would be a start. Offer increased housing sizes for each year would also be of value. Sadly it will be another offer of useless things in the next round of gifting and more spin to try and make a silk purse from a sow's ear

It's a chicken and egg argument and just as pointless. SL is a business who needs to attract the majority to pay wages etc etc. The minority cannot do that. Yes the builders create and are critical to SL, thats not ever in doubt. But equally if SL doesn't start rewarding the majority who pay the bulk of the money, then it will wither and die. The issue is Lindens can only ever seem to grasp the technical side of things like these uselss preminum gestures , sorry sandboxes already exist and builders do their magic there. Who needs more furnitire as a gift? Martket place covers pretty well everything these days. Lindens want to reward premium payers? Then they should be targetting the biggest range as possible. They didn't. The sad part is they think themselves as clever.

Lindens have no concept of loyalty rewards. The blog on the subject, boasting of sandboxes and furniture made me cringe. Sandboxes are for builders and nekos only. And what is it with furniture as a bonus? Lindens have managed to promote two useless things that cater only to a small minority. Why can't Lindens think of the bulk of users who come in to play, explore and enjoy SL? A simple loyalty program would be to increase the stipend for each year as a preminum member - 300L- year 1, 400L- year 2, 500L- year 3 and so on. Couple the stipend increase with larger free houses each year ie 1024 prims after 2 years, up to maximum of 4024 prims after 5 years. As it stands premium members get very little that is meaningful and as long as techno geeks decide what they think the general user public wants, the premium members will continue to get nothing.