Tatum Lisle

If we believe the stats on how most residents are using SL, it's not hard to see that a big proportion of LL customers are in SL for long periods of time each week using and making demands on the service without the Lab seeing a cent from them. Unfortunately, SL is not popular or "clean" enough to attract big mainstream advertisers, sponsors and their revenue and probably LL and most of us don't wish to go that way anyway. And realistically SL is probably just not a big enough deal to charge a generalised usage fee to all its residents without significantly driving usage down. So Tier and Premium accounts would seem to be the mainstay of LL's income from SL. Keep pushing up Tier and you make it ever harder for the landowners to be profitable, so you can't then start charging all their customers a fee just to come in-world, especially after offering so much for free for so long. It's the rock and the hard place scenario, and I guess this is the Lab trying to get creative under pressure. I wish them luck with their efforts to add value to Premium membership and think that constructive idea-ing is probably better than mud slinging if we want to keep and improve our in-world experience. The Lab is not a charity, but it is subject to the harsh laws of supply and demand. And when it comes to paid membership, if you are dangling a carrot, you have to deliver the goods and Customer Service is a huge part of how to differentiate Premium from general membership. I must admit I'm encouraged by many of the recent initiative I see LL taking, particularly in terms of trying to introduce more of the networking benefits that SL users are enjoying on other platforms, all of which chip away at time spent inworld.