Welcome to SL and a very happy New Year. I wish you well in your new role as CEO, and hope you have the vision to push SL forward.
With the virtual economy in almost as bad a state as the real one, there will be many challenges ahead, I do not envy you the problems you will need to face and overcome. The only advice I can give you is to listen to your customers, both basic and premium, unlike many "games" basic accounts can inject a lot of real money into the economy. There are some obvious issues I am sure you are aware of, I can list some here:
Support is far worse then before, for basic users pretty much non-existent, I understand the need to cut costs, but it is very poor PR.
Increasing sales in the marketplace are good for some creators, however that leads to a decline in inworld shopping, meaning virtual Malls are closing. Those malls support a wide variety of good content, it they go so does the reason for some to login.
Non-profits policy, may be worth reviewing this, but I do agree the old GC invoicing system was a nightmare for LL and the customers so needed replacing
Land value has fallen to an all time low, sometimes it is not even possible to give it away. with large amounts of abandoned and derelict land, this is bad for everyone LL included. Possible ideas to reverse the trend are to review tier pricing, halt new land creation, offer incentives to high traffic sims, review the free homes for premium policy. To an extent the value of your virtual land is the value of secondlife, so important.
Clarify what is happening with merging the teen grid, many are not even aware of this change yet.
Viewer v2 was very unpopular with the majority of heavy users, still is. If you can see a way to correct this it will make youself very popular instantly.
Separating usernames from display names means that your displayed identity is no longer unique or permanent. This is a problem in a virtual economy and makes identity theft possible for the first time in SLs history. I can see the attraction of being able to change your name, and why it was done, but the current free for all is likely to cause issues. A suggestion, why not let users change their display name for a small fee, that reduces its appeal to those who might abuse it, and even gives LL some much needed income. Win win as far as I can see.
Good luck with the challenge, lets hope for an amazing 2011
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Hi Rod
Welcome to SL and a very happy New Year. I wish you well in your new role as CEO, and hope you have the vision to push SL forward.
With the virtual economy in almost as bad a state as the real one, there will be many challenges ahead, I do not envy you the problems you will need to face and overcome. The only advice I can give you is to listen to your customers, both basic and premium, unlike many "games" basic accounts can inject a lot of real money into the economy. There are some obvious issues I am sure you are aware of, I can list some here:
Support is far worse then before, for basic users pretty much non-existent, I understand the need to cut costs, but it is very poor PR.
Increasing sales in the marketplace are good for some creators, however that leads to a decline in inworld shopping, meaning virtual Malls are closing. Those malls support a wide variety of good content, it they go so does the reason for some to login.
Non-profits policy, may be worth reviewing this, but I do agree the old GC invoicing system was a nightmare for LL and the customers so needed replacing
Land value has fallen to an all time low, sometimes it is not even possible to give it away. with large amounts of abandoned and derelict land, this is bad for everyone LL included. Possible ideas to reverse the trend are to review tier pricing, halt new land creation, offer incentives to high traffic sims, review the free homes for premium policy. To an extent the value of your virtual land is the value of secondlife, so important.
Clarify what is happening with merging the teen grid, many are not even aware of this change yet.
Viewer v2 was very unpopular with the majority of heavy users, still is. If you can see a way to correct this it will make youself very popular instantly.
Separating usernames from display names means that your displayed identity is no longer unique or permanent. This is a problem in a virtual economy and makes identity theft possible for the first time in SLs history. I can see the attraction of being able to change your name, and why it was done, but the current free for all is likely to cause issues. A suggestion, why not let users change their display name for a small fee, that reduces its appeal to those who might abuse it, and even gives LL some much needed income. Win win as far as I can see.
Good luck with the challenge, lets hope for an amazing 2011