What makes a hangout appealing?

maeglutz · November 30, 2015

Hey guys :3 I've had a Mall/Club/Hangout goin' for about a year now and I've usually got around 5-8k traffic. It's been taking a dip down lately and I'm trying to figure out what could bring people in? My friends and I usually hang out here all day but I'd like to meet new people and have others join my roleplay a bit too..

When you go somewhere in SL what do you like to see? What makes you interested in a place? What makes you come back? What would you like to see in a sim that you haven't before?

I just need some ideas! Thank you <3

PekeNL · November 30, 2015

Oh.. Hello, Mae!

I guess its a multiple of factors that could either turn off or bring in people for it. First one is the network. If you have a lot of friends and they know a lot of people you could potentially reach a bigger crowd when you ask them to introduce people to the club. However, personally I discourage that because its not really advertisement, and in hindsight its just a group of friends (Like those sweet 18 birthday parties) instead of the actual crowd you want to focus on.. The clubbers.

A club is interesting when there are people involved and offer constant entertainment (During normal hours, not going force people to turn tables 24/7!) such as live music/DJ’s.. Raffles, contests, maybe something for a charity, who knows! Second of all, maybe you want to throw some advertisement out there.

I could go on and on, but since you know me in-game, we might as well discuss that at a later time.

Prokofy Neva · December 1, 2015

One thing I've found to be a real deal-breaker for hangouts and more so rentals is the music stream.

Have NO music stream, people are driven away.

Have A music stream they HATE, they are also driven away.

VERY hard to calibrate as Groove Salad Ambient Music is not the thing that can solve this problem, believe me.

I have a hangout which is the headquarters of the SL Public Land Preserve called Botany Grove. It has a huge tree made in the old prim craftsman days which I love and will never part with. I made it into a kind of Fairy Grove, with fairies, little things for them, stuff, you know -- fairies! This should appeal to SL's lead demographic of 30-something single females! No?

Well, they don't come in anything like droves, I'm lucky if they donate $1 or buy a $1 egg about once a week. I see some people on the boats or the camp store but basically, this is not anything like the traffic you are describing. And here, I thought I had done the fairy thing, which I like myself, and it should work.

Then this male 20-something came along and told me the parcel looked like a Texas fish camp.

I was a bit crushed, you know? Texas fish camp? I don't live in Texas and I don't even know what a Texas fish camp LOOKS LIKE.

However, I decided to embrace my Texas fishcampness there and added a bit more fish stuff. This helped may be a tiny bit.

There is no mesh on this lot because did you know that mesh is injurious to fairies? In fact the entire Internet is, as it is based on metal, but there are a particularly hardy SL breed that can at least grow on SL but you can't push it with things like mesh.

I even segregated off the parcel with the tinkly Irish Gaelic kind of fairy music since I knew that this was part of the demographics problem.

I have found that people in SL really perplex you. I once had a dirt lot with nothing but a stick on it and THOUSANDS of avatars came there to chat.

It's true social networks are more important than all the other stuff except not really, as you need glue for those networks, and that glue does have to do with the stream, the mesh, and maybe a manager that gooses things along, I dunno.

UVB · December 10, 2015

Girls

Seductive Dreamscape · December 13, 2015

Hi Mae. I've had a community in sl for over 4 years now and believe me there is no golden rule about popularity. People take time to find out about places and when they did arrive, in the early days, they were encouraged to bring a friend back, join the group and also make the place a pick. This really helped to spread the word as all new traffic came from word of mouth. I then made the venue very open to everyone's ideas... Anyone can start a DJ party providing they have their own stream, anyone in the group of 1800 can rezz anything to use (and tidy away again after!), and anyone can use group notices and chat to feel included and spark ideas. This works really well as the onus is not on me as owner to constantly be thinking of things to do when the group can think of things themselves and then put the plan into action! The other thing I did which helps with group harmony, is to make 15 trusted friends " helpers " or security when I'm not online... They have almost as many powers as I do to eject and ban. This makes the group feel very safe. There are also around 200 welcomers on all time zones who take pride in showing people around as they enter the community plot. We have various events timed every week and collaborate with other places similar to us, exchanging LM givers. We are also on The Road, a new sim connection syste that might be useful to you. Hope this has been useful and don't worry... Up to Christmas is always quieter! I'd be happy to show you around and talk more if you'd like.

HarrisonMcKenzie · January 22, 2016

What is there to do there (for a given location)? Is it a passive place with various sit-animated piece of furniture? Is it the scene of live events? Is it meant as a place to roleplay? Is it an art piece?

A passive hangout area is fine, but if it's just another place to stand around and IM with your friends, I wouldn't appreciate it as much. If it's an event venue but there are no events taking place or events of interest, I'm not going to want to spend time there. If it's a roleplay area but no one is there or it is not condusive to roleplaying for whatever reason, I might just find somewhere else. If it's an art piece or an educational area like a museum, that might be really cool, but what would bring me back again after I've seen it.

You want to think about why people are coming, what there is to do, and why they should return.

Tamarra Cyr · January 24, 2016

Prokofy Neva wrote: