There http://www.there.com/
Multiverse http://www.multiverse.net/
OSMP http://metaverse.sourceforge.net/
Active Worlds http://www.activeworlds.com/

Thank you very much! I will be exploring these alternatives in the next few days!

http://news.com.com/2061-10797_3-6132526.html

When this goes public I’ll look into going short.

Amber - you still consume EVERY DAY media - as we all do. Logo’s on things that you see. You see outdoor signage. I bet your PC or MAC has some sort of insignia on it - right in front of you, right now. You are an internet user - please don’t tell me you don’t see any advertising online?

I am in the same boat as you. I am a minimal “mainstream” media user. I don’t watch TV and I listen to our Australian government run radio station which plays new music but has no advertising (which is streamed in world on my land). This is the whole point - to main corporates - we are hard to reach consumers. That means that SL is a GREAT place to reach us.

In any case - my original point to Zee was - keep the main users happy which means that the corporates can cleverly get into the minds of the Amber’s (that don’t even realise they are promoting a brand when they are using the brand name).

Amber is going to be pissed off at me now, but I needed to get my point across.

All good.

Cheers
Alex Warrior
aka Janine Au

Anyway, the best advertising is word of mouth, and as there is positive advertising, there is negative advertising. My goal in the boycott of corporate islands is a form of negative advertising, in the hopes that if enough people in SL join in, the corporations themselves will place pressure upon LL to create a separate tier for mom and pop shoppe, residential, and community oriented private islands.

I am 100% certain that current customers of Linden Lab, (residents of secondlife), are willing to contribute their real life knowledge and experience of business to you for free.

I would recommend you start a “Suggestion Box”.

While it will be cumbersome to wade through blogs and blogs of silly advice, the genuine and business related advice given for free will be worth so much and will actually save you time and money.

The “Suggestion Box” does not need to be a public blog. Perhaps you already have this up and running with your high-end customers. You can then contact the person and perhaps hold closed meetings (in world) where you discuss further the suggestions put forward.

On another issue - further to Amber Palowakski’s comments:

While the end goal of all corporations is to have a sale of some sort (product/service), branding and positioning in certain target audiences is of extreme importance. Creating a “feel” about a product or service can ensure your sales when a potential customer just “thinks” about buying a product.

For example: secondlife user is in the pub (liquor store for you US readers) and thinks… what beer should I buy? They have just spent the last week in-world dancing at clubs with a Corona in their Avatar’s hand. And suddenly the secondlife user buys the Corona in REAL life.

That secondlife resident may be a free account. They may not have spent any money in world EVER. They may not have even visited ANY commercial island. But they sure were advertised to - with that little bottle of beer that I am sure all of you above have either in your inventory right now or have seen another avatar with.

The key point here is: the purchase doesn’t have to happen IN-world. For major corporations, it’s all about having “top of mind” recall when a potential customer thinks about a product or service.

That’s why it’s so important for Linden Lab to keep residents (any and all non-commercial residents) in world to attract corporates.

Cheers
Alex Warrior
aka Janine Au

PS. I don’t personally like Corona, the flavour is not strong enough for my tastes - but my fave beer is not in-world yet. But when someone does bring it in-world (not likely as it’s not Fosters, it’s Coopers), I will wear it proudly and promote it by having it in my hand. And that will be free advertising for my fave beer company!

Limit inventory size for basic acoounts. Premium would unlimited.

Basic accounts get 5 free texture uploads per rolling 30 days. Then it’s 10L each. Premium would get 20 free texture uploads per rolling 30 days then 10L each.

Offline builder for sale @ 29.99usd to premium accounts. Uploads of builds cost 1L per prim, and the same 10L for texture and anim’s to upload to gameworld. Basic accounts can purchase the builder, but only premium members may use upload feature. This particular idea not only helps bring in additional revenue but will also decrease bandwidth costs as people spend time on builds out-of-world.

Want to change your first and last name? You can 1 time in any one year period and the cost is 14.99usd to do this.

Basic accounts have a very limited and very basic selection of script options and funtions avalable to them. Premium accounts can call the entire library.

Basic accounts limited to linking no more than 5 prims into one object. Premium accounts keep current link settings.

Better “homestaed act” for prmium accounts. Premium can own 2048m of land before tier starts. If they own over that they do not get the 2048m figured out of tier. the idea is to give people a break if they just have a small store, or house plot. Once you go past that you pay full tier on all that you own. Basic accounts pay full tier from 1m, and the basic tier for land ownership is 10% higher than premium.

Increase teir accross the board 10%, no grandfather clause, no hitting one group with super high hike, just 10% increase in teir for everyone at the same time, with a 1 month notice.

Free email support and phone support, 50L for livehelp per 10min. Timing starts on reply from help tech. This is not out of line with other corps., help availible for free, but if you want instant, it will cost a little bit.

These are just a few ideas of ways to invrease topline revenue, without alienating any of your customers. In the majority of those you are actually increasing value to premium members, non of them should have any gripes about those changes. Basic accounts would see some resrictions in those examples, but honestly basic accounts should be just that…basic. Come in to visit friends and places, make a few items if you need them etc. If you need all the bells and whistles step up to premium, it’s worth it.
Should everyone have access to SL for free? Yes, I think that helps the economy of SL, although I do believe they should be verified in some way, for many reasons which many posts have already gone into. But just like television, I can get basic network for free or I can pay for cable TV. Cable TV is successfull because they made it worth paying for. If you could get cable tv’s offerings over-the-air would you just buy it anyway for the simple joy of paying a bill, I think not.
And if you were in the small group that paid for cable TV beacuse iy had one or 2 more options than network, and your cable company came to and said “we have a free service, you’ve probly heard about it, after all we have been advertising it heavily the past few weeks. Well anyway it was a huge success, and now we have tons of customers that are not paying anything, you have probobly noticed that to since all the new customers are the cause of your programs starting late and your picture and sound quality being worse and all. So since we have all these new customers that are using the the resources we used to make people pay for, and not many people pay us at all anymore since we give them 98% of what we offer for free. What we are trying to say is that starting tomarrow we will need 50% more than what you are currently paying us. What would you do? How would you feel about that. Pretty poorly I would imagine.
No differnt than how most of the people commenting on this blog do. I know you think we are a pian here and difficult to deal with and only serve to incite customer dissatisfaction, but in reallity you should be more thankfull for us, because we are the people that care about secondlife and we are the people that will be here and care if SL goes away, we are the people that will always try to make it a better place. You can continue to have your free user concubine and your big buisness mistress, but I emplore you not to forget about us. If they cared as much as we do and were as willing to help as we are, they would be on this blog commenting to, they would have been at the roundtable last night shouting when it was dispersed after 45 min. I lokked around, I didn’t see them there, what I saw were the citizens of SL that care about it’s future and that want to be a part of that future, I saw the people that you have beat down with the price increase stick and that you cut with the knife of poor service, and that you moderate with duct tape over their mouths. I saw the people that even as you abuse them like that, they keep by your side waiting patiently, allbeit not quietly I do admit.
The free accounts, and the corperations won’t stay for that, and as they start taking a closer look at SL, as they see how we are being treated they may very well decide to leave and never look back, lest they be subject to the same abuse in the future. If you will turn on us like this, you will turn on them eventually to.

– @ moderators - I hope this gets through to the blog, as I it seems that I can not get anything to post at all now from either of my 2 pc’s. I wonder if my IP has somehow been blocked from posting on the blogs, although I am quite sure none of my posts have ever went beyond criteria outlined for moderation in this blog. And if someone felt one of my posts warrented such drastic actions, I was never notified of it. I am posting this through a proxy for those reasons.

There is a great potential for things in SL to be done purely for the aesthetic pleasure of visiting and exploring, but sadly very few people have a sufficient disposable income for $195 to not be missed - and even fewer at that increased rate that has been thrown at us now.

It’s just sad that Linden Lab do not recognise the great untapped potential of SL aside from ‘commercial and corporate’. Back in June, I think it was, at a town hall meeting, Philip assured me that they do value non-commerical, but as with all things that seem to come out of LL, it’s all mouth and no trousers.

Lewis

As it was my summarizing final post, and since it was really kind of aimed at LL, it occurs to me to post it here as well. (For everything that led up to it, and an expansion of my more detailed reasoning regarding a tiered land pricing system, as well as the points made by others, see the SC thread.)

—–

Well, this has been a good discussion.

What I have learned from it is to soften my insistance that there is no justification for value-added to corporate rates, on the basis that the land purpose is completely different by definition.

Yes, go ahead and make that pack sweeter; it’s no skin off my teeth or anyone else’s, really. It makes good business sense, too.

Just make sure that businesses operating primarily in the real-world, or entirely for other real-world businesses, are categorized under the corporate rate.

Realize that there is no way shape or form that individuals operating businesses entirely within SL can in any way ever compete with real-life corporations treating SL as a piece of advertising, nor should we be expected to pay the same price for what is essentially an entirely different product, as different as the difference between us and charitable entities.

I don’t want LL to entirely throw out the baby with the bathwater here. They can have the best of both worlds, if they do it right, which means enabling a niche for the regular resident, tailored to those needs, and instituting a higher rate for outside companies using SL not as a world contained within itself, but merely as advertising space.

We can’t compete with that. We can’t compete with their free entertainment, their free housing, or their free cars. They will give away the store.

Fine. Just don’t charge us the same price as them, because that means we are not only losing business to them, we are actually subsidizing their businesses, and subsidizing the free acounts is enough of a burden. We don’t need to subsidize corporations and real-world businesses as well.

If not - and unless LL has some secret plans up their sleeve I don’t know about - expect the indigenous business to struggle and ultimately fall to the wayside, becoming nothing but the occasional curiosity.

coco