Linden Lab to test new house/land incentive for premium Second Life accounts
by Tateru Nino 
Dec 4th 2009 at 3:00PM
Filed under: Betas, Business models, Economy, News items, Second Life, Player Housing, Virtual worlds
While the growth of Second Life new-user registrations remains steady, as do active users, the number of premium accounts in Linden Lab's virtual world had entered into an accelerating decline, last time we had any data available to us. This is hardly surprising, as tweaks to the land-centric Second Life economy over time had largely eliminated the need for many users to have a premium-account.
The Lab is announcing the creation of a new continent (name and location not known at present), which will contain a number of unfurnished homes on 512sqm parcels of restricted-use land that do not share a border with the parcels of other users.
A limited number of these will be offered to randomly-selected, existing Second Life premium-account holders. Plans include the possibility that a smaller number of new premium-account holders may also be selected for this test, but that is yet to be determined.
If the beta-test period goes well, Linden Lab plans to roll the new program out to include all premium-account holders as an additional benefit of a premium subscription.
As premium-account incentives go, this one isn't really very surprising. Rummaging through our notes, it is in fact the third similar house/land package incentive that Linden Lab has offered since 2005. There are a few differences in specifics and eligibility, but that's about all. Previous such incentive programs didn't do awfully well in the medium- and long-term, but circumstances change. In the new economy, the program may be more successful.
The new parcels will not be able to be sold, terraformed, subdivided or joined and cannot be the targets of classified ads or of events listings. They will be limited to one per premium-account.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DD Ra said on 5:34PM 12-04-2009
I think this will just not work.
Just because the secret of Second Life is FREEDOM. The 'laissez-faire" policy of Second Life at it's beginning gave total freedom to the resident to create a virtual Universe. This is the blood and life of SL, and these small homes will very quickly have the smell of a (luxury) penitential colony.
Think Portmerion, and beware, Number Six will revolt !
If Linden Lab wants to revitalize premium accounts, they just have to give us little more L$ for it that we would have by buying them, and let us free to spend them.
I spend around 50 US$ per month in Second Life, and I'm not Premium, never was, and never will to live into a place forced to me. But if I can see that Premium is not financial farce, I would be very happy to pay it for, and for a long time, because I love SL... as long as it can be my world, my imagination, and not my money, Linden Lab's imagination.
^_^
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vinemt said on 5:51PM 12-04-2009
I think this is a great idea. The parcel I'm paying for is surrounded by red no fly zone fences and giant rotating sale cubes. It's a crap deal and it looks like crap. I have to teleport to go anywhere.
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Dakotah Yue said on 5:57PM 12-04-2009
...additional to what?
This looks more like a move to get rid of fragmented mainland parcels. Other than that, with these new specifications, it would just mean a downgrading of the aleady existing "first land". These parcels actually are already pretty useless. Try and rezz a wig...
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Tateru Nino said on 9:02PM 12-04-2009
The First Land program ceased to exist in February 2007: http://www.m.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/02/20/first-land-program-passes-into-history/
orinoco.beresford said on 8:28PM 12-04-2009
hmmm... your world your imagination sort of ends up as our world with no imagination...
I'm really fed up of LL jumping on populist bandwagons to try to get some of the "revenue" again. They provide the world... leave the other stuff to people to create and make and enjoy.
There are plenty of estates already in sl that provide this type of service, why does LL need to offer this? There are many more options that they could utilise to make premium membership more desirable. But stepping on people's toes is what the labs do best!
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Opensource Obscure said on 1:23PM 12-05-2009
Sounds like a reasonable plan.
Some users may be "fed up" of Linden Lab, but many others trust Linden Lab much more than any other private land renters.
Also, some users have a lot of "imagination" and create by themselves their own house and furniture - I'm one of them. But many others don't, and their needs are way different than creators' and power-users' ones: an offer based on nice-looking and safe (if boring and feature-limited) places makes sense for them.
Phoenix Psaltery said on 1:14AM 12-05-2009
This reminds me of the housing addition sims that they built, what, three years ago? that remained deserted for ages. Who wants to be limited to a 512 anyway?
Not much of an incentive.
P2
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Jay said on 2:22AM 12-05-2009
You know SL has come of age when they start building public housing/tenaments on 512 parcels. Yep, wonderful 108 prim plots of land with a low quality build taking up who knows.... nost of those?
Yep, Linden Lab are now officially SLum Lords.
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luf said on 4:55AM 12-05-2009
At the moment we all know there is little value / incentive in going Premium, hence the steady decline. This is LL's attempt at reversing that trend, its aim seems to be to get more people into land ownership and possibly increasing long term user retention.
You say "There are many more options that they could utilise to make premium membership more desirable.", what would be your plan?
I appreciate, and this appears to be the concern of most on the LL discussion blog, that this will compete with existing offerings from estate and land owners.
As the plans stand users will get a house PLUS 117 prims, that's more than a standard 512m parcel so appears to have a higher value, why would I move to a plot with less prims? I suggest this is revised to 117 MINUS house prims to make it a more even playing field. I would also remove more of the parcel abilities from the LL Home land user. Abilities like Media control, ban lines etc should all be disabled.
Part of this idea is to make this a simple introduction, so less abilities equals less confusion.
For this program to work, I think there has to be a very close look at the value proposition of this offering. For me this "free offer" has to be of a low enough value to make offerings by current estate and land owners have a value that the new premium user will aspire too.
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Bettina Tizzy said on 1:02PM 12-05-2009
Ewww.
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Dakotah Yue said on 7:39PM 12-05-2009
@ Tateru - Wow, didn’t' think it was so long ago. Anyways, that didn't make existing parcels go poof, did it :-). In fact I've advertised mine in my profile pics for ages:
.................................................................................
FOR SALE:
beautiful piece of land
virtually endless: 512 m²
premium lag
from two sides embraced by cute ban lines
The parcel supports the incredible number of
117 !!! primitives.
That means you can even rezz one boot if you choose to delete your home. AND !!! ...
it is up to you whether you rezz a left or a right boot.
.............................................................................................
(To be honest, conditions change slightly on an ... uhm ... hourly basis, but I can guarantee constant undiminished ugliness.)
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iggyono said on 8:52PM 12-05-2009
Hey..free is free. I'll take another 512. I do wonder about the pic that Tateru included, however...but her post notes that we won't be next to the neighbors.
But if we do get ticky-tack houses, I will become the TERROR OF LEVITTOWN :)
Anyone up for some "Blue Velvet" RP?
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Tateru Nino said on 6:32AM 12-06-2009
Alas, it's not an *extra* 512. It's the 512 that's already included. (You don't get any extra square-metreage out of it).
The image is from one of the previous house-land promotions. Linden Lab have had several as premium account incentives before.
iggyono said on 10:19AM 12-06-2009
Thanks for the clarification!
Linden Lab giveth...
I'll keep the 512 I already have--I combined it with another 512 and my neighbors not only are nice but mildly amused by the crazy-man next door.
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danielravennest said on 12:19PM 12-06-2009
The preference of people to rent than buy is mainly due to the huge price differential for large land vs small. A 512 via premium account costs you $6 a month on annual account. Pay for a full sim worth of mainland tier with group bonus, and it works out to $1.38. Tossing in a free house and a nice neighborhood will attract a few people at the margin, but that's a huge price differential to overcome.
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Yo Brewster said on 2:59PM 12-06-2009
Again, there is till no incentive to switch to a premium account. Until LL gets it, premium accounts will continue to decline. In the old days LL actually paid people to advertise their premium service. I'm sure some of you remember the Refer-a-friend program? Each time people would switch to a premium account by using your link, you would get up to L$1500. Unfortunately the program was broken for over a year and LL refused to take the link down as it was given them free advertising. The point that I'm trying to make? Until LL increases the true value of a premium account, people with premium accounts will finally figure out that they're actually getting ripped off!
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Chakalak said on 3:36PM 12-08-2009
Welcome to Tranquility Lane! ;)
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Chance said on 9:41AM 12-09-2009
Great, so the 512 I use towards my current parcel will be re-allocated to this useless one and my tier will jump from 15 to 25$ a month. Nice job lindenz.
If I remember correctly one of the suggestions that gained some traction when we were last queried about what would make premium more valuable was the implimentation of a finer grained tier rate (ie., x$ per 512m rather that the big jumps).
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Tateru Nino said on 9:57AM 12-09-2009
Only if you choose to take up the offer, as I understand it.