Your source of news about the people, places, things, and events across Second Life.
In real life in Washington DC, the new President has proposed a new plan for the government to improve things, as well as how it will be paid for, tax increases. How many Americans, perhaps most, see them depends on which political faction they support. But some regardless of which party is in charge just see "The Man" reaching for their wallets while providing little in return.
Here in Second Life, among the things being talked about is it's own "taxes" going up. Or to be specific, it's fees for buying Linden dollars are no longer being charged a flat fee per transaction, but a percentage that means anyone buying more than $20 US worth at a time will be paying more. While it appears the majority aren't complaining too much about it, a few have expressed their displeasure. Kitacelia, a resident struggling with a fixed income, could only conclude the Lab made the move out of greed, pinching pennies and lowering quality while charging residents more just to fatten their wallets, and wrote a commentary explaining her position.
The last time the Lab rose the fee to buy Linden dollars, I called them out on it. Just after a lot of people had snapped up Linden Homes, some getting Premium accounts just to do so, it made them look a bit greedy from my point of view. This time, greed isn't what it's looking like, but needing money to pay bills after some decisions that didn't turn out as planned.
In their announcement on the blog, the Lindens gave several reasons for the price increase:
Investing in our infrastructure to further improve speed and cadence of updates
Overhauling the onboarding experience for the newest Residents
UI cleanup
Developing new marketing initiatives and entertainment partnerships to fuel growth
Preparing for SL18B
Less glamorous but no less crucial is our ongoing and growing work to ensure compliance with multiple regulatory requirements
Presumably they're still working on the changes for the new resident experience as I haven't heard much of anything for a while. "Multiple regulatory requirements" may mean more work behind the scenes on Tila, which in itself came about because of concerns about how the US Government was viewing Linden dollars with all the publicity going around about Bitcoin. How much this would cost is unclear, but if the Lab is having to hire some people, lawyers and technicians, and pay them overtime, it wouldn't be cheap. The Second Life Birthday, presumably that wouldn't cost them much. But a couple things in the news did bring to mind the "investing in our infrastructure" and Developing new marketing initiatives and entertainment partnerships" parts.
The announcement about the price increase came on the heels of the Second Life map being fixed after months of being glitched. The problem, and others, were due to the move of the Grid's data from it's old servers to Amazon Cloud servers. The Lab had been saying the move would both improve performance of the Grid and eventually lead to price savings for the residents. But instead while a few details are smoother, such as some residents having fewer problems with sim crossings, the move has also resulted in more and longer to fix glitches that it appears the Lab did not think would happen.
Soon afterwards came the new front page of the Second Life website of which the image at the top brought back discussion of a "behind the scenes" look at production of a commercial for Second Life that has yet to be aired. From what one person was saying on the Second Life forums, this is something that happens with some real-life companies, "The marketing folks come in with 'tweaks' that will 'reap great rewards'. ... So my friend's company does the tweaks --- which costs the company he is working for a lot of money because what seems like a small thing to the Marketing people is often not a small thing at all. In the end it doesn't work and my friend's company puts thing back (more money gone) and then the next great sales person comes along === and it all repeats." And in the case of Second Life, well, it's something that even it it's golden age people had a hard time understanding, let alone today. So it's likely the company Linden Lab partnered with wasn't sure of the best way to advertise it, and the commercial was either stopped before it was finished or never aired. Of the picture that started the discussion, it seemed someone in the Lab decided since they spent all that money already, they might as well make use of it and took a single image from the film and photoshopped it. If this is the case, while it might not have been a *complete* waste of money, it's still a lot of cash to spend for what in the end amounted to a single image.
If it turns out Amazon ended up selling Linden Lab a lemon in regards to the Cloud Servers, only so much can be done about it. Since the old servers are gone, getting new ones will cost money, and likely mean even higher fee increases. As for advertising Second Life, finding someone in the advertising business who really understands our virtual world for what it is and what it can do is going to be a challenge. From the point of view of many, Second Life, IMVU, and VRChat are pretty much the same thing, just another place online where people can dress up their "dolls."
So does this mean that Linden Lab's only options for advertising is to try to do it on it's own or hire people whom can only do poor commercials? Not necessarily. They could take a hint from the plotlines of many of their games and have the residents give it a try. Longtime residents clearly know what makes Second Life different from other places online and know what will attract other people in spite of the lag and other issues that will frustrate newcomers. Some already have some experience with advertising, either the products of others or their own. The Lab could easily make a contest out of it, with the winner or winners given a prize (and perhaps employment if the ad turns out to be really successful).
Even if a resident-written ad isn't a blockbuster hit, it would certainly go better with the Second Life userbase than a photoshoped picture from a canceled commercial. While the Lab may be stuck with cloud servers that will take some time to iron out all the bugs, they have more options for advertising than agencies that know little about it's product.
Bixyl Shuftan
Going down the page, there was more:
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There were a few comments about the filming not being cheap, and wondering where the money came from. One woman commented, "I can see it is really a human. I could not believe it. What has it to do with SL? ... I think how much that video had to cost. The studio, models, rigging, light, makeup and costumes. Where the bleep did that money come from? And for what purpose? Making people logging in to get an avatar, that is impossible to get. I feel like I do in RL when it is discovered that some politician has used money we had paid for taxes, and thought it was going to infrastructure, schools and such. Not to give politicians all sort of luxury. How many new regions has people have to buy, only to cover the cost of making that bleep video?"
Another woman reflected her friend worked at a big company, and over the years they'd made marketing campaigns that didn't do much except burn money, and this reminded her of his stories, "The marketing folks come in with 'tweaks' that will 'reap great rewards'. Sometimes there is a new look involved but that is the domain of another long time employee so not many changes there. So my friend's company does the tweaks --- which costs the company he is working for a lot of money because what seems like a small thing to the Marketing people is often not a small thing at all. In the end it doesn't work and my friend's company puts thing back (more money gone) and then the next great sales person comes along === and it all repeats."
This week, Linden Lab changed it's fees for buying Linden dollars, making it slightly more expensive to buy larger amounts. Among the reasons stated was "Developing new marketing initiatives and entertainment partnerships to fuel growth." While this is almost certainly not the sole "new marketing initiative," if the comments in the forums are a guide, it's not raising confidence among the residents.
Hat Tip: Daniel Voyager
Bixyl Shuftan
Join our host, Strawberry Linden, as she speaks with two members of our
Marketing team. Brett Linden is the Senior Director of Marketing and
Darcy Linden is the Senior Marketing Manager. They will be talking about
the 2020 Roadmap for Marketing Second Life.
Salzer had joined Linden Lab from Activision/Blizzard, her hiring announced Sept. 2, 2010. “Kim brings a deep background in gaming (including experience at Electronic Arts working on massively multiplayer online games and hit sports franchises), and in online learning,” the Linden blog stated at the time. Hired as Marketing Vice-President, her goal was to figure out “a single idea to focus on and bring out, an X Factor” to get more people to want to get into Second Life.
Last week, Brooke Linden announced on the Official Blog that Second Life Marketplace was introducing an experimental program they called “Dash Deals.”
This is the latest in a number of ways Second Life has been trying to use the highly popular social media sites of Facebook and Twitter. In this case, using it to encourage the use of its SL Marketplace site (and buy more Lindens to use in purchasing items there. In my opinion, it has potential. Taking a look at the “Dash Deal” thread on the forums, some of the posters expresed skepticism about it, saying the email option would be no good to some as the first Dash Deal was good only for 24 hours, and some people didn’t get emails from Linden Labs until more time than that expired.
Linden Lab recently welcomed a new addition to its executive ranks: Kim Salzer, who became our Vice President of Marketing, at the beginning of August. Kim (known as Kim Linden inworld) joins us from Activision Blizzard, where she was Vice President of Global Brand Management for properties like Guitar Hero and Call of Duty 2, among others. Kim brings a deep background in gaming (including experience at Electronic Arts working on massively multiplayer online games and hit sports franchises), and in online learning, and we’re excited to have her as part of the team. As an introduction to Residents, I asked Kim to tell us a bit about herself in her own words:Q: What’s the one thing you bring from the gaming world that will be most useful to you in your position at Linden Lab?
A: Working in gaming taught me a lot about just how creative and passionate that audience can be, and I think the same is true for the Residents of Second Life. And SL provides so many great tools to enhance and bring out that creativity, I’m really looking forward to helping foster that as we move into the next phase of the platform’s growth. I want to see if we can make the range of what’s possible in Second Life even broader.
Q: What are your goals for your new position as VP Marketing at Linden Lab?
A: What I really want to do here is help the Lab figure out what the “X Factor” is going to be for Second Life. When I was working on games, I always tried to choose a single idea to focus on and bring out, an X Factor that helped people get into the game and helped them discover all the rest of the possibilities there. If I can help bring that kind of focus to Second Life, I’ll be happy about how I’m doing my job.
Q: What excites you most about working on a product like Second Life?
A: I’m excited about the prospect of helping to build a product that really empowers people to express what they’re about, and that can make a real difference in their lives. I think we’ve only just started to see what can be done here, and I can’t wait to see where we and our Residents can take things from here.
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That Kim Linden comes from the company that brought us World of Warcraft is interesting, but not necessarily a sign of earth-shaking things to come (with recent events in mind, at least by itself). As Tateru Nino reminds us, Linden Labs in the recent past had a Marketing VP whom had worked with the people who brought us The Sims.
To view the blog post and the following comments, Click Here.
