What services has LL co-opted and what services will LindenLab co-opt or just kill?

Services that LL has co-opted:

GOM
SLPics
International Sims

Services that LL will co-opt:

SLExchange (already a bit with classifieds)
MetaAdverse
ROAM
ROAM Search

Services that they will kill

island land rentals to sl customers

In all fairness, we had "ROAM" in Beta / 1.0
There was both P2P teleport and automatic flight to a given direction. It sucked because we kept getting stuck on buildings. I did suggest that it could easily be fixed simply by flying at altitude, and some people even made a simple script to achieve this, but some unknown linden came up with the telehub idea and thought it was good enough to inflict on us for the next three years.

Zoned sims and prefab houses!

I must say I am a little troubled by their taking a bite from the zoned simulator sandwich.

Damn them for making it easier for people to understand Second Life and stick around for a while.

Why would we want more people around who will eventually want to customize thier plot (rent our land), customize thier Av (buy our clothes), customize vehicles (buy our vehicles) and obtain more Lindens (buy our money)?

Heh. These are good points. I'm not really losing sleep over Lindex and the end of GOM.

I guess I'm just a little worried that Linden Lab will try to provide too much in the interests of retaining residents and obtaining conversions. I don't want SL to lose its overwhelming user-created foundations.

The balance is very, very fine.

Taken from The last paragraph on pg. 16 of Cory Ondrejka's paper "Changing Realities: User Creation, Communication, and Innovation in Digital Worlds :

"User-created content takes the idea of leveraging player opinions a step further by allowing them to effectively prototype new ideas and features. Developers can then measure which new concepts most improve the products and incorporate them into the game in future patches."

Satchmo, Gigas had pretty much already done this about 6-12 months ago.

Why couldn't LL just funnel users into them?

I heard they were working on a troll for the Forums who would spend his/her time making up incredibly useless posts. Darn them!!!

Wow, I'd never seen that. I'd like to echo Schwanson, and raise him a couple:

Yes, well - the good thing with this particular promotion (and the one prior to it) - is it does use user-created things.

I don't think it will be overwhelmed at all by the vast stretches of unique, user-created builds and lands, any more than Boardman now overwhelms them.

Blaze, I'm not very good with sarcasm, so I don't know if you are serious or not. But GIGAS lands are a whole other thing. And it would be AWFUL if they funneled new premium accounts there, as opposed to other places, like Anshe's lands, Ravenglass Rentals, Hiro's place, and all the others I don't even know about.

Plus, it wouldn't even be the same thing at all. This new sim for new premium accounts is nothing like Azure Islands, in any way.

coco

You're absolutely right, coco. I never quite thought of it that way. Great post!

I totally agree with you Cocoanut. I think it would be a shame if they did that.

You make me take pause and reconsider. Bravo for expanding my point of view.

WEll, I guess Aimee just went on my ignore list as well. Ah well.

How come I never get props for narrowing it ?

I'm not saying Gigas should have had FIC type access to the newbies, I'm just saying they created an excellent prototype for something like this.

And as has been said before, Ingrid was the reason Boardman took off. Not Jack.

You ignore people that disagree with you?

Yeah, that's exactly it Pendari.

We call them politicians around here, nothing new for me to see.

blaze, I think what Coco is saying is that it would be a shame if ANY of these land services got treatment like that. I dont think she is just singling out Gigas.

This is an important point. It's a good partnership between the customers and Linden Lab.

Exactly. I think people are getting used to zoned areas next to "wilderness."

This is an important cautionary note.

Right. This is just a new option. It doesn't replace, it augments.

Sure, but I think you can have an objective 'certification' process that would let people get access. They had a conversion measurement process which they gave up on which was really truly sad.

If a user stays on premium after owning land in a zoned sim, then that zoned sim gets more users funneled to them.

This type of customer aquisition process has long proven itself all over the world, the fact that it 'failed' for LL speak less about the process and more about their inability to measure and implement.

Yes, they did create an excellent, beatuful area with their Azure Islands. But I would disagree with you that it is in ANY way a prototype for this. Their vision/design was entirely different from this one. (And their purpose.) Azure Islands really is a whole different thing for me compared to this Sim - like night and day, really.

As for Boardman, I didn't know Ingrid when I first got on SL, but I became aware of Boardman quite soon, and LOVED it. This is saying nothing against Ingrid's contributions and efforts there, or the addition of her personality there, at all. In fact, one of the first things I saw and praised there was her non-demoninational church structure, which I later learned she had built.

I'm just saying - whenever I love something, I've noticed that it usually turns out to be something a large part of the mainstream also adores. I guess I'm just very mainstream! So, from my history of myself, if I was crazy about Boardman (or Spitooney, or Backstage, also two of my earlier finds), chances are others will be, too.

So - if I'm totally charmed by the new Sim (and, as I said, in a totally different way from how I thrill to Azure Islands), I figure it will be the perfect cup of tea for many, many others, just starting as land owners in SL. I think it is ONE FANTASTIC opportunity for people to get in on a good thing at the ground floor. I would invest in it, just like I would invest in Boardman. And just like I have invested in Azure Islands (back when it was just starting out, in Meins), and that investment has paid off hugely, I think. It has only gone up and up since its inception. One fine set of lands.

In fact, I plan to wait like a HAWK for some of those properties to start to go on sale about three months from now (or so I've been told).

And yes, I agree completely that it will take some Ingrids in the new area to make it take off, too; in fact, its entire future depends on that. My guess is that there will be Ingrids there, and that people will feel VERY proprietary about it, and put enormous peer pressure on others to maintain its flavor. (Absent any zoning regulations, and, as I said, I don't know what those are, if there are any.)

And if they don't - well, no problem in any practical terms, as it will have served its purpose of getting new Premium accounts. And definitely it will be fascinating to see which way it goes!

coco