From: blaze Spinnaker
Yah, in the case of GOM, they definitely made some errors.
However, GOM in itself wasn't a problem. I expected it and so did everyone else.
The problem with GOM is two fold:
a- it's not an isolated incident
b- Philip should have realised that these guys didn't know what they were doing. Any good CEO can step in and educate people where they've gone wrong. The fact that Philip was unable or unwilling does not bode well.
Now wait wait wait wait WAIT. I'm trying to grasp this concept of how the promotion steps on players' territory.
GOM - I didn't like the way LL handled that. (1) They didn't put the thing out for bids and plans from anybody doing an exchange service. They went informally and on the quiet to the one they liked best (and the one that was best, in my opinion), and had informal talks and then that fell through. (2) And Lindex is permanent.
PR Promotions - (1) They did put these things out for bids and plans from anybody. That right THERE already makes it terrific in my book. (2) It's a limited-time opportunity, just like the last promotion, to get basics to convert to premiums. (Though if it works well, it will continue, as I understand it.)
So I was upset by the way the GOM thing went down, but perfectly happy with the way the PR things were handled.
I have thought quite a bit, since the hullabaloo over this promotion, trying to figure out why GOM was upsetting to me, and the shopping sites, when they start fiddling with that, may be upsetting to me, but this promotion wasn't.
Maybe it's just a matter of degree. I guess I give much broader swath to promotions that are temporary than I do to things that look more like permanent muscling in. Yet - it's easy for me to understand that this promotion and ones like it will make for fewer customers for the rentals market. And the contest for the education build can make it harder for those have built their entire Second Lives around educating players.
I guess I'm just wild about PR, I dunno, lol. I DO get the connection (finally) - GOM, neighborhood building, educational areas being built, etc. - it just seems like it is more a matter of degree to me. To sum up:
1. This promotion is temporary, at least for now, though the neighborhood will always stand.
2. The neighborhood itself, though, and even any expansions to more such neighborhoods in the future, are still a drop in the bucket compared to all of SL.
3. They've done it before - with Boardman and Brown, right? (And maybe some other one, I don't know.) That didn't mess up people, so it didn't seem like this was anything new to me.
4. They mitigated most of the problems seen previously by putting it up for grabs by any of us, rather than just going to one person or group, like they did with GOM. To me, that is a huge part of legitimizing this sort of thing. Because then it DOES become our piece of the pie, in that anyone can compete for it. (In part anyway - I still realize that the Lindens are the big gorilla and whatever they do has a far greater chance of succeeding than what we do on our own.)
5. The idea is to get more premium players. To me, nothing is more important than getting more premium players! Yes, the oodles of basic players are wonderful, especially for people who sell them things, but we can sell more to premium players, and the Lindens make more from premium players, which keeps us all carrying on carrying on. Premium players are the holy grail!
coco
