Have you ordered your free SL promotional CDs yet?

They're cute! I got some a while ago... but I'm willing to bet you never knew they existed!
From the somewhat hidden page: http://secondlife.com/community/referral-more.php

"Give your friends of a taste of Second Life with a free Second Life CD. Each CD contains a PC and Mac installer and a brief intro to Second Life -- everything one needs to take a trial.

Simply email [email]refer@secondlife.com[/email] with your NAME, FULL ADDRESS and IN-WORLD NAME and we'll send you 10 custom CDs to tantalize your friends with."

They actually sent me 20... must be coz I'm feted!
This offer is available to international users as well. Kudos to LL for eating all the shipping fees and stuff. I have found that if you merely tell someone about SL, they may even be interested, but forget all about it when they get home. Giving them a CD will act as a reminder. And they are really cute, you will want to keep one around for yourself
If you do have one, scan it in!

Do they recut them weekly? Or are my friends all going to get version 1.5 or something? What would be the point if they're going to be obsolete by the time they're delivered given we get at least a patch a week, and sometimes four?

They're at version 1.6 i think. If you see the PR forum, Catherine Linden adresses this issue that SL CDs are often outdated a mere week later. But that's not the point. The client can download whatever version of SL is most current in less than 5 minutes.
The point is that if you give someone a CD you're getting SL in their home... where people will look at it and be reminded to check this out. And even if your friend doesnt like it, maybe his wife or kids will take a look at the SL CD and be intrigued.

Recut? Dontcha know, Kris, nowadays they BURN CDs! Or, for mass-manufacture, PRESS them. It's vinyls that are recut.

Well, the CDs are kinda cut... At least they look like someone took a pair of scissors to them and cut off a couple of sides. They are shaped like this:


Except the image on them is horizontally oriented.

Hahaha... I've seen that form factor. Looks kinda like a lozenge!

Kinda odd that one is called Life too...

Tis too the point. If someone sends me software by post and it's already obsolete, I'm likely to just think it's flaky, often patched software. And certainly in this case I'd be right. So actually having the CDs is much more likely to turn me off the product than turn me on to it.

If you want to get SL 'out there', use email. Or, hell, postal flyers without a CD if you want. Just mention that it's only a 20 meg client, and keep quiet about the fact that it's updated several times weekly. But seriously; out of date CD's will not impress anyone.

you know, i think i may have to grab some these. it could come in handy whenever i'm at a bar/club.. i bring up SL almost every time i go out somewhere.. lol. instead of rambling on for a long time, i could simply say, "well, here.. just give this a look-see when you get the chance."

thanks for the helpful info!

Same here cybin. I tell a lot of people that I only have their work email addresses. It would be nice to hand them a CD.

I bet they're just loving you now, Eggy.

Toss 'em a USB Flash Drive instead. Not only can you put the client on it but there's enough room left over to give them a slide show of your last vacation to the World's Second Largest Ball of Twine, a subset of your pr0n collection (guys: random women you meet in a pub love this), and prolly a Linux distro or two (random women love this even more, IMHO).

Nothing says "compact, reusable, stylish, resusable, and I care" like flash.

Out-dated CDs are abit annoying, yea - but concider this: When you buy a CD for anything that is online, the first thing you do is get patched.

When I bought City of Heroes, City of Villans, Lineage 2, and heck even FFXI - I ended up spending a couple of hours or so patching and practicly redownloading the whole data that I supposdly have allready brought in on CDs - except, it was allready outdated by the time I opened the box.

Nothing new here. Annoying, yes. New, not really.

From a practical point of view - the CD will still serve as a pretty big curiosity factor for the receiving person to "check it out", so as far as thats concerned, its doing its job.

Atleast content in SL is downloaded and streamed live rather then having it all packaged... that cuts down the download and patch time dramaticly.

Yeah. And how much more than a CD would that cost?

Eggzactly. Thank you cshard
If your software isnt being updated on a regular basis, either you're God, in which case you are able to make perfect software at first try, or you dont care about your customers.

And to you this is somehow a bad thing, yes?

@Eggy: oohh good link! no cd's for me but referral form looks kewl. thank you!

Ok why oh why isn't some one in PR on the phone with Best Buy offering to stock all their stores with say 100 copies each?

If I were in PR I would be on the phone with best buy offering these CD's for 9.95 each retail (of course best buy would pay the wholesale price) the basic account in sl is free so the 9.95 would pay for the one time fee accounts. I would set it up this way because its cheap and it will get the Second Life name out there. More so it will pay for the packaging and cd's.

Hell go one step further in each box offer a code for a chance at winning a free SL tshirt or poster signed by king philip.

When I read that I could get 10 cd's free the first thing I thought of was stashing them on the shelf at best buy on one of my visits LOL.

The only problem is I could not place SL with the other mmorpg's. Where would the SL program belong in best buy? Next to the "Home Design" software? CAD programs? Small Business Solutions?

Personaly if SL wanted 1 million ppl playing in world I would of marketed it as a new brand of MMORPG that pushs the limits between fantasy role playing and rl economic gain.

but thats just me

Mar

*bah edit for typing errors, sound it out im not into seperate spell check lol

Because that would be too much money and LL is still not breaking even?

Um eggy for US customers its a cup of coffee and a doughnut. What do you mean they are not breaking even. Show me the financial statements please I wanna take a look too.

Mar

If they're not breaking even, they shouldn't be printing special-shaped CDs with 20 megs of data.

I can download SL faster than I can put a cd in the drive and install the program.

Just print out a hojillion stickers and put them EVERYWHERE. Guerilla Marketing.

SL has a rabid fanbase who would love to put stickers all over their college campuses and whatnot.

LF

I'd prefer to wear a t-shirt advert.

A bunch.

Sorry, I musta forgot to put the proper punctuation on my post. So here's two to make up for it:

Heck, I'd slap those stickers all over my car, and one on my wife's forehead.

(God, I'm old. I bet no one else will get that. But I cracked myself up.)

Thanks Eggy! I'd heard of them but assumed you'd have to pay to get them posted.. I wonder if they'll send them to the UK, I've asked!

Anyone who I sign up with the CD, I'll get them to put you as the refferal

Thanks again!

Yeah, they sent them to me, and I'm in Portugal so... they'll probably send them anywhere in the world.