Forums: An Opportunity for Revenue?

Could LL be missing an opportunity for revenue? By adding a link to the forums in their client, they could attract more participants. These participants could be required to have paying accounts and be served adds based on the content in threads. Partnerships with companies that make useful software for SL (Poser, Photoshop, etc.) would have direct access to the creative community. Further, one could even charge L$ or US$ per post.

Is LL missing an opportunity to both serve its community and to make additional revenue?

How much would you pay for a supported and integrated forum?

Um, for realz, do you know any other game forums where you have to pay per post? Not for nothing but that's a rather ludicrous idea and defeats the point. It doesn't solve the issue of forced censorship that the deletion of the forums causes.

Those of us who pay to play SL are already paying for a supported and integrated forum.

There is no need to levy extra costs on what is arguably one of the most important features of any community - a central place to discuss topics of interest. There is also no need to obliterate it with offering no suitable alternative - blogs are not a suitable alternative - but Linden Lab don't seem to quite understand the implications of their decision, and certainly are not listening to the community either.

Lewis

I agree. And the forums are already membership only. IE, you have to have a membership to read all the posts about the destruction of SL in its entirety. The blog, conversely, will be available freely for the internet at large to see, and I wonder how many potential SL users will read the blog before signing up for a free or even trial account, see the wash of comments about how nothing ever friggin works, and decide to go to WoW or Eve Online instead. While I am pissed off about the forums being removed, I'm happily waiting to see how quickly they're put back when the bad PR from the open blog comments comes out.

Who do they get to sponsor the "Age Play Makes Bady Jesus Cry" threads?

On the contrary, I think that LL throughly understands the implications of their decisions, part of which involves being able to avoid having to listen to the comunity.

Mind you, I also think that hiding their heads in the sand when it comes to comunity feedback will eventually turn around and bite them in the ass, but that's longer term then they're really interested in.

I guess with "Ads by Google" you might get those kinds of sponsors.

As to the original post, I wouldn't pay anything for an integrated forum. I already pay over $800USD a month... is there no limit to what we must pay for?

This Forum was always about more than support from Linden Lab, it was an extension of the community decsribed by What is Second Life? Since in-world doesn't allow for this type of dialog, is was a useful tool for resident conversation.

Now not only are we asked to pay to create and host content, we're asked to pay to host the community?

Paying for forums is a sure way to kill them. LL has done a nice job of that already.

Granted, running them does have a cost, but I believe LL has truly underestimated just how useful they are and how they indirectly contribute towards their own bottom line.

In my opinion, the forums shound not only be maintained, but they should be made read only for non SL residents.

Of course, my opinion means squat as my last name ends with an "O"

Whoa! Brilliant posts.

~Ulrika~

Amen and amen!

There already was a link to the forums in the client Help menu. It appears in the current client version it's been replaced with link to Linden Blog instead, which is utterly asinine and knee-jerk change given last i checked the collective blog wasn't the place to ask questions about content creation issues and such... :/