Improving the Premium Experience

In a few weeks we will start beta testing a new addition to the Premium subscription, to see whether we can dramatically simplify owning your first home in Second Life. We believe that, if we can make owning a home both easy and welcoming, it will increase land interest overall, leading to more consumers of both land, content and other inworld services.

This new addition to the Premium membership will be called a 'Linden Home'. This is not the same as First Land, not least because it is about providing a home rather than just land, but it does share the same goals.



During beta, a limited number of randomly selected existing Premium subscribers will be offered the chance to apply for a Linden Home. We may also offer them to a small percentage of new Premium signups but that would be later in the beta phase. There will be a number of themes and house types to choose from and, once chosen, a 512m parcel of land on a new Continent will be given to those Residents. That parcel will have a beautiful but unfurnished home already in place, and most will not share a border with other Residents.

A key aim for the beta is to provide easy entry into inworld home ownership (especially for new Residents) while not competing with estate owners. These estates do an amazing job of providing quality experiences for Residents. We want to create an on-ramp so new Resident can learn how valuable and simple owning land can be, but then move naturally on to larger parcels elsewhere.

Therefore these parcels will be unlike normal land in that they will be restricted in various ways; the house cannot be removed and the parcels cannot be sold, joined, terraformed or divided. Events and classifieds cannot be created for these parcels; only Premium Members can own them, and only one per account.

If the beta goes well, we are looking to launch this as an entitlement for all Premium subscribers early next year. When launched, Linden Homes will join the Support services, stipend and free 512m of land tier that Premium members already enjoy. As we go through the beta period you will all have a chance to visit the areas to take a look for yourselves, and we'll be talking in the blogs about what we learn from those first beta testers. Based on extensive feedback, we believe that by greatly simplifying an entry-level home-buying process, new Residents will stay longer and ultimately participate in the community and economy more extensively.

As usual, shortly after this post goes live we will open up a Discussion area so that we can get your feedback and questions. There will also be information added to the Support Wikipages and some Q&As added to the newly launched SL Answers over the next few days!

So what happens to these places when the person decides to move on? They can't sell them. Do they count as your first tierless 512? If so, you'd probably want to abandon them when you moved to a larger plot somewhere else. The place would become a derelict ghost town.

I'm guessing they would just give them out to new people as they come in. Churn.

By their logic, everyone after a short period of time will suddenly want to move on and pay for a larger plot. I think a ton of folks will just do what I'm currently doing: Get by with 117 prims on a lovely 512. Why rush to buy a cow when you can have 117 prims of milk for free?

I think you've under-estimated Linden Lab. I think they do expect that many people are going to want to move on to bigger plots of land after they can't rez their high-prim items on 512 sq m. And after the have let enough time pass, they will release the already-written blog entry on what a success it is, so much so that the next "feature" will be Linden-managed prefabs on larger mainland. The teaser prefab is a nice gateway to steer new users to more Linden Lab products.

LOL. I did under-estimate them. All I could come up with was that after 90 days they would start charging tier for these parcels.

Possibly.

...many Premium members currently on parcels of their own choosing will suddenly find their 'free' 512m gone....and will be bumped up to the next-higher level of tier!

No it's optional, you don't have to take a Linden home.

Assuming LL keep to their word, its a good thing IMHO, if they don't I can see many land barons bailing as quickly as they can sell their sims, end result, SL becomes a empty wasteland (err void even) in a matter of no time, following shortly thereafter by LL shutting down SL and releasing a blog post stating that resident feedback, in world office hours, and numerous surveys showing that residents believed it was other residents fault for screwing up SL and that LL was in no way to blame for the closure.

I really don't take any pleasure in writing this, because I've loved every second inworld, and I will miss SL more than I can express.

But: someday the whole SL phenomenon will be a Harvard Business School case in "most breath-takingly fast and comprehensive self-destruction of a viable business platform in world history."

I really don't take any pleasure in writing this, because I've loved every second inworld, and I will miss SL more than I can express.

But: someday the whole SL phenomenon will be a Harvard Business School case in "most breath-takingly fast and comprehensive self-destruction of a viable business platform in world history."

You guys wanted more Bennies...looks like they are on the way.

No it's optional, you don't have to take a Linden home.

...It has nothing to do with retention....