What does this comment on stipends mean?

One comment in the latest blog seems odd:
Does this mean they're planning on phasing out the stipend?

Sounds like it.

He elaborated on that more in /352/14/292421/10.html#post2219875

Pasted for the link-challenged:

Means pretty much what it says. It may be that this involves phasing out the stipend. It may not.

Pfft...

I don't read this as threatening the premium stipend at all. Let me rephrase what I think M is implying.

"We think the only reason most people who don't buy land get premium accounts is the stipend; however, those people are realizing the cost of premium membership, if simply used to buy lindens on the Lindex, gives a much bigger return. If we want to get more people into premium accounts, we need to think of providing other incentives."

What I see this as "possibly meaning" is that instead of introducing something new to add to the premium benefits, there may likely be less freedoms, abilities, or features for Basic members. Perhaps asset upload throttles, or inventory size caps. Something to make people need premium accounts if they want to fully partake.

Of course I could be 100% wrong.

Lets see, how to make the premium account more attractive by the same team (person) that thought up OS new prices...what shall we guess at?

1. Each av gets a webpage to put pictures on
2. Premium avs can choose to be a member of 50 groups but has to pay double the current premium price
3. Premium avs get ignored 50% less by support
4. Premium avs get priority on asset server requests (oh yes)

that's my starter set for useless and useful

I hope that they don't mean "Reduce privileges for Basic members" (even though I am premium).

As for ideas...

How about letting mail to "Argent.Stonecutter@secondlife.com" go to IM or be forwarded to my gmail account?

More groups, maybe, but I'd rather they allowed "light" groups or allowed you to have "light memberships" in groups. If group IM is the main cost, then let us have more groups if we only get group IM for 25 of them? Most of the groups I'm in, I'd rather NOT get IM from.

I *do* read it as a threat to the stipend. They've reduced it at least twice before that I've heard of, so there's precedent. Neither M or Zee say anything about protecting the stipend, just "making the value of Premium membership less dependent on the stipend".

So I read it as "we're going to come up with new benefits for Premium membership that don't cost LL anything and do away with the stipend so people will buy more L$."

And why not? Premium memberships are "irrelevant to their business".

The Tuesday "Where's My Stipend" threads will soon be one with the dinosaurs and Ruth.

As a user who only gets L$300 a week, I don't care about the stipend to be honest. I only had the membership to get to live chat to get my huddles back due to a bug. I should not have to pay to get back something due to a bug but that's history now.

If all I wanted was L$'s i'd just buy $10 worth and get what, L$2800 instead of L$1200 as basic.

How will this affect us Lifetime members? Does our stipend end entirely?

I've gone from a 2-3k stipend in 03/04 to whatever it is now, $300L or $500L?

I would hope they have something to replace stipend for us since we did invest in them when they needed the money.

5. Prim and script limits on AVs. Premies getting more than Basics.
6. Basic accounts can't leave the Mainland.

*giggles* ^.^

Wanna increase the value of being a premium account? Do away with it. Straight tier is good.

Or improve response times to premium account support tickets. Like actually responding to them... Actually, scratch that. We likely to use the Live Chat, because we actually get a response. So, don't TELL us to file a support ticket when we do.

Or do away with the stipend and give us 1024m of land "free" with the support package.

Or buy all of us booze and ship it to our house. No koolaid, please. I don't like LL's koolaid.

Totally agree but i bet you that they will slide it in this coming year imho. I've seen stipend drop from L$500 to L$300 and other stipends abolished, well they have the new guy onboard Tom IIRC who is looking at this area zee said. Well my annual is due in Dec i imagine it will be the last at L$500 at least its still got value as it is now.

Just as i see the Mentor program slowly being phased out in favor of the new company here to make the NUE the best thing for LL while having groups in world doing the mentoring under the Resident Help association system, that way LL doesn't have to run the mentors anymore. I am sure more price rises are on the way also. Looking at all that is going on it seems that LL doesn't need its customer base anymore, well thats the impression i am getting.

Is anyone else??

PS: This is my Alt as my main got suspended don't know why clearly yet as LL forgot to tell me and several others lol

I've actually had pretty good response to my support tickets.

I'd like to see something along the lines of there being smaller increment jumps between tier levels. I truly think that would be an incentive for people to buy land or buy more land. (It would for me.)

Of course LL may not care about if we buy land or not either.

I'd like that myself. Then I could go up to the next tier level... which I can't right now, because it's a major jump as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think it's a bad idea at all, IF theyare going to offset the loss of stipends with real value perks, whatever they may be. When I was premium, the $300 was meaningless to me, as would $400 or even $500. Once I realized I had no need to lease space from LL the entire idea of Premium became unnecessary. Stop the subsidies, and make being Premium actually worth something.

If they boosted tier, since the stipend just goes into tier for me.

Absolutely.

From the day I first started posting on the forums, I've expressed concern that LL is chasing after the wrong customer base. Philip, and now Mark, seem determined to sell SL to corporate clients.

But SL is not a good platform for corporate clients, and the flaws are built in.

- severe limitations on the number of avatars that can assemble in one place.
- extremely high bandwidth requirements for little productive return over other forms of communication
- instability and unreliability
- lack of security for company-private communications and data.

They can, if they try just a LITTLE harder, get all of us individual users to leave, and take our little annoying selves off to other platforms and pastimes. But if they do, they'll still have the built-in problems of the SL platform, and STILL won't attract the kind of corporate interest they dream of.

Helloooo, LL...SL is an ****ENTERTAINMENT**** platform, you dimwits. Your customer base is NOT the corporations, it is the great mass of individuals out there. Us. The people you keep blowing off.

Totally agree with you Lindal there. SL doesn't really cost me anything as its a tax deductible expense as some of our advertising budget and we are VAT registered as a company, so frankly i don't care that much, as we will stay with SL until costs per new member for our RL business become prohibitive and then we we will scale down etc. and as in all good business we will adapt to the market within the budgets we have set for here.

The sad thing is that SL is slowly losing people, we have some great friends that have recently left and others planning to if LL woke up and proclaimed it as an entertainment platform then maybe that would help them at this time but lets be honest will they??

It's Kobayahi Maru for LL. They don't wan't "Us" as the public face of SL, we are on the whole, too "wierd/creative/idealistic/independant/unruly for the button downs. They can't have their meetings and such with us around, were too unpreditable. Plus, a lot of us aren't the mindless lemmings they look to sell to. But, without us, there is no one for them to market their wares to. Whitebread Middle America* is more their speed, but those people are so busy working two and three jobs that they may not have the time, or the discretionary income stop spend on a "make believe" world.

*A generalizatin to refer to the average working stiff, no matter where they live.

Why after LL took all the restrictive ideas they got from the OS forum, are people giving them more ideas on what they are willing to loose when it comes to premium memberships? Do they need us to tell them any more ways to screw us over? I thinbk if they can't come up with them, we shouldn't help them.

Another reason why I want to see more suggestions for features they can add to premium (like, letting people email Argent.Stonecutter@Secondlife.com) rather than take away from Basic.

I agree - 100%