Transforming the Second Life Experience with Big Spaceship

While skeptical of this particular engagement, I certainly don't dismiss the whole NUE initiative as misguided.

I see value in paying attention to new users and their first hour experience. While it's true that existing users are considerably better sources of revenue than new users, some of the standard marketing economics seem not to apply. For one thing, prior to this, I see very little attention or investment being made on drawing new users to SL, so it's hard to argue that--in this case--attracting new customers is more expensive than retaining existing customers; rather, I see no evidence that new customers have been costing LL anything more than webhosting for registration and some half-hearted attempts at making introductory environments. So maybe for a change directing a little money toward getting and keeping new users is just good business.

And I can see how the first hour may be crucial--I gather there are good statistics that the attrition curve falls off very steeply after that. I'm even able to imagine that the website/registration process is part of the problem, assuming there's good data to back up that assessment.

+++

Something else: When I first landed in-world, I was pretty psyched to find out what all the fuss was about. To get that experience, I would have suffered through a lot of aggravation (and probably did, but just don't remember). If new people coming in are really *eager*, they'll be pretty tolerant of a difficult learning curve and a fairly user-hostile interface.

If the right new users are targeted with the right enticing information about what can be found inside, they'll get through the introduction and they'll stick. Getting that targeted marketing right has huge potential.

On the other hand, if the "wrong" new users stumble upon SecondLife, they won't last an hour, no matter how glossy the introductory materials.

My first day last year as a newbie...was made so much better by a woman who helped me almost the moment I rezzed up. Had no idea what was going on...but I had fun learning how to navigate in SL. She was not a mentor she was just someone who helped me and she was amazing. But after a while I think she just got tired of my incessant questions..rofl. It would have been nice to have a Mentor who was assigned to me for 30 days or so. I eventually found places like NCI and others that were very very helpful in assisting me. I stayed.. But I've invited a lot of people into SL and their experience was not as successful as mine. Can't say how many real life friends I have who have signed up and are in my SL friends list who have not returned. Why? For most of them their experience in SL did not turn into fun...just frustration at trying to figure out where to go what to do if I was not logged in to assist. Even when I did send them to places that were for Newbies...not all but many. And there are many people assisting Newbies with good intentions. And there are those that are like the pimps and sleazeballs waiting for the new meat to get off the bus in LA or New York City promising a easy way to make Lindens.

I think that giving New residents some Lindens would be a great first start...just giving out Freebies is not what helps a new resident make a stake in this SL world. Honestly I knew that I could not buy land when I first got here because Land in SL was too complicated to understand and way out of my RL budget...but I was hopeful...the other reason I became Premium was after standing at WelFare Island or any of those camping sites I had to find a better way to start getting Lindens into my account and being new with no lindens was daunting. You really can't do much as far a buying things are concerned. And I became Premium for the support from LL..but didn't get much of that..LOL My support came from other SL residents that understood how SL worked.

Basically....

Give New Residents immediately upon rezzing a selection of the New Resident places to go so they don't have to search for them in search. And a mentor that checks in with them for 30 days.

And give them Lindens to put into the SL economy. What's 1,000 Lindens to start out with? Not alot..give them something other than the ability to log in and wander around aimlessly...

My two L$

I'd be interested to find out how many Lindens spend any significant time in-world (either as a Linden or a secret alt) actually "using" the platform, instead of doing "work related stuff".

I'd hazard a guess that what would be termed as an 'active and contributory user' spends more time in SL in a week than the vast majority of LL employees, using the grid for socialising, building, having fun, shopping, selling, dancing, exploring etc.

"Maybe it just takes listening to some of the people on the inside, who know your product arguably better than you do" might just be your best solution - and, of course, the cheapest. All you have to do is ask for volunteers...

I am fully behind LL making the new user experience better for people entering SL, however I am now beginning to feel, as I read through the thread that perhaps as seems to be becoming the norm, LL have failed to see what is required of the new user experience.

So decided to put down my own thoughts of the way I would have liked it to run, firstly and most importantly make it easy to get out of the orientation island fast if it isn't doing anything for you and into the rest of SL, after a couple of minutes, I was looking for the exit.

Then address the reason why I was bored, make the orientation fun please, make it a taster of the things that can be done in SL. With basic appearance editing, clothes changing, communication and walking flying skills being taught only.
Don't overload new users with information, there is no need, instead utilise the mentors you have to act as buddies giving help and guidance to your new users in a tailored way, this will instantly give them social interaction, until they begin to create friends and join groups themselves.

I was lucky enough to have people to visit and learn from inworld, they were the reason I stayed nothing else, Second Life has plenty of aspects to absorb people but these need to be identified and shown to the users that will benifit from them, not all people have the same wants from SL, these wants need to be identified quickly then the relevant help can be given, the best way to do this is through the mentors.


Not through a laborious induction process.






Use the people who volunteer their time freely, don't alienate them along with the rest of your users! (Think Island owners just been stuffed by LL price increase on OS, mainland residents let down by continued extion plot problems after promises to act as effective estate managers of the mainland, content creators who had their designs stolen, Land dealers who see land unable to sell for more than 3L/sqm in many mainland sims and the many other upset users who complain of unstability)

Please start ot think about the service you provide to all these users, while you still have them as they are what makes it worth looging into Second Life.

What is the point in creating, if there is no one to admire your work?
What is the point in running a club to be the only member?

Get the new people in keep them in, look after the existing members and make SL all that it can be!

I want to see it bustling with activity again.

A nice idea, and I do try to do that with newbies, as often as I can. But many people don't WANT a new friend, they just want to get on with it. Worse, there aren't enough mentor types to go around...there are MANY more new people coming in than there are available mentors at any given time.

I like the idea suggested by Oryx Tempel and others...a sort of "super HUD". This would be a temporary (or switchable) addition to the user interface that would provide guidance and instruction, but for the Second Life grid as a whole, not just one little Orientation Island. It would, perhaps, have a row of buttons or tabs..."Would you like to: Change your appearance? Change your clothes? Move or fly? Find Something or Someone? Get or Make Money? Go to a new location? Get Help with Something Else?" Each button would open up a short tutorial or text file. The last one would open a searchable Help database (NOT the Wiki, PLEASE!) Such a user interface addition, along with a directory of useful/fun landmarks and a GOOD set of help files, would make SL a lot more understandable for the new resident.

Oh...there could be a button on there to call for live help from a volunteer, too. Help People Institute has a function like this on their Helper HUD. HPI mentors wear the HUD and signal their willingness to be on call. Newcomers request help and a mentor is paged at random. And that might be one way to do something like what Hodgey is suggesting.

If they'll be creating interfaces, and if they're responsible for such sites as MyCokeRewards.com, then SL can look forward to being a hellish, keystroke intensive, time consuming, interface experience. That MyCokeRewards site is one badly designed, sluggish site . . . and it sticks out as being one of the worst on the web in this respect.

Back when I signed up for SL I found the orientation to be engaging and informative. Simple and easy to follow, and this was back in early 2007. I remember the first question I had after logging in and seeing a bunch of gray gooped Ruths hopping around - "Are these other people? Do they move and talk?" Then I found the orientation stations, figured out how to operate the platform, then in time learned the more advanced features like building, scripting, etc.

The last time I created an alt, I was seriously disappointed. There is no structure or flow to your new Orientation Island. Just like an interactive 3d user manual it should flow almost like a book. 1 - What is SL? 2 - What can I do with it? 3 - How do I do these things? A simple path like structure with step by step instructions really seems to be the most simple and understandable way to go.

Now, please for the love of gawd do two things... 1 - Make sure that newcomers properly capitalize their first names, and 2 - Somehow discourage them from using numbers! I'm sorry but its just so frustrating when you see people walking around with names like "joshua1979 Lastname" Its like walking around in real life with a big blue and white name tag that reads "Hi! I'm ab1gD0mdUm Idiot" This is a world that mimics real life in almost every way - in essence a Second Life which parallels your first. Not something like Yahoo or <<cringes>> MySpace where you're given a single field to create a user identifier.

As for the prior posts that I've seen, yes. You guys really need to do something about customer retention. I'm sorry to say but after this whole Openspace disaster and just recently being evicted from the Openspace I've spent six months developing I'm quite peeved with you Lindens to the point where I've all but pulled all stakes in your company.

I will say though, thank goodness for OpenSim. I've just finished renting out some server space and have setup my own smaller scale grid where oddly enough I have the same challenge of creating an new user orientation area. Although in my case I don't plan on hiring in some big-wig marketing firm to design it. Instead I'll just use my prior experiences as a "newbie" and create it in a way that makes sense based on my and my team mate's experiences.

After the wonderful experience of getting a price hike of 67% for my dream-atoll, I surely will warn everybody I know that they should avoid Second Life. Second Life means to be punished for creating contents.

Nice try by the way to hide all comments from non-logged in people by moving them to the forum. The opinions of your customers are really bad promotions. Thousands of angry customers will do you no good.

Do you all at LL remeber back several months ago when we logged into SL we would get those Poll's asking us what we thought of this and what we thought of that and so on and so on? Well seeing how you all want to run this place like a real world by making everything harder and harder and more expensive why dont you all let us VOTE on these issues as residents instead of just craming them down our throats and later telling us that our comments are not constructive?? If you all want to run this place like the real world then let the users decide what is best for SL instead of some dictatorship that forces it on us and more or less tells us "like it or leave it..we will just get new users that dont know any better"

Yeh, I think the OI they had when I started in 2005 was pretty well designed, with a series of stations that led you from one skill to the next. What was wrong with that one?

Many residents tell me that fixing existing bugs and clarifying policy... then actually sticking to it... would be valuable for them.


New residents would enjoy the Second Life experience so much more if existing issues such as bugs and policy ambiguity were addressed before introducing new changes and features.

And with questionable moves like the OpenSpace price hike, resident retention will be even more difficult. I see absolutely no value in bringing new people to Second Life, while SL is hemorrhaging existing users. You would simply be trading knowledgable long-term residents for uninformed newbies with no vested interest in the community or the economy. What is the point in that?

And with all of the alternatives to Second Life making advances in the Metaverse concept at an impressive rate, it won't be long before the lack of focus on bug fixes, policy clarification, and policing of established policies will drive even higher numbers of residents to seek a more stable and trustworthy environment for their virtual existance.

You can polish a turd all day long, but at the end of the day, it's still a turd. Second Life has always had the opportunity to set the stage for the development of the Metaverse, but with each passing announcement from Linden Labs, more and more people are looking to alternatives for the future.

So for confirmation here Linden Labs has selected a company that is a marketing team to revamp the way new users experience Second Life.

Just a thought on this one but wouldn't it make more sense to be working with a company that has some actual experience with user interface design and interaction not a company who's experience is in branding, visual marketing, and PR?

Is Linden Labs trying to make second life better for new users or are you trying to make it look better and more interesting for new users?

How about instead of making it look better to draw new users you guys make it actually function better for the current users.

Having DPW working on more areas like Nautilus is money better spent then trying to make things look better. Lets actually make things better.

Linden Labs doesn't need a marketing team they need a company with experience on user interface design which based on the portfolio of Big Spaceship that have absolutely zero experience in that side of things.

I'm not sure two viewers would be useful (it would increase the codebase and the difficulty for residents to support new residents), but maybe add an Intermediate menu that can be enabled similarly to the Advanced menu would be. Hide all the stuff that isn't routinely used or important in Intermediate or Advanced (this includes mic lock, newbies do NOT need this feature and it tends to be more annoying than useful in practice). Simplify the main viewer window.

Crack down on abusers: Far less love and understanding out of the g-team and the SL legal department please! For the love of God, do a check of open proxies and permaban them by IP as they're found like most IRC networks do. Consider more punkbuster like fingerprinting of the hardware. Prosecute sim crashers in court: The patriotic nigras and other /b/tards are damaging SL's usability (and thus reputation and ability to earn money) especially at welcome areas and many of the better known private sims. These lower forms of life have been at it now for almost three years with no repercussions for people who continue to invade SL despite being hardware banned. Case in point: Fort Longcat and woodbury are back despite almost everyone involved with the sim and build being hardware banned. Why are people who habitually violate the TOS, and get hardware banned for it allowed to continue buying land? It doesn't take a private investigator to put the pieces together, more like an especially bright five year old.



Could we please stop beating a dead horse? The odds of this changing are unlikely, and those of us who have run businesses in the real world (you know, the one that actually matters), don't have a whole lot of sympathy. First off, 90% of businesses fail. That's capitalism; deal with it. Second, what's with this thing about SL "business owners" who utterly fail at the basics (ie, they don't have a business plan, are very likely breaking the law by running a business without a business license in real life, and fail to budget some wiggle room in case of cost overruns), getting shocked that they made stupid choice that put them under? Why do they try pinning the blame on someone else? Sorry, business owners do NOT get to pass the buck on mistakes. Wanna pass the buck? Work for someone else, not yourself. Third, the openspace issue is off topic on this thread.

The folks who didn't read what they were buying on the open space thing are lucky they didn't get banned for what amounts to zoning violations (open spaces are just that... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/open_space). Instead, LL changed the rules IN THEIR FAVOR, and increased pricing to match the cost overrun created by opensim overuse....

I think it might be better if instead of being a user controllable option, draw distance was automatically tuned as a function of network speed and video RAM. Failing that, have a warning that gives users a chance of backing out of an increase draw distance when it's turned up higher than 96m: "Warning: draw distances over 100m are likely to cause network and client lag. Are you sure?"

You can already do that in-world using the inventory window. Drag items onto your avatar from your inventory to wear them.

Given that the clients are resident created open source projects these days, and the direction things have been moving based on what I've seen on the JIRA and heard from volunteers working on the code, that removing the Advanced menu (as Debug is called now) is unlikely.

You don't need a website designer to make it easier for new residents to sign up. Just ask Torley to make a video of the signup process and link it on your home page right under the "Get Started" banner and label it "Here's How."

And while you're at it, link the Video Turorials directly from the Viewer Help menu instead of making someone find them from the KnowledgeBase pages.

So tell me again why the Tutorials were marginalized on the Blog page and we have to sign up for RSS feeds to hear about new ones. Trying to keep them secret?

Mike

Let's look at people who reject this game just based on it's stupid name.

It's embarrassing to mention Second Life by name. Just because the name implies; playing house, not real, not important. LL claims it's not a game but a platform, then give it this limp name.

After 4 years i still hate to say "second life". Ask this latest marketing company what they think of this name...

It's the ability to create that drew me here...even past the power of the Complete Turn Off Name. Not phil's beach ball and a halfwit parrot.

Anyway, i understand you are forced to find new ways to fill the bucket as the current users sift out the bottom in disgust.

btw, if you want to do something useful fire jack

Yep I agree the name "Second Life" is holding us back.

On the OpenSpace thread, I've noticed the posts that have been getting replies are 1) Are all calmly, well worded, thought out and bring something new to the discussion, and 2) formed in such a way that answering it answers all duplicate posts of the same category. Posts that haven't been getting responses are purely flames, or the poster is demonstrating a serious lack of business foresight and trying to pin the blame on their suppliers (ie, Linden Lab).

Useless for first hour new residents. They can't grasp the alt-zoom concept to view themselves properly. In addition the entire concept is stupid because of the probability you will miss and inadvertently give away or lose an object. The drag onto avatar in world feature needs to be removed.

No, you open a panel where you manage attachments period. No chance of dropping a transparent dance chim full of expensive animations on alpha floor making it near impossible to find or worse giving it away to a laughing camper who will never give it back.

I sorta miss that one, too. It wasn't very flash but when I left, I sorta knew what was going on.

The latest round of OI's wasn't too bad but I think parts of it were a bit buggy.

I find that most newbies I talk to on HI lately have no idea how to do things like control their camera or use search. Many don't know they can fly. A depressing number seem to spend most of their time trying to sort their prim vs "real" hair out..

Never trust a company that uses Red print on a Black background! Such a bad combination. If they can't get that right........

I still think this "panel" should be the appearance window. Bring inventory items into the appearance window, drag them into that window to attach them (or wear clothes), add a couple of extra tabs to the window below the clothes tabs for Attachments and HUDs that let you see all your attachments by name and adjust them, without losing them in the main window inside your avatar.

Or maybe make your avatar go translucent when you have the attachments tab in the appearance window hilighted, and let you fish attachments out from inside your avatar that way.

Maybe even put an "appearance" button down in the button bar instead of "build".