Introducing T Linden. What would you do to improve Premium subscriptions?

I would really like to see the ability to buy prims for your parcel.I want more prims but I don't want to get into more tier payments.That would be a killer until i feel strong enough.

So the ability to buy more Prims...number one request

T Linden - thanks for continuing to read the posts and replying to them. Even if you aren't preparing to announce anything, can you give us an ETA on an ETA? By which I mean... do you have any form of timeline or agenda, for decisions / announcements? Will you have some decisions by the end of the year? Q1/09? Or is this just testing the water, without any actual mandate or agenda?

Thanks, and have a great weekend!

-Atashi

My stipend goes almost exclusively on ads if I did not have it I would not spend it back.

I did not say to use a premium account to verify adults. I said that in order to access those aged verified required areas, that one must additionally also have a premium account.

Speaking of age verification, nothing is REALLY proof. That's another topica, another thread.

What would cause resident delight?

Oh, gee, there's a loaded question...

1) No "hai, we're abusing your wallet now" surprise price hikes with no discussion OF OPTIONS beforehand.

2) Customer support that's actually, you know, SUPPORTIVE and HELPFUL. On a CONTINUAL basis. Not this, potluck-depending-on-what-linden-you-get crap.

3) If I do an AR on someone who's 11 or 12, I don't expect it to go into the black hole of calcutta, essentially telling me, "AR's don't matter, we're just going to ignore them anyway."

4) If I do a support ticket via the portal, I expect an answer - not to have it languish for months. I *do* realize that I may not GET an answer in 24 hours - I do tickets with a reasonable expectation that I will get an answer in, say, a week. I understand sometimes things happen and people are just swamped. Substantially longer than that, though, like months at at time? Just says "we don't care about YOU."

In short, what would give ME resident delight?

1) Major decisions (like openspace price hike) be discussed - with lindens actually taking part, not just "we're reading the forum, thanks for your responses" canned posts. The intelligent ones in the audience NOTICE.

2) If a linden-opened thread is called 'discussion with so-and-so', then THAT linden (or lindens) needs to be active in the thread.

3) Prove that the lindens actually care how their decisions will be perceived by other people. The bad PR the company is getting lately? Could have been avoided COMPLETELY if things were handled better. It doesn't take a genius, but it DOES take someone who's used to dealing with people, not machines.

4) Fix more bugs. Especially texture loading bugs that cause people to see gray textures all the time. If individuals like Nicholaz Beresford can fix them, so can the lindens!


You're right, none of these have to do with adding value to premium accounts.

But until these problems are fixed? All the value in the world isn't going to convince me to re-up MY premium account next summer.

It's like a lousy workplace. The pay may be great, the benefits may rawk, but if you're constantly getting beat upon by coworkers and higher-ups, and being forced to justify every expense down to every last paper clip you use...you aren't going to want to stay there, no matter how good the benefits and pay is.

Plain and simple.


That said.


Things that -can- make people thrilled with their premium accounts?

1) Make it worth their while: Minimum 1024sqm free tier. Really nice looking buildings often take too much of the 117 prim allowance on a 512sqm build and don't leave enough room for equally nice furniture. (yes, you can get low-prim builds, but many of them are low prim by using hollow prims, and you STILL haven't fixed the head-bouncy, cam-jerky bugs yet! *grump*)

2) Loyalty bonus: 1536 free tier after one year, perhaps 2048 free tier the year after that. Cap it at that point so the tier level doesn't compete as much with the existing charter members (what few you have, heh.)

3) Once a year, or once every couple years, for 1 day, offer premium users (ideally those who have been premium for at least 1 year) the opportunity to purchase charter-type memberships. Livejournal does this with their "permanent" accounts every couple years or so.

4) If a premium user doesn't log in, and their payment comes due, simply gracefully downgrade them to basic if they don't pay AND they don't have land.

Don't lock the account - you never know WHY they don't log in, for all you know they could be laid up in the hospital after a bad car accident for six months! Crap happens, non-landholding premiums should NOT be penalized because they had a near-brush with death.

and (5) of course, Stipend to 500L/week. I've talked to a number of users who ARE seeing the current 300L/week and going "what's the point of going premium?"


Not that I expect any of these will be taken seriously, but hey, knock yourself out.

Dun nao.

Refreshing to see you are following along T. Thank you.

I'd like to ad a visual mute feature to your utility list. Being able to visualy mute objects by the parcel or link set would enhance every mainland owners (premiums) experience.

If I remember corectly this was a feature in a RC last year. Unsure why it never went live.

Being a mainland premium account and landowner since 2005 - my delight would come from Linden Lab following through with the promise of a zoned mainland - and not just for the new clients - but for the clients that have been paying mainland tiers for years. Zoning out the adfarmers from all of the mainland was easy and everyone coperatred. It will not take much effort to initiate further zoning, devlop resident tier-paying committees and then following through with agreed upon initiatives.

Don't be lazy and cheap. If you want paying premium customers you have to treat them like Premium customers. Throwing us all out there to deal with the chaos (some like to romanticize it and call it 'diversity') will not make anyone feel premium or convince anyone to waste their time and money on such a 'privilidge'.


.

I suggested this in a notecard to a linden a long time ago - it is an awesome idea. The ONLY reason I have a premium account is so I can own my own land and not have to worry about someone pitching me off it.

Lias is right. Ultimately, the real draw for premium accounts is an attractive mainland. If people prefer to live on estates no matter what, there is nothing you can really add to the account for that person unless they really want to just buy it to support SL.

I am very very much against making "Features" premium service only.
What, "Cannot run this script, uses Premium Membership required functions."?

Last I checked, Browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera don't have "Premium" features. You may pay for things on the web, but the web browser itself?

Honestly, I think Premium membership should be done away with completely. Bring everyone to the level that old members have had from the start. Without premium membership, 512sqm of land is $5 monthly tier.

Since I'm sure that doing away with Premium Membership isn't something LL really considers an option, I would suggest at least sticking to a service-centric plan. Services such as web space (Give it some MySQL storage that's reliable and you've got quite an attractive proposition) or the Resident email address that someone suggested.

Speak for yourself, Lias. I bought on mainland because I want nothing whatever to do with forced themes or zoning. If they want to create new mainland regions with zoning, that's fine but leave mine alone.

As for the topic at hand, I have read through most of the posts here and, frankly, I don't really see anything that would really "delight" me in terms of retaining my Premium account.

Getting support from an actual Linden Lab employee would help. Or, failing that, at least someone who knows what the heck they are talking about.

K linden is the most approachable Linden in ages. And he is a cute frog. I long to release his inner prince.

Per the thread... obvious that the tier pricing needs an overhaul. Stipends should remain. Some require greater access to support.

You can't please everyone all the time, but you can please more people by giving them options.

You could offer five or ten combinations or allow us to pick one or two things from a category. For example, I currently have two premium accounts and pay US$5 per month to get the land I need. I don't like the $5 part because it's billed monthly and I'd rather pay for everything annually because I'm lazy and forgetful *blush*.

If I could pay the price of two premium accounts with one av and get an additional 512m free in addition to the 1024m-worth of land normally provided, that would be great. Or if I could give up my stipend for extra land on both or one and not have to pay the extra $5 per month would be great.
Someone else could give up land ownership for more group memberships and inventory backup. (A great deal for anyone who doesn't own any land and doesn't plan to.) A third person could choose to keep free 512 meters, give up stipend, and gain an extra 20 groups.

I love the idea of breaking up the tier rates into smaller amounts, say 256m no matter how much you own and lowering the minimum tier to 256 so people who aren't that interested in land could have a place to store some items, donate it to a group, have a little hangout place with their friends, etc.

Another thing I would like to see is being able to combine the prim allocations on parcels that are on the same server but in different regions.

I don't like the idea of decreasing the fees to upload because new items, especially textures of course, cause more work for the servers and our computers. (This is coming from someone who sells textures.)

And frankly, I think you should charge a fee for creating a new account unless you limit the inventory. I don't know anywhere else where you can have a huge inventory for free. You could say, pay $10 to create the account or be limited to 2,000 items. Most people have way more in their inventory than they use anyway, and you just reward people for not managing their inventories, then have them complain if they lose something. I have 6,000-7,000 items in the inventory of my most-used avatar and have never lost anything. /me ducks to avoid the houses and cars being flung at me. The person could always pay $10 later to upgrade to unlimited inventory.

Actually, both Firefox and Opera did have features like that when they were very first starting up (when Firefox was Netscape). And many of the features suggested are on the server, not the client - many web hosting companies have such services.

Thank you T for accepting our suggestions and criticisms with grace and humor, both go a long way with your customers. I hope you enjoy being a part of our Second Lives

P.S.
Any chance of the alpha texture bug ever being fixed? (had to get a builder's pet peeve in there)

-Kate Sakai

I believe if you just want freedom to rez prims then you should rez a open sim on your own computer and have a blast. Building community (as we are referred to as residents) has been what mainland has been about. People existing within inches of one another cannot have completely opposite ideas - that is when the fighting starts.Zoning was always mentioned as a buy-in option for people paying tier in mainland sims - If you choose to by-pass that option then ok. Older players should not be forced to sell their land and tear down their environment just to get whatthe new players get for the same amount of money.

.

It really is nice to see T still following along and actually responding to let us know hes paying attention! Way to go, T!

However, I need to correct you on one point. I DO find my stipend to be very important to me! If I read your last post correctly, you grouped me in with those that dont think the convenience of stipend is worth anything. I love my stipend because LL gets it all back each week with ads and land search fees anyways! (My apologies if I'm reading it wrong..its getting late).

Thanks for keeping up with us here, and now that you have earned it, Welcome!

T, I wish you the best, it's going to be tough to seek delight for a while.

My tier goes from 90,660 annually to 104,460 once all the openspace changes roll through - enough to buy a brand new economy car outright every year, or a new convertible mustang plus gasoline every two years.

Yes I know, it's a completely separate matter, separate thread and not why you are here... but it puts you in a sort of situation like asking "But other than that Mrs Kennedy, how *was* Dallas?"

I am so glad I am not in your shoes right now.

* * * * *

One last point on-topic.

As depressing as I might sound at the moment, I've been (possibly?) one of the strongest supporters of Linden Research in word and deed over the past three years. That said, I've also been a firm believer that the next 100 million *real* signups are on the way. This isn't a stretch; consider the Habbo Hotel product, or the longevity of such worlds as Ultima Online which has recently celebrated a 10 year anniversary.

Here's the point: your next 100 million residents won't look much like us early adopters, demographically. For lack of a better descriptive word, they will be the 'normal' people.

Whatever you do with Premium membership will strongly steer and shape the upcoming generation of residents, and will have to match the needs of 'normal' people to succeed.

I remember the rollercoaster story - a company set out to make the best rollercoaster in the world. In order to do this, they solicited feedback from rollercoaster aficionados - people who really knew and loved rollercoasters. Bigger! Faster! Wilder! these people suggested... and the rollercoaster was built with all their suggestions taken. As such, 'normal' people hated it, and were throwing up as they got off the ride.

You know what, if I had one recommendation, it would be simply this: the *true* premium experience on the grid has to do with making or having a friend. The grid is a cold, boring, aloof, not-terribly-interesting place unless you have friends. Yeah, that's a crazy thing to say I guess - how can premium membership possibly generate... friends?

Something to think about.

Premiums could get to import friend lists from applications like facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn and so on.

Let me take your main paragraphes, T, and derive some suggestions from them:



- I am not a native English speaker, but I think it would helpt to call them not only residents, but customers.

- Really listen. Maybe not only to premium members. My experience is that Lindens often reject to get/read IMs, notecards, forum posts. Don't use one way communication, but read and reply to feedback.
I have several times got a reply from Lindens: "Don't bother me with nc, IM, posts, ..." even in situations when they asked me for something and I replied.
My own latest bad experience is not the OS thing, but the mentor thing. I was offline for good RL reasons, was not renewed and the answer of Vteam was very poor communication: 1. we do not judge (valid) residents (customers) individually and 2. You can do support better than as volunteer (this one declaring volunteers to be not necessary).

--> Improve listening, improve communications by making Linden employees listen and using and replying to feedback. Maybe it's a good start to tell them not to give rude "you're not welcome" - replies (or silence) to premium customers.

--> By promising answers and replies to this thread, you give a great example, T. Thanks for doing that. I am looking forward to your communication with customers.



Great, but can't find something so offer especially to premium customers. Unsing SL should be the same delightful experience for all.



- Yep, long time planning, big time horizon would help a lot. Would give residents, customers, premium members, business ownwers a basis they can plan on. The last months were characterized by some quick made decisions that caused a lot of angry feedback from customers.

--> Why not use the feedback channels more to talk to long time premium customers about your plans and how they fit to a long time horizon? Give them an easy way to know about your long time plans, give them information how quick decisions fit to those plans and give them an easy way to comment, suggest, ask, reply ... and to be sure their words are read.

--> Premium customers often are long time customers, having experienced a lot in SL and planning for lots of new and great things. And very often their plans are cut off by some sudden change in LL policy. Therefore have a way to make sure that bad surprizes happen less often and we can really use SL as a reliable platform for our activities even in the long future.



- Well, my view of SL is mostly that of a teacher and counsellor, who uses SL as a platform to teach RL and SL themes, use SL as a great platform for new learning experience and new ways of counselling.
Being cut off from LL resources and better communications for a 2 months (announced) break did not really help, nevertheless, I will pronounce SL as a great platform for these activities on Online-Educa in 2 weeks, cause I am still convinced that SL IS the place for great learning and coaching experiences.

- To get back to the theme of your post: make sure that escpecially premium members get the feeling that you are doing this, and let also free members get the idea that it might be worth to upgrade to premium.



- Well, thinking of your words, I remember priorities so definitely set to sim owning. It happened more than once, that great people were excluded from activities (at SL5B for example) cause they were not sim owners.
You do not need a sim to attract hundreds and thousands of new customers, to give them a delightful experience in SL, to motivate them to sooner or later buy a sim. Many great people help SL and do not own a sim, many of them are long time premium members, but run their great work from areas that just fit their needs.
Therefore again: listen to those customers, provide a channel for them where they are really listened to.

+++

So many nice suggestions were made to make the premium membership a bit more valid for the customers. They are all great and I would really enjoy some of them to become reality. Great ideas from almost all of the posters here.

But my main wish would be to improve communications. Give your customers, especially those who pay you every month, the idea that they are listened to and that their input is welcome, read and replied.
Good communication is a highway with traffic running great in BOTH directions.

Yep, you want to run 100 alts 24/7 you pay for 20 premium accounts to do so
If it weren't free they wouldn't be doing it.

Ooh ooh! Really like Crap Mariner's suggestion - I can't recall how many times I've wished I could go into "hidden" status. AFK and Busy modes are just completely not functional if you need to be online and working.

I'd pay for more groups and a "hidden" status if nothing else.

I think ideas like increasing groups, attach points etc etc for premium members is a great idea .. then in 6 months LL can say they are being misused and not used as intended and increase premium membership costs by 66% or near 80% for Europeans paying VAT

This may sound bitter and I admit it is .. I'm not a premium member, I had been considering it, however after the OpenSpace mess I like many others have a jaded opinion of LL's business ethics and concern for their "members" opinions

So what would it take to make me become a premium member .. something called trust would be a good start. However Trust is earned not bought.. Time for LL to show us all they do really care and can be trusted

Priority login when the grid is busy would be a biggie

free uploads would be nice...

EDIT...
oh and not be called immaterial..... to anything.

If there are non premium members "abusing" the unlimited inventory, its wrong to introduce a new limit across everyone .. LL cant "take away" existing features from members or introduce new limits retrospectively (ala OS)

Is this debate note about improving Premium membership experience NOT about decreasing Non Premium Membership experience