Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

Here's a link:

http://gigaom.com/2008/10/30/protest-threatens-linden-labs-profitability/

and here's a quote from the blog I just linked:

I contacted freshly minted Linden CEO Mark Kingdon for his comments about the protest. In a statement provided by his publicist, Kingdon told me, “We understand that this price adjustment will affect businesses and other projects of some our Second Life Residents,” and emphasized the cost increases were only directed at select landowners, who have until January 2009 to adjust themselves to the new rates. “To be clear,” Kingdon continued, “this price adjustment affects only a portion of land in Second Life; it does not apply to private islands or regular mainland property. We made this change to ensure an optimal Second Life experience for all Residents.”

I must have missed something. When/where did M sum things up?

(I've moved on, but I'm still watching this for the education.)

Firelight

Thanks, Snowflake.

It's too bad he didn't tell us on the blog. That's what I check for communication from Linden.

And it will be interesting to see what and when the next tier price changes will be.

Firelight

Here's a link:

http://gigaom.com/2008/10/30/protest-threatens-linden-labs-profitability/

and here's a quote from the blog I just linked:

I contacted freshly minted Linden CEO Mark Kingdon for his comments about the protest. In a statement provided by his publicist, Kingdon told me, “We understand that this price adjustment will affect businesses and other projects of some our Second Life Residents,” and emphasized the cost increases were only directed at select landowners, who have until January 2009 to adjust themselves to the new rates. “To be clear,” Kingdon continued, “this price adjustment affects only a portion of land in Second Life; it does not apply to private islands or regular mainland property. We made this change to ensure an optimal Second Life experience for all Residents.”

Jack had clarified the issue a bit in an inworld meeting. If I understood correctly, this is not about people misusing them. It is about there being a technical issue with them. Instead of them taking 1/4 of the cpu, they are taking 1/2 of the cpu. (if I understood it right).

Since there are so many openspace regions now, they are now noticing that this issue is beginning to affect the entire grid. Something that probably couldn't be seen until there was a certain amount of them online. They now have to scale the openspaces differently and this is going to cost money to do, plus requires a price adjustment to account for the added amount of resources they take as compared to other sims on the grid.

Anyone please correct me if this assessment is incorrect.

Excuse me? This just really enrages me, and shows me that MLinden has no understanding of the community. What really gets me is this: Linden Labs has marketed their Product as a 'User created environment'. They have made money on this USP (unique selling point) Now they are proceeding to squash all creativity and what? Kill their USP? makes no sense to me.

Soliel Snook

“To be clear,” Kingdon continued, “this price adjustment affects only a portion of land in Second Life; it does not apply to private islands or regular mainland property. ”

What would have happened if the original post had said this.
there would have been people complaining about the price rise, and a lot of people finding that they could not afford the new price, BUT, there would have been an understanding of the problem, and none of the outcry.

The problem here is not the price, it is the fact that LL lied, they blamed us for the problem, called us abusers, would not accept that they were at fault, and up to now have STILL not appologised for that attitude.

I am sorry, I will not be treated this way by a company I hire to do a job for me.

LL are NOT doing me a favour by allowing me to use their servers, I am doing them a favour by hiring the service from them.

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

Do you remember that concept, the customer was called sir or mdam,
WE pay the companies wages.
I do not expect and will not accept being treated like a nuisance that LL can do without.

Get a clue LL, treat customers properly or lose them.

I beg to differ. I believe the problem is the price in addition to the fact that they lied. I am disappointed that so many of those who were most vocal in the beginning are not willing to stay the course. I understand you might be tired but, let me say again, this is not right or ethical.
I have downgraded my membership and will abandon my sim at the end of the billing period. It is now a question of principle.

To use an Australian expression "Not Happy Jan"

What would have happened if the original post had said this.
there would have been people complaining about the price rise, and a lot of people finding that they could not afford the new price, BUT, there would have been an understanding of the problem, and none of the outcry.

Because they were never intended for that level of load this is causing problems. For some people this has meant a less than great experience with performance fluctuations. The overuse of Openspaces has also put additional strain on some of our network and database infrastructure at a much higher ratio than is reflected in the current pricing. So higher traffic to and from the servers along with heavier demands on the asset server, both of which impact the overall experience people have inworld.

Excuse me? This just really enrages me, and shows me that MLinden has no understanding of the community. What really gets me is this: Linden Labs has marketed their Product as a 'User created environment'. They have made money on this USP (unique selling point) Now they are proceeding to squash all creativity and what? Kill their USP? makes no sense to me.

Soliel Snook

Well, way back in the old days, prims cost money (the "prim tax". As a result, the cost of running a sim was directly related to the operational cost to LL to support that sim. This wasn't all bad--there was an incentive to do more with less. There still is some (more crap = more lag), but it's borne by visitors, not owners.

If all of this really is about LL recouping operational costs, going back to "metered rates" would solve that problem handily. It'll be unpopular with customers who like to have budgetable, predictable monthly fees, so it's likely to cause a drop in usage, but hey, fewer customers = lower costs too.

I was glad to see more nuance in the most recently blog entry, though. That's progress.

Arashiko
> 5 year resident

To explain:
Thought about There.com (Mckenna Industries) Coca cola, Nissan, Bebe, Cosmo all there already as well as some other clothing lines.

TIGGS

It's worth looking at but once bitten Would want to make sure There's business model was stable.

The point I was making (and which you underlined) is that LL exist in a competitive market. Management of the product, and the maintenance costs of the product, need to be seen in that light. In a time of recession, a 66% maintenance price hike doesn't look good. Incidentally, just mentioned the hike to my budget manager and his answer was as expected. (Puts soothing cream on ears)

Yesterday’s meeting was a very important first step toward reaching a solution that will be reasonable and fair to estate owners and their tenant/owners while at the same time allowing the management of SL to operate a financially sound and profitable business. It is hoped that the suggestions offered here will contribute to both of those goals.

Openspace Announcement Discussion

I will be reading all the comments to this thread tomorrow and will reply as best as I can then, as it's very late for me now in the UK. Please be assured that we do read every reply.


Jack

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Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes

In March of this year, we announced improvements to our light use land product that we call Openspaces. Not long after this, the new Land Store opened allowing estate owners to buy Openspaces and have them delivered almost immediately, an enormous improvement over the old method of ordering them via support tickets. As a result we have seen tremendous demand for Openspaces - with many thousands of them being ordered. We're delighted that so many of you have found them to be a useful addition to your estates.

Read on after the cut..

For those that don't know, an Openspace is a type of private island that we made available for light use countryside or ocean. We figured that if Governor Linden can have ocean and green spaces, we should let private estate owners do the same. But Openspaces differ from normal regions in one particularly significant way; unlike normal regions that effectively get a CPU to themselves on the server, there can be up to four Openspaces on a single CPU (so 16 on a quad core machine), sharing the resource (hence them being ‘light use’).

So Openspaces have been incredibly popular as a perk for estate owners, but sadly there is a twist. Unfortunately most of the Openspaces are being used for much more than light use. Based on analysis performed in August and September, Openspaces are being used about twice as much as we expected, in other words being loaded with double the content/avatar load than we'd expect for a region that is supposed to be light use.

Rather than being employed as open areas like ocean with little or no content and traffic, the majority are being rented out to residents looking for a place to live. Because they were never intended for that level of load this is causing problems. For some people this has meant a less than great experience with performance fluctuations. The overuse of Openspaces has also put additional strain on some of our network and database infrastructure at a much higher ratio than is reflected in the current pricing. So higher traffic to and from the servers along with heavier demands on the asset server, both of which impact the overall experience people have inworld.

We need to therefore take some steps to improve their performance and better reflect their actual usage levels in our pricing so that we can maintain the best performance level for everyone. As a result, we will be implementing a pricing change effective January 1st along with some policy changes effective immediately.

Beginning 1st January 2009

We will increase the monthly maintenance fee from USD$75 to USD$125 per month. This price increase will apply to all owners of Openspaces on January 1st as well as new purchases after that date. There will be no grandfathering of Openspace maintenance pricing.

For anyone owning class 4 Openspaces on January 1st, they will be upgraded to class 5 by end of January, to further improve the experience people have on those regions.

At the same time, we will be increasing the upfront fee for brand new Openspaces from USD$250 to USD$375.

Effective Immediately

We will no longer allow the Owner of an Openspace to be changed to a different resident than the Payor. Initially we will not enforce this change on Openspaces where the Payor and Owner are already different but in those cases the only change allowed will be to set the Owner back to the Payor. This doesn't affect the parcel level rentals, this is just focussed on the whole region rental of Openspaces.

We will no longer offer an educational or non-profit discount for new Openspaces. As mentioned earlier, this is due to the increased back end resource required for us to support Openspaces in the way that they are now being used. For the small number of Educators that already have Openspaces, we will be contacting you directly to discuss this change.

Next, we will be making changes to the viewer that enable residents to know precisely what type of land or region they are on so that the land market remains as fair and easy to understand as possible. So expect to see changes that much more clearly display to residents whether they are on Linden Mainland or Private Estate, whether it is a Normal region or Openspace and what that means. This will affect various aspects of the Viewer including the inworld Search along with the About Land and Buy Land screens. Making Land easier to understand will benefit everyone, especially new users looking to step onto the property ladder for the first time.

Lastly we will begin to proactively discuss overloaded Openspaces with their owners. This is important because as with abuse of region resources, a heavily overloaded Openspace can adversely affect other Openspaces sharing the same machine which is clearly unfair to residents who are using them responsibly. We have listened to your feedback on this, and agree that we need to make changes to better support our Openspace users by actively working to keep the performance levels as high as possible. We will also provide some detailed guidance about what ‘overuse’ looks like and how to prevent it.

So to recap:

* Openspace prices and fees change on the 1st January with no grandfathering.
* Class 4 Openspaces will be upgraded to class 5 in January.
* Educator discount is no longer available for Openspaces.
* No Owner switching for Openspaces unless it’s a full transfer of Payor.
* More proactive education by support staff to prevent unfair resource use by Openspace regions.

We’re sure there will be many of you with questions and concerns on the back of this announcement. As previously, there will shortly be a forum created specifically for discussion of these changes so please head over here if you wish to provide feedback. In addition, if you need a more personal dialogue about this post, please contact support as usual.