M Linden speaks to Hamlet Au on OS issue

The article has a few interesting tidbits.

Re: the comment about premiums, he DID say "premium subscriptions", not "premium members". I think all he meant was that premium subscription fees form less than 10% (by my math) of their revenue. Obviously mainland tier is important to LL - if they decided to phase out the Premium program, probably the first move would be to unlink it from the requirement to own mainland. And the residents who have been premium are obviously highly committed people - personally, if I were LL, I would have wanted to nix the Premium program a long time ago in favor of a better-structured reward system for committment, but figuring out how to do that without slapping these devoted members in the face is very tough.

Also, there was this: One really wishes that they could put into place a fee-for-resources structure, where there would be a couple of price levels, based on actual monitored usage. So, if one throws a party in one's lightly-used sim, that month's fee would be larger, but usually the fee would be rock bottom.

And this: The interview was posted on the 3rd (yesterday). So, perhaps by the end of the week there will be more news from LL.
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Let's see. What amount of entertainment can I buy with 125$US a month?

Good seats for two football games, and a hotdog at each.
Watch 10 movies in the theater complete with popcorn.
Purchase and watch 6 DVDs.
Save two months and buy a brand new BluRay player.
Rent a JetSki for a whole weekend.
Buy and scratch off 4 lottery tickets a day. You have better odds of getting money back, too.
Take the whole family to any amusement park, if you don't buy any food.
Purchase 15 books to read.
Buy two new high-dollar console games to play.

Or, I can give the money to M and let HIM play instead of me.

What I have been paying is the top of what I consider the game to be worth. I get plenty out of SL as far as entertainment goes. But you have to admit, SL is expensive, in computer hardware and in monthly fees. I can get a lot of other forms of entertainment for my hard earned dollar and still wander around SL as a homeless tramp. So it is not in LL's best interest to keep going on their current track. They can try to suck money out of the cold, shutdown server - I won't pay more than I already pay and that's final.

I kept 2 accounts premium even though I have a private island and no longer need them to be. I guess LL doesn't think I need to keep them now either.

On the flip side of that, I always thought it would be a good idea to allow anyone with payment info on file to be able to purchase mainland. It would certainly expand the pool of potential land buyers.

An interesting historical sidenote. When I joined there were no "free accounts". There was a basic account type and they COULD own mainland. They just didnt get the big stipend. When the "free" account went into effect is when they removed the ability to own land.

Hmmm....I'll choose:
Rent a JetSki for a whole weekend (cool! I didn't know I could do that)
Purchase 15 books to read (YEAH! Awesome!)
Buy two new high-dollar console games to play (that one for my husband)
Or maybe I'll save for a while, and get a Wii and all of its various accessories

Well, the original article, and the reference/clarification to it in this one, were both discussing "subscribers", so unless his comment was out of context, he should have been addressing the "decline in subscriptions" (ie, "subscribers", not the "decline in subscription fees". Either way, subscriptions are NOT immaterial, and saying so betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the SL economy. Declining subscriptions do not automatically infer declining land ownership, but you can bet that the "potential" for such is gone, since the one (subscriptions) is a requirement for the other (land ownership). Declining subscriptions means less potential land owners, and most likely also means less actual land owners as well.

Failing to grasp those important relationships and correlations does not bode well for someone who should be intimately aware of and familiar with them.

Motorised Cultivator?
Steam powered laser equiped nanites are the choice of a new generation

I think some people hang too much on the sentence with premium. You shouldnt take every word with a pinch of salt. Take the viewpoint of LL to premiums and you will see that premiums not really the main income. You pay 72 US$ per year. For this you earn 300 L$ every week and 512 virtual qm mainland for free tierfee. Effectivly LL earn every month something around 1 US$ per premium account. That isnt very much.
And now calculate that you can use support for free as premium. Every producer should know that support isnt cheap. An real life employee will cost 40-60 US$ every hour within additional costs. If you demand support longer than 15 minutes per year then LL will pay for this. So it seems to be an loose deal with premium accounts for LL and in viewpoint of LindenLab premiums are not really relevant for main business.

But i think i can say what i want, this is more an civil war and hate slogans making people blind for constructive minds. Rebellion won only in star wars. The Empire is much more stronger. ^^
So wait for Johny is coming home. http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7VLTqGCOC8&feature=related
Not at any time a war produced winners, only ruins.

People should really cool down a little bit.

Or Create 6 new accounts on practicly any other online game in the world and invite 5 friend to play them with you.

Sigh!! I'm showing my age

Since LL doesn't buy back Lindens, stipends are nothing to them. They just "Punch a button" and create them with no costs to LL at all. Premium memberships are nothing but gravy for them.

That's because there is a newbie running SL. Someone who was not terribly invested but thought the world was cool. He's more invested than some random person coming in from outside, but not invested enough to understand the way residents work in the market.

Ceera's point is an interesting one. The premium fees themselves are not material. But unless they intend to decouple land ownership from premium membership, this move doesn't make much sense. They forgo how many thousands of people monthly that would pay small tier at rates with low/no discount. It would make the mainland problem more challenging but there would still be a thriving island business because some people cannot stand mainland and are not going to fork out $295/mo for islands.

As a premium user, I don't have a problem with the "premium subscriptions are immaterial" point.

M didn't say premium members were immaterial.

The subscription you pay to LL is nearly all paid back to you in stipend. So overall it makes nearly no profit, and thats why it can be called immaterial.

... and create a home made inflation, faster as you can click payback button. If the time would come in which LL cant payout L$ because the cover doesnt exist, nobody will invest only one further cent into this system. And most of "designers" would stop creating and selling contents and abond their parcels. This would crash inworld market first and after that the same system. In practice it is not only a punching button.

They give you lindens that cost them nothing... just meaningless numbers to them... they could give you 1million linden stipend every day and it still costs them nothing.

The only thing that makes lindens worth anything. is the premium subscriptions that allow people to buy and sell them in large quantities. The same meaningless premium subscriptions that gets them around $10,000 USD in free money from linden sales every single day.

Again, I feel disgusted with LL.

'Premium accounts are immaterial' OK, fine I'll remember that when it's time for me to renew mine. I don't want to buy anything that's clearly not worth having anyway.
What do I get for mine? The ability to own land... Well, I don't want any of your ugly mainland thanks, it really sucks.

I can do everything I want to do with a free user account, so I'll be keeping next years premium membership money for myself.....Thanks.

Just like how they kept pumping out land. Punch a button, crash the land market.

The risk of inflation still doesn't change the fact that LL has no costs in giving out Lindens.

WTF? premium members dont account for anything ? maybe i am missing the point here, i am a paid member with a hobby interest in progamming, (My RL job is far removed from this type of thing), but we must account for something here, because non paid members are not entitled to leave anything they make on any island, so i might as well go back to my standalone island offline if that is the case..lol...

Dear LL
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!

I said I wasn't going to post further on this subject in the main OS forum. However, I honestly now believe that Linden Labs has every intention of getting rid of Premium Subscriptions. They would then be able to offer land/tier to anyone. We would all be the same kind of free account, with the option to pay them tier for land. They would also no longer have to pay stipend or offer 512 meters of mainland. Thus they have removed the limitations they originally placed on owning land and have opened it up to everyone (ie: Basic SL account which costs you nothing unless you want land). They could also re-structure their Customer Service Support so that they only need respond to landowners, saving lots of money and making the "Immaterial" statement a premature slip of the tongue.

This would be a pretty smart move. Also, it would be ease the admin burden for LL, getting rid of Premium subscription billing, signup boni and weekly stipend runs. All they had to do is to adjust the tier structure to start at 1 sq with about what a monthly Premium subscription is costing right now.