An Open Letter to Linden Labs

To Whom it May Concern,

You don't know me. But what you don't realize is that I and others like me are amoung your most important customers.

Am I sim owner with thousands of dollars sunk into tier fees each month? Nope.

Am I one of the vocal masses responsible for disseminating your every move to the community at large? Or have I ever posted once in response to a forum thread or official blog post? Still no.

Am I an investor looking to offer you money to plow back into your servers in the hopes of growing my own profits off the investment? No, again.

What I am is the average user. I've been a resident for eight and a half months. I have a paid account and I've dabbled a bit in owning small parcels on the mainland, but spend most of my money on L$ to pay the artists and creators who are also my fellow residents. I'd like create more myself, but it's a slow process and I'm willing to pay for things now until I can create my own in the near future. I have a few friends I hang out with in world and I love checking out new places to get inspiration for the future I want to build here.

So, what is it I and others like me have that makes us so important?

Potential Influence.

Now, I am not one of the 'early adopter crowd' as they like to call it in the tech world. You will likely never know my name and never realize I was here, let alone miss me if I go.

But if I go, I likely take at least half a dozen others with me, people who are here because I brought them here.

If I go, I take with me any plans I may still hold to save up the rest of the money (I have about half of it now) to purchase my own full sim after the first of the year or so.

If I go, any community I intend to build and create within the larger whole finds a home elsewhere, along with any future residents it might attract to the 'home system'

And, for each person like me who stands here and makes their feelings know, there are ten others quietly watching what you do and making their own plans to leave without warning if things go disastrously wrong. When they go, so does the money the spend on the creations of other residents. Then those creators will go elsewhere, where the consumers are. And while the big businesses are flocking to Second Life now, how long will they stay if their own customers have no use for the platform?

Will it happen overnight? Probably not. But, it can and will happen, perhaps no matter what action you choose to take.

Your announcement tomorrow will likely decide the fate of your entire product. Look around at my fellow residents/customers/what have you, look at how many are already poised to flee. And again, for each one of them, there are others who haven't said a word, but who are simply going to disappear.

Perhaps, as some whose opinion I trust have said, the technical issues are real. And maybe, in this economy, raising prices on consumers is the only way for you to get the funding to fix them. I'm fair enough minded to give you the benefit of the doubt on those points. I work for a company providing a technical service as well -- in customer support, ironically enough. I understand that there are reasons you may not wish to announce specific details to the customer base at large and that you can't always control what your own service providers will charge.

But, if all of that is true, do the thing fairly. Don't put the bulk of your financial burden on a relatively small percentage of your users. And, if this is the first step in future price increases at other levels, be straight with us now. Don't surprise us in six months. Put all the cards on the table and distribute the cost evenly amoung us, private sim owner and mainland buyer alike. Ask just a little more from each of us, rather than dumping a 67% increase on a few.

For those who, like me, have been saving up and planning to join the ranks of private sim owners who are responsible for a large part of the growth and community building within Second Life, your decision on this will decide whether or not we take that step, whether we put our faith in you as a partner in that community or find other alternatives that may be technically less advanced, but more humanely balanced. We're looking for you to prove worthy of the trust we put in you if we choose to use you as a service provider.

So far, we haven't seen it. What we've seen is a lot of double talk and spin. We've seen a lot of avoidance of confrontation. And we've seen potential legal issues on the horizon as a result of how this is handled.

Some of us have been through this before. We've seen how one or two bad business choices on the service provider's part can rip a community apart. We don't want to do it again. We'd like to be able to say "Look at that. They did the right thing, even though it was tough on all of us" and go back to our daily lives. Nobody here really *wants* to leave, not even those advocating an exodus. We have friends, businesses, communities, *lives* here.

But, you can't bank on that. We often have to do things we don't like, things we don't want to do. For all any of us really knows, you're in that position now. And, if that's the case, we can live with a few inconveniences in exchange for your honesty.

All we really are asking is that you treat us fairly. And we'll do the same.

Sincerely,
Kirasha Urqhart, just one more anonymous face amoung many

bump

WOW

I just listened to President-Elect Obama's Acceptance Speech.

Your post is no less eloquent.

Reading it was as if I was still listening to him speak.

Well Said! Bravo

Now, let's hear Jack or Mark Kingdom's concession speech, please.