In an open meeting with Second Life residents, Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale revealed that the company may institute a performance based ranking system on non-Linden made registration portals. A month or so back, Linden, makers of Second Life, announced that they would be outsourcing the registration and orientation process to outside companies with the goal of creating a better first experience for new residents and increasing retention rates. Since then, new projects have been going online and Linden have been rotating traffic to them.
Interestingly, Rosedale says that the initial results indicate that the resident run islands out perform Linden Lab's. When questioned about the future of traffic distribution amongst competing projects he said that the company were considering an Adwords style ranking system where those that scored well on such variables as new resident retention, and number of successful registrations would rank higher, and consequently receive a larger share of traffic. The goal of course is to improve the overall experieence, and get more new residents into the system faster -- keeping them there is a major concern, as many newcomers to Second Life do not stay for long.
The transcripts of the meeting were recorded by Prokofy Neva. I was not able to attend, but made for good reading and provides some interesting insight into how Linden plans to handle the new new user experience over time.
Interestingly - that's exactly what I thought they would do:-). I think it's a wise move for Lindens, this way they will ensure that all the OI's would have a natural reason to compete.
I think this is a very good example of how Bionics systems should work ( my MBA thesis)!
Robbie Kiama, Meta Mart www.MetaverseMart.com
I agree Robbie, I was really pleased to read this this morning! Competition amongst OI's would be a very good move I think..