Virtual Worlds

What price to recommend Second Life to others?

Linden Lab have begun their (extremely) low key advertising in an attempt to increase their userbase.  In the last 24 hours I’ve seen the new YouTube ad [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHx__AVAsD0]

and now I’ve just seen the Winterfest push.

Want to win 100,000L?  That’s around $400USD.  They’re giving that away each week during December. There’s a catch though, you have to find some poor soul who has never had an account and get them to not only sign up but log in..  

Between November 25th and December 31st, for each new person you successfully invite into Second Life using the form below, you’ll earn one chance to win the weekly drawing for a L$100,000 prize.

and the fine print (which they conveniently forget to mention in the blurb above) is that you don’t even get the Lindens.  It’s to be spent on Xstreet SL..  Which means that they manage to claw at least 5% back in commissions paid by the merchants that you bought from.

Very clever indeed.

Even if they were going to deposit the money straight into paypal I wouldn’t recommend SL to anyone.  I stopped bringing people in 18 months ago because of my disenchantment with the poor quality of SL and the behaviour of LL.  These days I don’t even admit to using Second Life to anyone I meet.  It’s become my shameful secret.

I’m sure there are others who will recommend, either because they still have that dewy eyed feeling or because $400 USD is a lot of money.  However, I value my credibility more. If I won’t recommend it for free then I certainly won’t recommend it for money.