Do I get a reward if I refer new users to Kitely?
Yes, with some restrictions. We believe it is important that people have a good first impression of our service. Therefore we will give you 200 Minutes for each new user that enters one of your virtual worlds and stays inside it for at least 5 minutes. In order for you to get this referral bonus, that new user must be connected to an active Facebook or Twitter account and must never have entered any Kitely virtual world before.
Is it possible to change the system so that reward minutes are retained beyond the end of the month if they haven't been used up?
At the moment, the system resets the minutes back to 120 (or whatever), which seems a little unfair if you only received the reward minutes a couple of days before.
How about giving us a reward in KC? I know it's less expensive to give away minutes rather than actual money but...
Right now, I have more minutes than I did at the beginning of the month. my plan gives me 1800 minutes. I got 200 referral bonus minutes the other day and since I haven't used 200 minutes yet this month, I am over what my plan provides. I have 1826 minutes at this writing.
Meanwhile, when somebody visits my region, as it is free to visitors, they eat up my KCs. If I received 200 KCs, I would feel I had really received a bonus but 200 minutes - although valuable to some other users, I have no doubt - doesn't really mean much to me. The thought of it is nice, yes, but it has no actual value to me. And for those who would really be pleased with the minutes...if they got 200 KCs as a bonus they could spend it on minutes if they chose.
I know some other worlds do pay bonuses in the local currency and I hope Kitely will consider it. I had been thinking about starting a thread about this but when I saw Quin's post, I had to jump in.
Giving away Kitely Credits, which are transferable between users, for doing something that is as painless as creating a new free Kitely account will give people incentive to create fake accounts for the sole purpose of earning KC. The resulting abundance of KC entering the ecosystem will hurt KC's monetary value and negatively effect both Kitely merchants and Kitely itself. If that happens then there won't be premium content on Kitely and Kitely itself might not earn enough money to stay in business.
Giving away Minutes can also open us to fraud but in a much more limited way. As Minutes expire at the end of each month and can't be transferred to other users, people have less incentive to misuse the referral system to try to earn them. Even if someone does do so that user's excess Minutes won't effect the demand that other users have for Minutes or even that same user's demand for Minutes in following months.
Please note that the referral bonus isn't limited to worlds which provide free access to visitors. You can earn these bonus Minutes even if the new users who visit your worlds cover their own time using the Minutes that are included in their plans.
The referral system is intended to give you an additional small incentive to invite other people to Kitely. If you continue doing so on an ongoing basis then you can earn enough bonus KC each month to get all the inworld time you need without upgrading your plan. If the existence of the referral system is causing people to focus on the value of the bonus instead of getting people inworld so that Kitely can grow and improve then we will probably end up canceling it.
i have gotten a few in that i know of to make accounts but I didnt know of this and I wouldnt bother them anyways. I told several but am not even sure who all of them checked out kitely.
The details of the referral program are listed here: [EDIT: link removed as the offer no longer appears in our FAQ]
When you receive a referral bonus you'll see it listed in your account's History page.
As noted, the referral bonuses are not intended to be the main reason for inviting people to Kitely, they are just another small incentive for doing so.
The reward wasn't being sought after. It appears out the blue, sometimes from previously unknown visitors, sometimes from friends visiting from other grids.
But when one can't fully use the reward, and the questions/suggestions about that aspect don't get anywhere, it takes away any feelgood factor that the "reward" was given in the first place. It makes the reward scheme seem pointless and counter-productive.
Following your feedback we decided to cancel the user referral bonus. Not many people were aware of it and the responses from those that did know about it were not always as positive as we had hoped.
At the very least you could have seen to it that your customers who received this alleged reward for creating something that enticed someone to sign up for Kitely got to use said "bonus." You could have addressed Quin's original post. Maybe carrying over unused "bonus" minutes to the following month would create a bookkeeping problem but you could have worked it that "bonuses" earned this month would kick in at the start of the next month, so a user whose minutes are precious would know they would have 200 extra minutes the following month and actually be able to reap that benefit.
But cancelling it altogether is easier. Now you don't have to pretend that you have a referral program.
I'm sorry that you, and some of the other people here, didn't see value in what we gave but there are people who were able to stay on the Free Plan despite spending significant time inworld each month because of these referral bonuses (there is even one such person in the Mentors Group). We were giving away something that cost us real money and that you hadn't even expected to get and because it had limited value for you you saw its existence as a negative.
We are already charging a lot less than other grids for providing a lot more. We also spend a lot more resources on improving OpenSim and make significant code contributions to the OpenSim community. Is it really necessary to blame us for not wanting to spend more money on something that has questionable value for our business?
I didn't say it was a negative. You should read my posts again.
I'm not blaming you "for not wanting to spend more money on something that has questionable value" for your business. It wasn't my idea to offer free minutes, it was yours.
The people you mention who are on the Free Plan? Why not let them actually use ALL of those minutes you are supposed to be giving them rather than just giving it lip service? And why did you turn your back on them after receiving a little criticism? You still have not addressed Quin's original question.
The only negative here is the way the issue is being handled.
