For the Month of July..
This includes a very steady new membership increase for the summer months as this time of season concurrency is at it's lowest
Just Keeps getting better
= 493 active users.. -20% from last month due to seasonal concurrency
= 4,241 regions .. with over 100 new regions since the 4th of july in less then just 2 weeks making this the 3rd largest grid
= Gained 995 new members .. 1000 a good number this could represent new members from many grids combined
= Population Total users 12260..looking forward to 20k I predict in 3 months
New features this month..
= Marketplace with Permission Export currently being made ready to be Active at end of summer
Quotes today from Ilan Tochner our Kitely Co-Founder made today in Hypergrid Business Journal
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/0 ... -the-heat/
On Kitely, usage declined with people going on vacations and spending less time in virtual worlds, Kitely founder and CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. “However, with needing to handle less support requests we’ve been able to spend more of our time focusing on developing the upcoming Kitely Market,” he added. For example, merchants can now view their stores as their customers will see them.
“The Kitely Market is designed to help join all hypergrid-connected grids into one viable ecosystem, finally creating a critical mass of content, merchants and buyers to help the metaverse evolve from a collection of small grids to a unified market that can attract serious investments,” said Tochner. “This should help rejuvenate interest in OpenSim from organizations who are rediscovering immersive environments due to devices such as the Oculus Rift.”
Tocher added that the grid has slightly changed the way PayPal payments will work. “Instead of having buyers pay directly to a merchant’s PayPal account, and thus exposing the parties to each other’s personally identifiable information, Kitely will act as a middleman and enable people to make purchases in real-money using their avatar identities.” In addition to ensuring privacy, this will also reduce the fees that merchants will have to pay, eliminate chargebacks for merchants, and in general reduce their administrative load.
“We’ve also decided to add various anti-fraud mechanisms to the Kitely Market,” he added. “One note worthy feature we’ll be including is the ability to automatically reclaim all copies of a bought item existing in Kitely if the payment for that item is refunded by PayPal, the credit card company, the merchant, or Kitely.”
These changes will increase operational risk for Kitely itself, however, and the grid will change slightly higher commissions for real money transactions. Commissions for payments made in Kitely Credits will stay the same.
“People comparing Kitely Market to the Second Life Marketplace are advised to take all the fees paid by buyers and sellers into account when calculating how much of each dollar a buyer spends in the marketplace will actually end up in the merchant’s PayPal account,” Tochner added, referring to the Linden Lab policies. “You’ll want to pay close attention to the 10 to 15 percent higher price Linden Lab charges people who pay directly via US dollars, their 5 percent sales commission, and their 2 percent cash-out fee.”
More information about the Kitely market can be found in the most recent Kitely Mentor’s Group meeting notes. The market will go live by the end of the summer, he said, but the exact date has not been set yet. Meanwhile, there is still time for interested merchants to list their items for free and be eligible to become a featured merchant.
