a thought about creators and users moving to Kitely

[Ozwell Wayfarer]

I noticed Ilan comment in the introduction section about the marketplace hopefully making it easier for people to move from SL and a thought came to me. This may be total pie in the sky, but please indulge me. It wont take long

Now, the benefits that Kitely offers to Merchants is already pretty damn fine, and the free minutes for new residents is a great incentive. But a BIG hurdle is leaving the inventory behind. To some I have spoken to, leaving inventory is a bigger deal than leaving friends in many cases (Hey! Friends are free! You can always make more of THOSE, but my animated Neko Tail? My useless Sportscar I cant drive anywhere? My collection of Shoes/skins/etc ad nauseum......I cant leave THAT! ).

So, I think it would be great if a situation could be created where creators who move their products over like-for-like would give previous customers the items for free or for a massive reduction. Kitely could offer a small stipend to encourage the behavior. Nothing huge, just a token few KC as a gesture for being "in the program" as it were. The only drawback I can really see is people trying to "game" (i.e. con) the creators. As I am sure many people (like me) don't have the same avi names on both grids. Also maybe if there was a sudden "surge" of people incoming from SL, a "token few" KC could soon become a large sum of money, but taking the long view, it would be a coup for gaining new users, and QUALITY users who have spent cash before and therefore are highly likely to spend again.

...Good? Bad? Out-right hairbrained? I think it would certainly start people talking. Just think. "I heard I can get this castle replaced for free on Kitely, and still have tens of THOUSANDS of prims left over for STUFF and room for a REAL moat! AAAAANNND.......no strip mall next door "

....sorry, that switched over to my own personal fantasy there, but I'm sure you get my point.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Ozwell,

The idea has some merit but we can't afford to compensate merchants for providing content to our users at this time. This of course doesn't prevent merchants from offering their content at a discount to people who have already bought it in SL. In fact this could be a nice source of additional income from selling content to people that those merchants have already sold that same content to. I think this prospect should be a big incentive to merchants.

I think that, if someone is willing to take this one, creating an object an SL user could use to register the items he has that were created by some merchant can come in handy. The user would run a script which would list all the items the user bought that have the merchant as the creator (and their location in the inventory if possible). The user would then place these items in a scripted box that will send a manifest to that merchant. This isn't fool proof or 100% secure but it could help merchants get some idea of what relevant items are held by the SL user. A companion script could be created for the merchant which would allow the merchant to receive those manifests and calculate the discounted price he or she should charge the user for reselling that content to them in Kitely.