Linden Lab has today announced an end to the First Land program. The program gave every SL member who upgraded to a Premium Account the ability to buy their first 512m2 of land for $512 Linden Dollars. The discontinuation of this has a number of ramifications:

1. New premium members will have to fork out the Premium Fee and then another significant chunk of money to buy land on the private market

2. Rental options are likely to boom as it becomes an even more affordable option compared to outright purchase

3. There could be an impact on the longevity of some users in SL. Using a RL Example – people arguably tend to treat the houses they own better than ones they rent and tend to have a more sentimental connection to what they own. The majority of rental options require payment to a business using PayPal or other payment option which adds a further administrative burden to the SL user compared to those who purchased First Land. This could all increase the churn rate of SL users

One suggestion made by a number of residents on the Linden blog is the idea of a grandfather clause whereby those who have signed up to Premium accounts prior to today’s announcement be allocated a 512m2 block for $512L.

Linden have stated they are looking at other ways to boost the value of upgrading to a Premium account. Linden Lab’s action in that regard is likely to be as swift as the wider SL community reaction to such a significant change.

Looking further at the metrics released by Linden Labs, the gender breakdown of unique users shows a couple of interesting things. Firstly, Second Life would have to be one of the most gender-balanced internet offerings around, and for one month there was even a female dominance by a small margin. Secondly, the surge in growth over the past six months has seen more males sign up than females which has widened the gap significantly.

The standard perception of internet-based entertainment is that males will seek out options where there are set goals to achieve, the antithesis of Second Life. The statistics are showing this perception to be flawed. Of course, the true test would be the gender balance of active accounts which isn’t clear from the data provided. Nor is the Australian gender balance.

Linden Labs have put out the call for anyone interested in speaking to the media about how SL plays a role for them spiritually. Read their blog post for details and email catherine@lindenlab.com if you’re interestd. At SLOz we’re also interested in that aspect so if you wanted an aussie religious / spiritual event covered, let us know.