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Adz Childs added a comment - 28/Oct/08 09:09 PM
tap-tap Is this thing on?
This bug coincides with the launching of the new official registration portal, the one that makes you pick a first name before presenting a list of available last names. Please look into whether or not the new registration portal properly handles referral codes. PLEASE?
waves
I am Nicolas Biddle. I am named in this JIRA entry. I support it. 
You see, before LL launched the improved Registration Portal, I would send new signups a quick IM welcoming them to Second Life and thanking them for using SLNameWatch. Obviously, I can't do that now because I don't receive a calling card. It's simple as that. I have no idea who is clicking my referral links. I have no opportunity to conduct a follow up about upgrading to Premium. Not that it matters – I doubt I would get a bonus, now, anyway. It seems the referral system is broken. Do you not care about premium subscriptions? If the Refer-A-Friend program has ended, you need to make an announcement and remove references to it from your web site. Otherwise, its FALSE ADVERTISING – to your own already-paying customers! Hi. I'm Data Scribe
I signed up using a friend's referral link. When I signed in, though, I was totally lost. My friend had told me to look in my inventory for his calling card, so that I could make my first SL friend. But, there was no calling card in my inventory. I tried to use Search to find him, but I forgot how to spell his name. I wandered around orientation island for a while. Then I got bored and left SL forever. How do I cancel my account? Just kidding... I'm the alt named in this JIRA entry. I'm here to illustrate the point a bit further and to show that two people are adversely affected by this bug – the referrer and the new signup. Needless to say, LL loses premium conversions as well. But I guess they don't mind. I'm not sure why you are replying with all your alts Adz, number of comments do not make issues more visible.
Anyway, that aside, I support this, and have taken the liberty of reproducing this myself. The referral system does appear to be broken. Dante, I commented with my alts more to keep the issue entertaining rather than any impression that it would make the issue more visible to LL.
Thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to reproduce the issue. I feel better knowing that it is not a stupid mistake on my part. It's not just me. Thank you also for updating the sub-task. The rest is up to LL engineers. I remember something being published about new users being directed to the parcel of your choice when they sign up.
Direct SLURL program announcement: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/09/18/getting-a-second-life-just-got-easier-with-direct-slurl/ I.e.; Blue Linden is probably the person to corral on this one. I recommend this be raised at the next triage meeting and if Blue Linden holds office hours then someone needs to go raise this jira entry and ask what the deal is. If we begin using Direct SLURL for new resident sign up referrals do we get a referral bonus or has Linden Lab silently eliminated this program under the guise of a Direct SLURL shiny? Quoting Direct SLURL blog Announcement: All existing SLurls will be enabled with the Direct SLurl extension effective Thursday, September 18th, 2008. I run ProfileSLive.com and we get about 1.5 - 1.7 million page views in a month. A while back I used to receive a referral bonus at least once a week but now the only referral bonus I seem to have received was for an old account a few weeks ago. Based on that, I must agree that the referral program seems to be broken again.
EDIT 2009-01-24: the instructions for how to make the old registration portal appear are no longer valid. The old registration portal never appears anymore. There is only the new registration portal, now. I keep the original text of this comment in place only for your reference.
Just in case others are not familiar with what I mean by the "old registration portal" versus the "new registration portal", here is a demonstration. Unfortunately the redirection to one portal version or the other is controlled on LL's side. There is no way to create a URL that links directly to one version or the other. In general this is bad form for the WWW, but I believe it was set up this way as part of A/B testing many months ago. 1. Log out of secondlife.com (I'm not certain this is necessary, but it's what I do.) At any given time, about 1 out of 5 of these links will be the OLD portal. The rest will display the NEW portal. You can quickly spot the new portal because it has avatar shapes at the top. If you get very unlucky and all of the portals are new, then wait an hour and try again. The redirection scheme shifts periodically and unpredictably. (alternatively, you can try secure-web11 through secure-web32) At the time I write this, secure-web6 and secure-web10 stay at the old portal. The other 8 links auto redirect to https://join.secondlife.com/ I believe it is the NEW portal which does not honor the u= parameter. Looking over my calling cards, I have isolated the cut-off date to be July 23, 2008. What did you change on that day? I changed the pJIRA issue title to include this specific date.
Six month mark.
Two clicks from your front page is this page, "Refer A Friend! Refer Your Friends and Earn L$2000 Linden Dollars!" 3 months since reported. 8 month mark.
5 months since reported. "Please note: If someone signs up for Second Life using your code, your name won't be auto-filled on the registration form, but we do keep track behind the scenes. This is prevent folks registering from being confused by the sight of a potentially unfamiliar name." Can I get a Linden response, please? 1 YEAR MARK (9 months since reported)
I have disabled http://slnamewatch.com LL, please tell us what is your plan for fixing this. Either way, there is the issue of all of the unpaid referral bonuses. If you never plan to pay, I believe we all deserve at least an explanation and an apology. I wonder how many 7.50USD bonuses you were supposed to pay in the last year, but didn't. I bet it adds up to quite a lot. I hesitate to use the word theft, but you are getting away with something for nothing, here. My website has maintenance costs too, you know. Voting for removing the claim that there's a referral bonus if there's not going to be one.
If there's still a referral bonus but it's not automatic, then I will suggest people who use slnamewatch put "Adz Childs" in as their reference when I mention it on the forums. A properly constructed Affiliate / Refer-a-friend program can be one of the most powerful viral marketing tools a company can use to build web traffic and grow its customer base. I own a number of web properties that generate significant revenues, through a carefully chosen set of affiliate programs.
A program like this must be tied to a subscription or up-front revenue model to work. It's not a good fit for the current "Free access" model, Linden Lab seems content to offer and is used by the majority of users. The Lab also seems content with the current rate of word-of-mouth-driven adoption. It obviously suits their growth goals and requires no further stimulation. For the Lab, not sharing revenue they don't have to makes perfect "bottom-line" sense. Unfortunately, in the long term, not offering ways for people to share in their success and share the excitement of that success with others will backfire. I believe the future of e-business and social networking will increasingly be one where customers are rewarded for helping build and grow brands. Companies that fail to acknowledge and reward the people who help them be successful will not survive this growing wave of grass-roots marketing and referral-driven sales for long. @Valiant: If this works like the original referral system, the referral bonus is based on accounts that go premium, which is both a subscription and up-front revenue model. If you read the actual text of the Jira, it says "Many of these new SL residents upgraded to premium, resulting in referral bonuses to Nicolas or Adz."
In any case, the bigger issue here is that they are still advertising the program. Argent,
You have it exactly right. The bigger issue here is that they are still advertising the program. Cross-posted from my blog: At this point, this can honestly be considered a scam.
There is still a button on the avatar account information page on the web site: this button recently survived a minor redesign of the page.
I think it might be useful to find out when the program is expected to be continued and/or why it was discontinued in the first place. It was a good program and the cost per referral was not high compared to the value of a new premium membership (and we were being paid in L$ anyway which strictly speaking are not real money.) |
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Bug
Open
Major
Refer-A-Friend link no longer exchanges calling cards with new signups. No referral bonuses for accounts created after July 23rd 2008.
