If I Were Queen

I saw Crap Mariner do a meme on his blog (inspired by Mitch Wagner) that asks you to share the first five things you would do as CEO of the Lab.

Oh!! Oh!!! Pick me! Pick me! I know what I would do!!

1. Call my own customer service line and ask for help with a made up problem. Better yet? I'd listen in on a day or two's worth of calls and find out how the folks who were on the front lines with my customers were doing and what issues came up. Oh - I'd file a ticket, too, and see how long it took for a satisfactory answer.

2. Try to search for something. Then, I'd know that one of my highest priorities should be fixing search. Fixing search benefits the economy, the creators, and the current residents. This is basic functionality and it needs to work.

3. Figure out who butters our bread and how to keep them happy. It's not just big land holders. Big land holders are nothing without the regular residents who rent from them. Find out who buys Lindens and figure out 'lifetime customer value.' SL will only survive if they can keep customers who spend spending and creators creating. Does Linden Lab even know what a profitable customer "looks like" right now?

4. Close the SL Twitter and Facebook accounts and remove caps on the number of messages customers can receive. Linden Lab needs to focus on making communication work in-world. No more emailing customers. No more asking people to Tweet or use Facebook. IM should work. Group chat should work. Notices should work. Voice should work. Flawlessly. That's basic functionality.

5. Start some aggressive image management. I'd hire a world class PR firm to start feeding positive stories to the press. The marketing department would be tasked with some serious brand reinvention.

If I did these things, I'd make the experience better for current customers. If the current customers are having fun, others will want to see what all the fuss is about.