I'm surprised to see that information, and wonder if it really is
updated or has some glitch in it, because I could have sworn that
Meta Linden told us during an office hour that in fact the
corporate-sponsored welcome areas in this special Linden program with
the registration APIs were posting better retention numbers.

I finally managed to get ahold of a set of those numbers, and in fact
saw they were pretty disappointing, both as to retention as to number
of Lindens spent in world.

The problem with retention remains because the Lindens did not change
the way they did things, they merely tried to do what they were always
doing in a more speeded up and even more feted way. The system is all
wrong.

1. Instead of having a list of special friends who get to have a
chunk of the newbies stream fed to them for free, merely because they
have a pretty face or are special in some way or promise to tap into
large RL communities, isn't a reason to hand over to them this social
good for free. They should pay for it. Anyway who thinks they can
serve newbies well should bid for that privilege and unabashedly
treat it as a business -- or a funded non-profit activity with
business-like productivity and attention to the bottom line.

2. Instead of ambivalence about outsourcing the newbie helping
business of SL, LL needs to emphatically embrace the inevitable and
outsource this job. They need a combination of their own outsourcing
of the task to some company who does online communities a lot better
than they do, and they also need to allow companies and groups to bid
for the privilege of having a fresh stream of customers for their
products and services. This is how the real-world works, and it's why
cities like New York retain newbies, the free market, not City Hall
alone, serves the newbies.
Also, randomized delivery of newbies should be changed to serialized
delivery, and the API program of free deliveries should be ended.

3. The Lindens need to move a billing and technology help desk kind
of presence inworld, on avatars. Billing especially is so fubar'd now
that 5800 accounts being frozen, and a precipitous drop in premiums,
is the result -- and that should NOT be happening. Outsource this
sort of 24/7 billing/basic tech help desk but use the world, eat the
dogfood, and have it be islands where avatars in blue shirts with
their names stitched on the pockets and chinos reply cheerfully
inworld in voice or in type.

4. Get rid of the volunteers and mentors system. It obviously isn't
working. It's among the reasons why retention does not work so well,
because it is reliance on a very unaccountable, and very uneven
system. Pay people for the necessity of dealing with newbies; accept
payment from them for the privilege of getting newbie customers.

When the Lindens are ready to do these normal things like a cell
phone company, then they will see better retention.

Let people willing to have newbies come to their sim sign up to do
so, without a reg API, without feting and fussing, let the market
take care of the world's needs.