Monday, December 29, 2008

A random giftcard idea

So I was standing in line behind this super slow man at the grocery store and while I waited for him to scan each individual potato chip, I looked at the "impulse buy" stuff. I'm a sucker for all the little stuff at the checkstand, which is why I do self-checkout. If I'm busy, I won't pick up a pack of tissues, a lollipop, and another lip balm, right?

Anyway, so the wall is filled with giftcards - Walmart, Chili's, iTunes, all that stuff. My eye fell on this.




Holy shit, what?! Someone can buy this card so someone to have Neocash over at Neopets??

Can Linden Lab look into this?! LOL I mean, how cool would that be? You're at the store, you pick up a card because you have a little extra cash since you decided NOT to buy the double fudge brownies, and then whenever you need some $L in here, you punch in the code and there you go. Or your friends/family can buy you a card for holidays or special occasions because you're impossible to buy for and what you really want is some expensive shoes in SL. Or you have a friend that you'd like to introduce to SL but you know that they won't put money into it right away and having no money sucks, so you buy them a card so they can have a great experience right away. [And it suckers them in because they want to keep looking good or buying crazy fab avatars, so they keep buying money!!]

I don't know. Maybe there's a reason why this wouldn't work, but if there was an SL giftcard, I'd probably be the first to buy it. Or make someone buy it for me.

5 comments:

Natasha Burke said...

That's actually a good idea. I have seen those gift cards too. That have one for almost everything from habbo hotel to City of heroes. SL should really look into it. :)

Emyly Beaumont said...

I love it, love it, love it! The perfect gift for a friend who has everything you can think of - except a second life! Hehe.

Casandra Shilova said...

Great idea! Why not submit a ticket on it?? Or go to the Linden village for one of the office hours, and seriously suggest it?

Peter Stindberg said...

That is a good idea and - not meaning to diminish it - a quite obvious one. I actually think that XstreetSL/SLX should have a universal giftcard too. Or maybe some designers should line up and make a universal giftcard, valid in all shops.

Anonymous said...

I thought the same thing when I saw an IMVU card in 7-Eleven.

It is a GREAT idea, however it can't happen, at least not yet. It cannot happen for the same reason LL can't advertise on television in the same way WoW can... The grid cannot sustain more than 75,000 concurrent residents, therefore marketing to a mass audience is futile.

Like a curse, the very things that would make the world flourish happen to also be the world's one true weakness to begin with... true popularity.