Kris Ritter

Billing System Finally In Place | Kitely Blog

Kitely looked extremely promising up to this point. But to my mind this pricing method isn't going to work, unless I'm totally missing something.

It's GREAT prices for content creators and land owners, on the surface... a tiny fraction of the cost of SL.

But the real problem is that they're charging visitors PER MINUTE, like a friggin cell phone!

There's the option for a region owner to elect to pay all visitor charges, but imagine what will happen:

Every region that DOESNT elect to pay visitor charges will be a ghost town. Every region that DOES is going to be packed full of people just hanging out, not because of your builds or content but because you're footing their bill!

Am I wrong? This just seems completely daft to me.

I dunno. Rivers Run Red have defected there. Guess someone should ask Justin in a month or two!

Rivers Run Red leaves Second Life for Kitely, Unity – Hypergrid Business


Edited to say: I may be confusing two points here by mentioning RRR.... I guess for RRR and the like, where they don't particularly rely on Joe Public visiting, it'll probably work out. So maybe Kitely is great for corporates for a 'virtual world intranet' type affair. I'm just a bit disappointed it won't be a viable competitor to Second Life for the rest of us.

Coyote Momiji

Absolutely not.

Wildefire Walcott

I can't fault them for being willing to try something different. Sometimes minutes-based billing works better for some folks (the pre-paid cell phone market is enormous, for example).

But isn't Kitely just Yet Another SL-Based Grid? Who would pay any price for it when SL is unlimited and free? What are their concurrency numbers like?

Also, the Rivers Run Red move confuses me. Are their builds for proprietary use (like virtual training facilities) or marketing? If it's for marketing, you'd want to go where the users are, right? Or do their clients run special promotions where they try to guide new users to create accounts at the grid where RRR's builds are?

EDIT: Oh, I read their FAQ. So you get your own sim, basically, but it only exists when someone wants to go there. That does seem perfect for an RRR-type business so long as they have a way of getting people to the grid (and visitors don't mind waiting a few minutes for the sim to come online). Also, it is tied to your RL identity. It is an interesting model, and there are some obvious pros and cons. I wish them luck.

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Kris Ritter

My thoughts exactly. ANY business or content that requires eyes on seems doomed. Then again, you can't convert Kitely currency to USD yet, so I doubt anyone is going to open a store there anyway.

Yeah, I dunno. I guess their content don't cater for 'visitors' as such. So, sure, it's like $100,000 dollars cheaper for them in Kitely if their users are willing to come to wherever they are.

Presumably, there won't be a rentals market and therefore land baroning either - even if you can get your 100 regions for $100. Users aren't going to pay for rental of land AND pay by the minute to use it! And no rental estate is going to foot the bill for all their renters to be there indefinitely - it's 20 cents per hour per person. That will stack up huuuge extra fees.

Which makes me wonder what the heck anyone is gonna do with 100 regions.

And why anyone would want to 'hang out' in Kitely.

Floyd Gilmour

I am personally all for someone trying something different, the pricing for this seems fair, and I can see this potentially being adopted by Roleplay communities.

Adeon Writer

I've lost touch with Kitely. Do they still require you to own a Facebook account in order to use it? That was the reason I wasn't even remotely interested.

Kris Ritter

Me again. Talking to myself, mostly. I should, like, get a blog or something, huh?


Assuming they want users, and I assume any business model, however reluctantly, relies on users...

They really need is to understand that while some content creators are also consumers, not all consumers are content creators.

And that 'build and they will come' doesn't apply when you're charging a premium for anyone to even come look at the build. Only content creators who don't care one jot if anyone ever sees their work are going to build it there, surely?

They desperately need an option for consumers, who dont want ANY land, to be inworld without time restraints. Even if that is, say, $9.95 a month with no charge per minute/hour, it's more likely to work than the current offering.

And then probably a '1 region, unlimited time' option, too.

As I said, unless I'm mistaken about what they're trying to achieve, there ain't gonna be anyone around to see the content they're making it so cheap to create and host.

I see the difficulty; the pricing model is so cheap precisely because it's 'on demand'... so if someone is using that region, someone has to pay for the resources it takes to make that region available. The most logical person being the one who wants to view it. But logical or not, that really isn't gonna fly.

Kris Ritter

And that's what I think too: the only people that will be interested as long as this model is in force are people who dont need or even want 'outsiders', and conversely don't want or need any content from other creators, and who for one reason or another don't want to set up and host their own opengrid.

That's a pretty limited subset of people. And I thought SL was pretty niche!

I keep thinking I'm somehow not seeing the bigger picture. Would be happy to be enlightened!

Floyd Gilmour

I think that Kitely isn't seeking to get a large shared community, people aren't going to want to pay by the hour just to have a look around and make friends, but people will pay if they are already aware that there is content that they want there.

For example, I am a manager for the Final Fantasy VII RP sim Midgar, we only have 1 sim in SL currently, but no one person pays for it, we sell a scripted combat system which is a compulsory part of the sim, and all our funding comes from the sales of the compulsory system. People happily pay for the system (And its many weapons/spells.) because they want to join our RP.

Under Kitely, we could essentially run a larger estate for less, and people would still pay to play with us (Only instead of to us to pay for the region, it would be to Kitely.)

I am certain that this could work very well for us, so I see the appeal. However, it isn't something we could do without the wide range of avatars/outfits/skins/hairs available in SL.

If Kitely could bring in merchants to provide this content, I am certain roleplay communities would be very happy to move here... But getting the merchants in will be the hard part!

Eboni Khan

Did someone jump in the time machine? This is like 1994 online pricing.

Wildefire Walcott

That's what it sounds like, from their FAQ. They explicitly say your account is tied to your RL identity and mention FB integration several times. Some people dig that stuff, others not. The biggest problem is making it a requirement.

Wildefire Walcott

With 2003 technology!

Virtual Clover

HI

Well it's good to see Kitely's getting more traction on the VW forums.

I just registered on another forum to respond in kind, from the same sort of confusion. The biggest obstacle for you who aren't quite seeing the bigger picture is the conditioning itself. I'm a former SLer (since 2006) and 3x sim owner so I know the ropes. When I was scouting OpenSim hosts I looked into Kitely last year. I had exactly the same reaction - if I want traffic at all then the pricing model aint gonna cut it - I'll end up spending a ton of money hosting other people on one region, what happens if I have more? I'll have to have an affair with Bill Gates to cover it. I also hate facebook.

I blew off Kitely for the duration and was on the verge of going elsewhere when HB posted that article on Kitely beginning to charge. I read it and it raised questions - most of which I posted on that same article. Then I went to the Kitely forums and asked those and others (500 questions ;-) ) and Ilan answered all of them and this time his answers were more digestible. They're still relatively new and would have their own share of growing pains - but it's no worse for wear than the bs SLers put up with every time the Lab pulls an update.

To start with Eboni's comment it's like 1994 pricing, that is incorrect.

This is 2012 and beyond pricing. And Cloud technology did not exist in 2003.

I think your problem is more of a 1999 paradigm ;-)

We're all assuming this is price of land and this isn't Kitely's model. The land is immaterial. The model is price of time. It *is* exactly like a cellphone...the phones come cheap while you pay for your use time. If that's "1994 pricing" then you should catch up to the 21st century plan ;-)

It's like Netflix and iTunes and pretty much everything else online now and the micropayments model - this is Kitely and this is why it works and will change everything. SL is to movie theaters the way Netflix is to movies. In SL, you pay nearly 300 a month and you *are* paying for the server load when any visitors come to your place. You're footing 100% of the cost for others to play free...and they may disregard what you sell if you sell things.

You pay for content you can't create yourself. You pay for marketplace advertising. You pay all over the place beyond that tier payment. You pay the set up fees, you pay the transfer fees is most cases and then you spend every waking hour inworld looking for ways to monetize and make your tier payments every month. You have to deal with griefers and copybotters. You have to deal with your stuff you purchased as a consumer held hostage.

In SL you pay $1000 set up fee for an estate. You pay $295mo in tier (x12mos $3540yr) for one region. If you have more than that, I can imagine why you'd be stressing unless you're playing SL off an old medical insurance payout or something. But for most people, paying the equivalent of a car payment for virtual land is beyond ridiculous - and SLers constantly throw a fit at LL to lower land prices.

Kitely's not playing that game. They're doing something else entirely. You're paying for your own access to virtual worlds, period. The regions - full regions run on their own individual servers, not shared, with up to 100k prim allotment and visitor volume with minimal lag (lag = your own machine's ability to handle it) and those regions can be picked up at nominal cost.

You know what kind of time you spend in world and how much you have to work with. If you log in a couple hours a month, then of course you don't want to pay for a full island even in SL. If you're a heavy user, constantly in world, the $50mo plan may be the sweet spot for you - breaks down to about 200 hours I think it was - and suddenly you have 30 regions at your fingertips to build world upon world upon world. Use one, use several, use them all. If you're a social user (i.e. virtual worlds for you are glorified chatrooms) then Kitely's not going to appeal to you since you can chat in SL free.

Kitely is for world builders, content creators, roleplayers, people who do stuff with their worlds and not just log in to hop on a dance poseball and spend time chatting.

1 region in Kitely is free.
2 regions in Kitely is $5 a month. That plan is for low volume, low use people.

The 2 regions in SL would cost you 2 grand to set up and almost 600 a month upkeep.

If you're a high volume user the $100mo plan is ideal - unlimited use, tons of credits, 100 regions ($10mo per region). That's still phenomenally less than ONE full region on the mainland in SL.

Everyone who joins Kitely does so by paying for how much time they're likely to spend in world and they pay their own way. They have regions to develop if they want them, but it's not required. Credits are provided that can be converted into minutes if you run low. You're not locked into anything. If you pay $50 one month and things get tight or you foresee being offline for a period of time, then buy a lower plan. In SL, you have to pay full tier or you lose everything. Kitely gives you about 60 days to purchase a plan...but really, it all works out to about a penny a minute. If you spend an hour in world, you're paying less than a dollar.

All the other hosts are charging an average of about $60 for one region, far lower than SL for sure, but that's one region you're still paying for, with a limit on prims and visitors before it lags and crashes, and you'd still be footing the entire bill for your visitors to access free, you're paying for their load.

The facebook thing is one that people don't particularly like, but Kitely's reasoning for it was for the group access - you can set your worlds 100% private and/or via your specific group and that keeps out trolls and unwanted visitors. Kitely's model is also an instant griefer block because of the fact everyone using Kitely buys their own time and griefers aren't going to do that. You have 100% full control over who accesses your place.

They are about to roll out an email login option that will definitely mark the rise of their momentum - facebook is kind of a show stopper for many people. Once the email option is ready, they will be following up with other login options, Twitter and others so you won't be locked in to your "real" identity, you can enjoy your virtual one.

They are new, though, and steadily working on becoming fully accessible to the metaverse. There is no hypergridding or in world teleporting at this time, but they're getting it ready to roll out, with the in world tp coming first. The hypergrid option and in world currency option are being developed so that things roll out without major bs problems - which is a breath of fresh air from what we're all used to with LL rolling out stuff that's broken, non functional, or causing other drama week after week after week.

And one more thing that really scored major points - in the half dozen years being in SL, not the first time did I ever encounter Philip Rosedale Linden popping over to my region to hang out, answer all my questions, patiently answer them again until it all clicked, have a relaxed and social little visit...nor did I ever see him bending over backwards posting around the net on SL/LL related issues, clarifying, answering questions...but Kitely's founder Ilan Tochner does that constantly. He and his cofounder recognize the LL problems and are going out of their way to not reproduce them. They're taking their time to get it right before launch, not just tossing out an inferior product and winging it as they go along.

Instead of looking at it as "paying for land" the paradigm shift required is paying for time. You focus on your own time and don't worry about other people - the plans are reasonable, greatly affordable, and logical based on realistic use time people tend to spend in world. There is also the option of picking up a lower plan and running OpenSim (Sim on a stick) on your local machine to build your worlds or creations, and then upload or import them, to save time/minutes so you can spend them enjoying and exploring.

I happen to have been a power user, I was on all the time...so I went first for the $50 plan and decided I don't want to deal with running SOAS...so I went for the unlimited option so I don't have to worry about time, it's a straight payment, and...I have 100 regions at my fingertips. I can offset some of the credits to host new people and let them check it out...and they can join.

Also you end up with a referral bonus if a new person (never before joined) comes to any of your regions and stays on about 5 minutes or so...you'll get another 200 minutes.

Virtual Clover

Again, Kitely is the ideal solution for developers and creators. If you're only in it for the chatroom feature then you'll be better off in SL...but if you end up with land in SL, you're throwing away money and Kitely can save you literally thousands of dollars.

It requires that paradigm shift to get out of the mentality of paying high land prices and liberating yourself to just being worried about you - your own time, your own schedule, and the freedom to develop. Oh, and a by product of this model is the end of the land barrons. If you're looking for real estate ventures, you won't be able to survive with the Kitely model since land is easily had for everyone who joins.

Low prices. The equivalent of totally free land. Freedom to enjoy it instead of freaking out over those tier payments. They really "launched" last March, so yeah they're new and not as fully functional - but their model is fresh and current, it works, it's content on demand (or virtual worlds on demand), and other grids are sitting up and taking notice, and a couple even looking into the same model because Kitely can give away land for pennies, or free, users buy time and everything is smooth...but hey, if you like paying 60 bucks to 300 bucks for a single region, lag, low visitor count, prim limits and a company that doesn't really give a ratsass about you or your business, enjoy Second Life.

For everyone else, Kitely solves real problems and they will grow rapidly probably as soon as the login issue is upgraded to more options in the next couple of weeks.

Hope that helped clarify a little. I know it's not going to convince anyone too scared of change or locked into the SL paradigm, but they'll come around eventually - because SL is more of a ghost town now than it's ever been. Kitely's model will do major damage to SL and will force SL to either bail out or evolve to the new model as well, and open itself up to hypergrid. Anyway, for those who are open to new and change, please check out Kitely and read the forums and FAQ, and if you still have questions, ask Ilan - he's a really great, friendly guy and takes a real interest in making sure you understand and see its value. Once the lights flip on, you'll ask yourself how you ever paid anything in SL before...

We've all been there ;-)

Adeon Writer

Why do you want to know my real life information? Shouldn't a valid credit card be enough? I'm not going to make a Facebook account.

Nara Malone

I have land in Kitely and SL. Maybe I can supply some insight into why I find each useful. I carry a paid membership at SL and rent a halh sim in a homestead region. I'm after a creative spce where I can setup and walk through scenes for novels I'm working on and test ideas for games I'm designing. It's a great plave to experiment with animations. i like SL because when I'm mid scenes and need a prop, i can grab it off the market place and keep going. So while the main purpose of my worlds aren't to generate traffic I do rely on content creators because I just don't have time to build and script evrything I need. But SL is wicked expensive to maintqin land on, especially for the small amount of time I use it. I also have bandwith issues because I connect via wireless.


I discovered Kitely when it was brand new. I like that I can save oar files of the scenes I set up. I love that I pay for what I use. I don't have issues with crashing and bandwidth I have with SL. I miss the SL content resources but that situation improves weekly. One added use I got with Kitely was the worldbuildin I did for a novel could be left up for readers to visit. I did that with readers this fall and the fact that it was a closed world gave readers intimidated by SL a small, controlled place where they could dip a toe in virtual reality. I have seven worlds on Kitely, about five open to others.

I foot the bill for visitors. I'm not overwhelmed I know the Facebook issue is a pain. It has the benefit of giving me tools to keep underaged visitors in areas appropriate for them. I'm on Facebook as an author, so having my identity attached to my Kitely account isn't the problem it is for others. I'm hoping that's an issue Kitely can get around soon.I believe it's high on their priority list.

I'm still using both worlds, but I don't know how long I can keep up with SL rent.

To get an idea what people use the worlds for, drop by and visit. You get a certain number of hours for visiting free each month.

Ciaran Laval

The Kitely model has potential for those who aren't running busy sims, this has always been the issue, say you only get on for a few hours a week with friends, logoff and then do your own thing, you can have a sim in Kitely for less than in SL.

If you're running a business, a busy sim, the Kitely model gets expensive fast but the good thing with Kitely is the option.

Ciaran Laval

Ilan who runs Kitely told me that when they got around to billing, they would start moving towards more options for opening an account, so i hope they do, Ilan has been very responsive to questions during their beta so I hope he will clarify this issue.

Raindrop Drinkwater

Okay. Sorry, not convinced. I'm not going to delve into it too much, but:

So if Kitely doesn't appeal to the social users, who's going to visit the creators' builds? Or buy their stuff or whatever?
I mean, I doubt the "poseball people" are spending all of their SL time on their poseballs. They go shopping, they move from one place to the other, maybe they enjoy fishing or what not. A world without them... hmm.

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Ciaran Laval

it's a cost per sim, if you spend a few hours per week in a sim then it's going to be cheaper. If you own a sim where you expect a lot of visitors 24/7, then it's not going to be cheap.

Ilan Tochner

First, thank you Virtual Clover and Nara Malone for your endorsement of Kitely. We strayed off the beaten path regarding usage and billing models and it's great to see SL veterans who recognize the benefits of our unconventional approach :-)

Now to some explaining of WTF we were thinking when we decided to use our pay-per-minute model. Our goal with Kitely was to make a system which is more fair to people who currently pay a lot to foot the bill so others can use virtual worlds for free. In RL you don't pay stranger's phone bills, in fact if you had a friend who always insisted on calling you collect you would most likely have stopped being that person's friend very quickly. Would you really accept a collect call from a bunch of total strangers?

The people visiting your SL land are paying their electric company for the power to run the computer they are using to access SL (a certain average cost per minute of usage). They are paying their Internet Service Provider to access SL (again, a certain average cost per minute - even when they have an unlimited plan the number of minutes in a month is not really unlimited).

The people visiting your virtual land are already paying someone per minute to do so. Are you really willing to pay very high prices to maintain your limited virtual land so those strangers won't have to pay just $0.20/hour more? (which is less than one third of one cent per minute - compare that to the cost of their electric bill or the cost of their ISP bill).

With the SL model you pay a high cost for land so that other people will be able to enjoy it for free. In fact, in SL you are paying for other people's time whether your land is used by a lot of people or none at all.

Now on Kitely, on the other hand, you only pay to cover your own time unless you specifically decide to cover costs for other people. This enables you to be inworld, on your regions(s) or on other people's regions for a bit more than what you are already paying to your utility providers to access SL. When you do this you don't cost other people money and they don't cost you money - which is only fair.

Is it really so bad to pay for your own usage when the alternative is that you are forcing other people (who may be your friends) to subsidize you? Are you really content to subsidize people who are willing for you to be forced to pay a lot of money just so they can access your regions for free?

Please think about that for a bit before responding. Everyone here is an adult, most of us spend a great deal of time inworld. Who do you think should pay for you to be able to have a good time inworld - you? a friend? a stranger?

Ilan Tochner

Hi Ciaran Laval,

First, thank you for your comment. We're currently working on email/password based logins (they're our number one priority now that we've rolled out our billing). If there are no surprises we should be ready to enable people to login to Kitely without a Facebook account before the end of the month.

Second, I just want to clarify something: everyone who joins Kitely is automatically placed on our Free Plan. This provides you with 1 free world (1 region with 100K prims) and 2 hours inworld (visiting any Kitely world) per month. While 2 hours per month isn't enough for heavy usage it does allow people to start seeing what is available on Kitely without having to take out their wallets first. In addition, there are worlds on Kitely that do provide free access to visitors so people on the Free Plan can remain inworld longer.

SL looses the majority of its new users in the first 1 hour from registration. New users going into Kitely can start building their own world immediately for free which enables Kitely's retention rate to be much higher than SL's. Many new users who start building worlds end up upgrading to one of our premium plans (the least expensive one costs just $5/month). Once they upgrade to continue building their own world they have many more Minutes with which to visit other people's worlds as well, which they do without other people having to pay more because of it.

On Kitely the most popular worlds are the ones in which visitors pay for their own access. Which really shouldn't be surprising once you consider that the worlds people want to visit can afford to cost visitors Minutes out of their quota and still get traffic (the same as RL venues are able to charge more when they are popular).

In other words, you can have many very popular regions on Kitely and still only need to pay for your own time inworld.

Virtual Clover

And of course, after the alternative login, once the hypergrid opens up, that's all she wrote.

Karima Hoisan

Hello,
I am new to SLU and happy to be here. I don't usually comment a lot on forums, but this thread caught my eye, as I am a four -year- old Second Lifer, who has been building on Kitely for the last 10 months. I was introduced to Kitely by my friend DB Bailey, Sl artist and architect, and although I thought the idea interesting, I believed it to be not for me, as I was neither a builder nor a scripter and there was almost no content to be found. Still I got a world and started moving the ground around, and now 10 months later, I have 5 working worlds, and have created more than 20 machinimas using my worlds built on Kitely and SL locations. I have a full sim in SL, open to the public and with few prims to spare. It would have been impossible to create these sims and sets there. My worlds are free on Kitely for anyone that wants to visit them, I pick up the tab, but I don't foresee I will be swamped with free-loaders. The visitors I have had, had very positive responses, and enjoyed exploring and relaxing there I agree with one of the comments about how Kitely could be great for RP communities. I see that too, and also for those of us who love machinima and making sets for them. It takes people to build a community, and as more jump on board and with a little patience, and of course focus on the importance of this, I don't see why Kitely will not succeed, in that area too.. Right now we have started a Mentor Group to help new residents. I keep saying the time to see other virtual worlds as an "either/or" type of decision is fast becoming obsolete, with choices like Kitely that make it viable and possible to do both. Also the concept that we can only have one sim/world (if we are not extremely wealthy) is also being proven wrong. What would one do with 100 worlds? Well, I would back up 50 and be able to keep them in existence for only 10 cents a month, for whenever I needed them, or just wanted to share them with friends or strangers alike. A full sim in SL costs $295. I have maybe 200 visitors a month there. I have added it up and I think Kitely even "charging by the minute" is very reasonable.
I am not associated with Kitely in any business or professional way, but I am pleased and believe in them, since I have been on their worlds the last ten months. Ilan Tochner is a very accessible CEO who has put his heart and soul into this project. It shows….

Maria Korolov

One of the best things about Kitely is that ability to upload OAR files with just a click.

One great place to start is Linda Kellie's site: LindaKellie.com

(If the OARs are zipped, remember to unzip them before uploading to Kitely.)

Some other hosting providers are starting to offer one-click OAR exports and imports as well, including Dreamland Metaverse.

Kitely does a particularly nice job here, by filtering the content. Objects can't leave the grid unless you have both copy and transfer permissions -- if you try to export them in an OAR, you'll get empty spaces on the region where those objects used to be.

This is a great compromise between allowing folks to make backups on their regions, and protecting in-world content creators who don't want their goods to travel, and I hope other grids will follow suit here, as well.

A similar approach could be used to protect content on the hypergrid -- if you have full perms, you can take it off-grid, and if its not full perms it stays local. Obviously, this won't stop hackers (can anything stop hackers?) but it allows legitimate customers reasonable use of their virtual property while still protecting creator rights.

And I echo Clover's comments about role players. For $5 a month, you get up to 25 hours a month in-world, and two regions. For $20 a month, you get up to 100 hours and 10 regions. Get a bunch of friends together and you can build as big a role playing world as you want. Nice -- especially when they finally roll out region-to-region teleports.

Personally, I think the sweet spot for Kitely is offline groups that want a place to meet in-world for an hour or two a month. Book clubs. Support groups. Speed dating meetings. Chess clubs. Groups that already have a Facebook presence and want an easy way to go virtual. If they like it and want more time in-world, they can upgrade.

Meanwhile, since Kitely is based on the Amazon EC2 computing cloud and the Amazon S3 storage cloud, when Amazon lowers its prices, Kitely can, too. And, in fact, Amazon has lowered prices several times over the past five years, and will probably continue to do so as competition heats up in the cloud space (and as computing power itself keeps getting cheaper): A Brief History: Cloud CPU Costs Over the Past 5 Years « Greg Arnette

And, once Kitely enables hypergrid, you'll be able to have the best of both worlds -- have your homesteads or building regions or company offices on Kitely, and have your clubs and other high-traffic areas on other grids, so people can visit museums, clubs, shopping malls, etc... for free.