There will re-open

After cleaning the data, reviewing the cleansed data, and talking about it some more, we finally said “Ok, do we want to do this?”.

The answer was a unanimous “Yes”.

We will work to re-open There as a Paid Service (fees TBD, but at least $10/month) for folks 18 or older. You will be able to use your old Avatars, and will have all of the inventory and Therebucks you had when we closed.

I know that many of you will be disappointed by the 18 or older aspect of our decision. As I’ve said, at this juncture we can’t afford to provide the level of support and monitoring we think is right to protect folks under 18, so we’re not going to put minors, or ourselves, in that position. In the future this might change, but that decision is final for now. Again, I apologize.

I’ll say right now that we will all have to work together to help supplant Customer Support and Community, especially at the outset. My impression is that most folks here would be more than happy to help and we’ll welcome it.

We don’t know the opening date yet, but we do know we’ll start with ThereIM, then the public areas, then, finally, hoods, lots, FunZones, etc. And, of course, the Developer program will be re-activated along the way.

As I said, we’ve done some work to get ready for this, but clearly there’s lots more to do. As we zero in on an opening date, we’ll let people know.

As promised, I’ll share the data about what it costs to run There, and, after we open, how much we pull in, every month. We might go totally hog wild and publish the # of members and # of people logged in even.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone for their participation, and patience with this survey.

We’re all very excited (well, cautiously very excited) about this, and determined to make it work. We’re all looking forward to the first month we can declare There “Broke Even”, or, even, gasp, “Made a profit”. Thanks to your enthusiastic response, we’re sure it’s possible, and willing to do our best to make it happen.

We’ll keep you filled in as we know more. I promise there will be a follow-up post by the end of the week.