Written by Awportals.com

Starting at around 10am on Friday morning Activeworlds, Inc set about the process of emailing the over 60,000 expired citizens stored in its universe database inviting each one back to Activeworlds, including their username and password within the email.

The Message

Better still every message informed the user that at 6pm EST on Friday their expired citizenships would be instantly extended for free until January 5th.

[quote=Official Email]Please join us as we celebrate over 10 successful years of the Activeworlds Universe.

We've seen so many great people come and go over these many years that we thought it would be wonderful to bring everyone together again for this special holiday season.

So please join us as we celebrate our environment, friends and fantastic creations. To facilitate this reunion we are reactivating your citizenship for 30 days at no charge. This will take effect today at 6 p.m. EST and we look forward to seeing you.

Citizen Name: YourName
Citizen Password: abcdefgh

You can download the latest Activeworlds browser using this link:
www.activeworlds.com/products/download.asp
Sincerely,

Tom Fournier[/quote]

A Huge Free Gift

With the Awportals.com database reporting around 65,000 citizens in total this giveaway represents slightly over $400,000 worth of free extensions.

Within 4 hours of the email process beginning the user count began to visibly rise above what is typically now expected for Friday afternoons, within 8 hours the number of users in the universe had risen to over 230 with AWGate and Alphaworld faring particularly well both sustaining 50 users.

[wcimg=The effect of the invitations]http://www.awportals.com/media/imglib_general/graphics_dec05.jpg[/wc]
Unlike the usual short evening peak of around 120 the universe went above 200 and stayed there for almost 5 hours in total. The above graph shows the effect on day one.

With the exception of the CYAwards both the user count and the duration of their stay was the highest since Awportals records began in May.

The Community Response

On the more social side of the equation, the community - which had not been told in advance to ensure surprise - and the respective visitors of old both appeared to be very much enjoying themselves. Many of the older users were found to be meeting with friends they had not seen or heard from in almost 10 years.

Once it became apparent the extent of what had occurred praise was quick to flow to Activeworlds Inc from present and returning members alike with many calling it "[a] wonderful Christmas gift" and "Pretty Awesome".

This combination of mass user contact with the much reduced Christmas pricing shows an increasing wisdom within Activeworlds Inc of the benefits of promotion and having an active universe.