Mock Locations, tension with Slowly Admins
Kevin's annoyance with people doing 'mock locations'
It comes down to lost revenue – from the sale of the multitude of regional commemoratives (free for a limited time in some location) and Location stamps (always free in that location).
Both regional commemoratives and location stamps are available to people all over the globe – via the Time Machine and World Explorer 'sales counters'. Each try at the random sale mechanism costs the user 25 Coins, which at my local currency works out exactly to 50 cents CAD or half a Canadian Dollar.
Slowly has released an immense number of regional commemoratives – many being really obscure, with some portrait of a local person. In some cases even local users seem surprise at some of their choices.
The portrait stamps are generally not their best designs – not so attractive, but still desirable as the app has built a core of active stamp collectors, and many are complectionists; they want to have ALL the stamps, no matter how ugly or obscure it be.
What revenue is Kevin worrying about?
The one which could be had if the user bought these myriad commemoratives via Time Machine. Or even the location stamps, via the less popular World Explorer feature.
I am personally a big fan of Location stamps, and filed many ideas for new and interesting ones for countries which did not have ANY yet – some of them came to light and we were happy to see more African nations specially having some local stamps.
How come the Time Machine has SO MANY stamps
... compared to World Explorer?
My theory here is that Time Machine has a LOT more sales than W.E. – there is simply a lot more interesting stamps, nice designs there. The World Explorer suffers from the abundance of old, ugly location designs – the original, 'minimalist' design with a few lines and even fewer colours. Example: Brandenburg Gate in Germany, which is a great landmark and has an UGLY stamp.
Slowly could replace any designs easily, they simply replace the image file on their server and voilá, done – new design is what people will see. They done this a few times with quick revisions on small errors in new stamps as we have observed. But they won't revise the old ugly location stamps – the cost of that work in time and money does not benefit them much, they would rather design and issue some more new stamps.
Monetization – getting money in from the stamps
The sheer abundance of regional commemoratives would not make sense, if Slowly did not have a sales mechanism for these stamps. The Time Machine does capitalize on the almost 600 stamps it currently offers, and the number is still growing.
Although a bit slower now, as we have seen a major push for Premium Singles – stamps that have a higher sale value, 50 Coins being a full Dollar in my country.
A single stamp going for one Dollar, while a full 6 stamps set is 100 Coins, or 2 Dollars in my market. Stamp sets are clearly a BETTER deal for the users. But we don't get many new sets, either global or regional.
The New Premium Series stamps
We had Castles of Europe at first, and that was interesting, well accepted and quite collectable. At a full dollar per stamp, it could generate some funds. There are 52 Castle stamps in total.
After the Castles, an even better idea came out – something that was available in many more countries. Easier to find a local one and offer a stamp even in smaller countries. The Beautiful Lighthouses series was born. And it currently has 63 stamps, they just added 9 more for October 2024.
On the same idea, another series called Sound of the World started, and equally can offer ideas for stamps in many countries, as long as they have some original musical instrument developed locally. Ca-xing, voilá, and in a short time it grew to 54 stamps as of October 1, 2024.
Why management frowns on mock locations users?
They don't mind people who virtually 'travel' and use purchased coins to purchase regional premium stamps or stamp sets in remote places. This is money the company would not see otherwise.
Kevin's annoyance is with people collecting all of the location stamps, and any available regional commemoratives at the remote places. Either a location or comm stamp is worth Half a Dollar (Canadian) each via TM or WE sale features.
So, it's a dilemma – they win some cash on travelling collectors who just must have these foreign stamps. But they lose some on the forgone sales.
We have seen some countermeasures – it has been getting harder to do mock locations, some Slowly versions are hardened to block that. And, some users received stern warnings or even 3 day suspensions from the app once they triggered the mobile client's 'abuse detection'.
Be careful as your account CAN be terminated
....at the whim of the company, and you lose all the stamps, all the coins, and more importantly – all of the letters and pen pals you originally started up on Slowly for.
The Slowly Terms of Service is an extensive legal document, created by lawyers simply to protect the company and acting in their interests. A careful reading is recommended, and you could notice there is mention they could terminate ANY user's account for ANY or NO reason, at their sole discretion. (paraphrasing here, but this is the harsh truth).
A more detailed Reddit discussion on past incidents with user suspension is HERE.
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