What could make Second Life hip again?

A curious piece on Linden Lab recently raising the OpenSpaces prices by Silicon Alley Insider ends with an observation on how Second Life might return to its former glory (emphasis mine):

That being said, there’s only so much blood that can be squeezed from a stone. For Linden Lab to survive, it can’t keep raising usage fees, and it can’t try to con business users into teleconferencing in Second Life when the product is so poorly suited to enterprise use. In the end, Linden needs to pull off an image overhaul and make Second Life once again a hip place to be, with a growing population and a steady influx of new land-owners (read: paying customers). If Linden can do that, it prospers. If it can’t, it’s doomed.

As someone who canceled one account and reduced tier to under the free 512m holdings earlier this year, I’ve asked myself several times what would cause me to return to using the site. Why should I keep paying for a premium account? Maybe it’s the grandfathered L$500 weekly stipend or the fact that once in a great while I’ll be reminded there are some cool places in there like the Gibson Island.

Working against Linden Lab is the fact that I don’t feel like the platform has done much worthwhile to improve and stay up with times. Web on prim was promised but undelivered to date. Instead we got a seldom used voice chat feature.

I’m strongly considering selling the rest of the land owned and not renewing my remaining premium account due January 2009. Go ahead and use the comments to tell me all the great things I’m missing. I don’t see where it’s worth paying for. In my case, since I’m not running a business there these days. I can still login for free and buy L$ if need be. Owning land is good for LSL script development, but haven’t done much of that for awhile. We have our slice of land for VTOR but our group isn’t meeting there on Fridays any more either.

But forget about my own experience, what would you like to see added to Second Life that would make it a “hip place to be” again, as the writer of the Silicon Alley piece asks? I’m curious what features, functions they could introduce to reignite the fire. Or if it’s even possible of doing that ever again.