Crappy Analogy? Are The Lindens Really Like Web Hosts?

When Second Life is described as a business, the analogy that pops up most often is web hosting service.  After all, the Lindens' main source of revenue is management of server space represented in 3D data (i.e. virtual land.)  Lord knows I've thus analogized myself.  Energetic blogger and clock maker extraordinaire Crap Mariner doesn't buy that comparison for many reasons, and suggests one that he thinks is more apropos: 

[I]t's more like managed application hosting. They're responsible for all of the back-end functions like OS patches, firewalls, backups, updates to the software, etc. The messy, icky geek-stuff. Heck, reloads and rollbacks for major kaboomage are on the house.

Once that's understood, Crap seems to suggest, it's a lot easier to contextualize the many controversies and user demands that beset the world, and offers an even more colorful third analogy:  "[I]f they asked for the equivalent service at a bank teller window, the teller would be stroking that silent alarm switch like Ron Jeremy wagging on his moneymaker."

Read it all here.  What do you think?  Does choosing a better analogy make the world seem more sensible?  (Image credit: Crap, of course.)

Comments

[Crap Mariner]

Yrrek Gran's the actual clock-making demigoddess.

I just build 'em big and crazy-assed.

But other than that, I disagree with Crap Mariner 100%.

(Yes, I break a lot of mirrors. Why do you ask?)

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks! So does that make you a clock installer?

[Malky]

While I'm not familiar enough with the structure of SL to suggest which, if any, analogy is accurate, I think that FINDING a good analogy is essential to understanding the conflicts between Linden Labs and the user base. Once we better understand our position in this new territory by comparing it to the old, we can better understand where the lines are drawn.

[Suzanne Aurilio]

When I had to describe to my account manager, what I was paying for to lease an SL parcel, the most relevant metaphor was server space. It's an oversimplification for sure but did the trick for that purpose. I think application hosting is useful as is some morphing of application service provider. At this point, we're still apt to have to explain what we mean.

[Lillie Yifu]

The bank analogy made no sense to me at all, except in so far as LL prints "land" when it needs money.

But Crap's application hosting is a good paradigm. Consumers and end users don't pay the bills, instead people trying to run businesses do, and in return hope to resell the value created for a profit.

The conflict between the user base and LL is that part of LL treats this as if it were the play toy of very well off programmers, when there are people here who are speculating, and people investing. It's difficult to keep both the speculators and the investors happy. The speculators want artificial scarcity so that their arriving first is profitable. Investors want relentlessly lower prices to make capital cost easier. For a while the speculators had it very good, but LL has burned them very hard starting about July of last year over and over again.

The key, I think, is that LL needs to start seeing people who pay tier and island fees as partners and resellers, not as end users who are to be jerked around. The arrival of twinity, vast park and, of course, opensim, create the potential for competition and therefore are going to help drive prices down from the current monopoly.

[Seven Shikami]

If the Lindens are web application hosters, then their wobbly uptime with frequent service interruptions, and worse -- full service uptime during periods in which all e-commerce applications are randomly broken and taking customer money without giving anything in return and while randomly deleting your web pages -- would make me want to switch providers ASAP.

Unfortunately, that's where the metaphor breaks down, because right now they're the only game in town for this sort of service.