What gatekeepers just don't "get"
Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 3:00PM I have just started reading The Laws Of Disruption by Larry Downes, which already has the feeling of being a cracker, and in the opening chapter he discusses, amongst others, Metcalfe's Law. For those of you unfamiliar with this law it can be paraphrased as "the usefulness of a network is the square of the number of users connected to it"
This as why from the word go numbers matter. You can't afford to be choosy about who joins your networks or why - you just need bodies. In corporate settings don't get arsey about who should or shouldn't be using your social media tools or what they should or shouldn't use them for. You can't afford to care. You need numbers and you need them fast. Do ANYTHING it takes to get them or you will end up with a dead system on your hands.
Reader Comments (5)
I love Metcalfe's Law but it's inherently flawed. Better is Reed's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law) and better still is Andrew Odlyzko's research from 2005 (http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-141783.html). Value and utility of networks is a special interest of mine and I see it as being crucial to evaluating the benefits of technologies under game theory. We should speak further on this issue and I look forward to reading Downes's work on your recommendation.
Cheers,
Joanne
Thanks for the links Joanne and yes it would be great to chat about this some time. All I know is, from my own experience at the BBC, that number make things more interesting faster!
Interesting topic, agree about the benefit of network size.
However, Metcalfe's Law is probably better considered as a measure of network potential.
I would suggest that a better measure of the value of a network is a function of the quality and frequency of traffic.
Anyone curious about Metcalfe and his eponymous law would do well to read Bob Metcalfe's excellent blog post from 2006, when the controversies around social networking began to rear their hydra-like heads. First off, Metcalfe points out he was talking about devices connected to a network, and had in mind young networks, with newly invented protocols that were trying to attain critical mass (Metcalfe invented Ethernet). He then goes on to discuss some interesting consequences, like The Long Tail.
My two-penn'oth? Metcalfe's Law is very supply-side. It makes sense if you're a vendor, or a host like Facebook. Because you don't create the value, your users create the value. If you're an organisation like the RSA, or RIBA, it makes sense to encourage all your members to come on board, but to broaden it to non-members? I think not. Most of all, Metcalfe's Law says nothing about value experienced by the user, as opposed to offered by the supplier. It can't explain why I value a network greatly if Dave Snowden and David Gurteen are on it, but not if theirchildren are on it (although the presence of the offspring adds value for them). It can't explain why you and I see each other daily on Twitter, seldom on Facebook, never on Ecademy, though I think we know why (and Zuckerberg and the Powers are voracious pursuers of big numbers).
I wasn't actually suggesting that numbers are necessarily the most important metric - not by a long shot. My own blog and twitter numbers are far from huge but they do include some very, very smart people! My point was more aimed at the tidy people who can kill networks before they even have a chance.