Metcalfe's law applied to social networks

From ScenarioThinking
Revision as of 19:39, 15 September 2009 by Danielpeters (talk | contribs) (→‎Timing)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Metcalfe's law applied to social networks

!!!TAKE NOTE: This page is under construction by Daniel Peters EMBA09. In case of any questions/remarks or if you feel like sharing thoughts on the topic, by all means contact me.

Description

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a (telecommunications) network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2) [1]. Metcalfe's law has also been said to appy to (social) networking websites. This presents interesting prospects for sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. with growing numbers of users each year. For instance, the number of facebook users grew by a factor of more than 10 between 2007 (40 million users) and 2009 (250 million users). The value of facebook

Enablers

Inhibitors

1. ToDo

Paradigms

What we see happening now: Microsoft buys Facebook, Google wants to muscle in on Facebook...

Timing

2007: Microsoft acquires 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240M, valuing Facebook at $15 billion [4]

2009: Google unveils plans to launch 'Google Wave', its own collaboration and social networking application [5]

2010: ....

2015: ....

2020: ....

2025: ....

Web Recources

  1. Wikipedia on Metcalfe's law
  2. Bob Metcalfe on his law
  3. Microsoft takes 1.6% equity stake in Facebook
  4. Google vs. Facebook
  5. Google wave