Comments on: Metcalfe’s Law: more misunderstood than wrong?

By: Big Potatoes | 2. Beyond the post-war legacy

Big Potatoes | 2. Beyond the post-war legacy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:44:48 +0000

[...] [3] Compound interest, like parts of biology and physics, works exponentially; but IT rarely moves as xt, where x is a constant number bigger than 1, and t, the exponent, represents time elapsed. While Moore’s ‘law’ shows few signs of reaching its limits, in the rest of IT growth tends to be sub-exponential or polynomial. Still more restrictively, around 1980, Metcalfe’s law suggested only that the dollar value of a network proceeds as the square of the number of ‘compatibly communicating devices’. For a discussion, see Simeon Simeonov, ‘Metcalfe’s Law: more misunderstood than wrong?’, 26 July 2006, on http://blog.simeonov.com/2006/07/26/metcalfes-law-more-misunderstood-than-wrong/ [...]

By: How to Achieve Critical Mass in Social Media | THE LAB

How to Achieve Critical Mass in Social Media | THE LAB — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:35:53 +0000

[...] there is some argument that users do not equal Metcalfe’s original description of “compatibly communicating [...]

By: Metcalfe’s Law Revisited, Or Take a Node to Lunch Day « Egghead Marketing

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:05:46 +0000

[...] been a bit written on Metcalfe’s Law in a Web 2.0 world here and here. If you want to get mathy, follow those links. But here’s my [...]

By: Mi otro blog… » Blog Archive » El valor de las redes: La ley de Metcalfe

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:58:02 +0000

[...] Bob Metcalfe, que además relaciona su ley y la de Moore con el famoso efecto Long Tail, o la de HighContrast, en la que se explica que el problema no es que sea incorrecta, sino que se ha entendido mal [...]

By: Nodalities » Blog Archive » This Week’s Semantic Web

Nodalities » Blog Archive » This Week’s Semantic Web — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:52:28 +0000

[...] Metcalfe’s Law: more misunderstood than wrong? [...]

By: Metcalfe’s law « Libitt’s Weblog

Metcalfe’s law « Libitt’s Weblog — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:19:05 +0000

[...] Metcalfe’s Law: More Misunderstood Than Wrong?. A co-worker of Bob Metcalfe puts the IEEE Spectrum critique in perspective. Republished in Web 2.0 Journal here. [...]

By: Stan

Stan — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:55:30 +0000

It seems to me it’s alot simpler than that.

The value of a network is equal to the number of links in the network. For a *fully connected* network, where every node has a direct connection to every other node, that number matches melcalfe’s law i.e. o(n squared).

But for e.g. social networks, the number of links is really more o(n). This is because the number of other user’s that the average user is directly connected to is not a function of the overall size of the network.

If there are a 100,000 users in a network, and the average number of connections is 10 (say), then the value of the network is (1000 * 10 ) /2 = 500,000 – and not 10,000,000,000.

By: Damian

Damian — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:48:52 +0000

The point of the value of a network changing over time is interesting. The value of a Fax machine is changing, but in some ways it is actually continuing to grow as its functionality as a scanning device continues to be utilized. Also. Its value in times of disaster (which we seem to be seeing increasingly having) goes up even more. During a disaster it is a standard backup machine not dependent on the Internet infrastructure, that can retry and provide confirmation of receipt. The Fax machine is continues to be used as a copy machine or backup copy machine in growing use (although more by the ever increasing small home worker). However, its original use of point-to-point communication is decreasing in the ‘mainstream’ world with email, it is still used for distribution, and for accessing “lower end users” without all the higher dollar technology solutions.

By: My del.icio.us bookmarks for March 2nd through March 3rd » the billblog

My del.icio.us bookmarks for March 2nd through March 3rd » the billblog — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:32:14 +0000

[...] Metcalfe?s Law: more misunderstood than wrong? « HighContrast – A 02006 post spotted via O’Reilly’s blog and worth reading. I’ve always been annoyed with the simplistic chants of ‘Metcalfe’s Law’ from the net zealots. Now I know I was right [...]

By: Simeon Simeonov

Simeon Simeonov — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:04:20 +0000

Hamish, yes, there is definite value increase to the user.