Week 13- Muddy: Social Media

In the week's lesson, the Metcalfe's Law was extremely hard to interpret. The Metcalfe's Law stated that "the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users (number of connections that can be made)." Most people think that the more people it has in the network, the more value it will have. But then it said "if a network that has too many users for the capacity can also have a much lower value since no one can access it." It was hard to understand the concept because it first stated that the value of a network is based on the number of the users, but it will also have a lower value with too many users.

So how do we use Metcalfe's Law to calculate the value of a network?

Some Rights Reserved by justin.wikinator- Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial- Share Alike

After searching for my answer online, I was able to understand the concept of the Metcalfe's Law with the help of the Wikipedia. Many people have misinterpreted the Metcalfe's Law. Instead of using the number of users to increase the value of a network, it is the connected devices that increasing the value of a network. For example, two cell phones can make one connection, five cell phones can make 10 connections, and twelves cell phones can make 66 connections.This law has led to the concept of the network effects, which is the effect of one user of a good and service has on the value of that good and services to other people.

The picture above is the Metcalfe wheel, it illustrates the fully connected world that we live in today. We are now able to connect to different people in the world by using computer, mobile devices and other social media. It is important for us to learn how this effect can impact our lives now and in the future.


Citation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law