So, as part of research for my job - and because I love this kind of stuff - I’ve been playing around with different types of social networking sites.
One of my friends, Ashley, pointed out FaceBook to me today. All I can say is - jesus christ, why isn’t MySpace more like FaceBook? In fact - why do people bother with myspace at all, when Facebook is better in just about every possible aspect?
The answer lies in the ‘network effect‘. Put simplistically, the idea is that if one person has a telephone, the benefit is small. If everyone has one, it is a useful tool.
So yeah, if any of you lot use Facebook, go on and add me. Oh, and if you’re not sure about this whole ‘network effect’ thing, go read the Wiki article linked above. It really is a marvellous concept, as illustrated aptly by an example:
For example, eBay would not be a particularly useful site if auctions were not competitive. However, as the number of users grows on eBay, auctions grow more competitive, pushing up the prices of bids on items. This makes it more worthwhile to sell on eBay and brings more sellers onto eBay, which drives prices down again as this increases supply, while bringing more people onto eBay because there are more things being sold that people want. Essentially, as the number of users of eBay grows, prices fall and supply increases, and more and more people find the site to be useful.
Nifty stuff.