Can a social network get too big?
Facebook has over 175M users. MySpace has more than 125m. Twitter traffic has increased over 1000%.
The three services are considered very valuable and its popularity is that the value is on. Thanks to its users, are several hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. Without them, are worth almost nothing.
The three have been the beneficiary of a trend that has gained importance in recent years: the network effects. The largest number of people using these services, they become other people, encouraging greater popularity.
For all those who hope to build the next Facebook or MySpace, the idea that we can exaggerate the effects of network is probably a crazy idea.
But it is interesting to note that the ReadWriteWeb Bernard Lunn has raised the other day. By asking “Is there a reversal of the network effect to scale?” Note:
…in some cases, a reverse network effect may exist: as new people join, others are motivated to leave. This dramatically affects the length of the competitive advantage enjoyed by these ventures.
He suggests:
In a social network, the value for existing users of a new user joining the network plateaus once users have most of their own contacts in that network.
This is an interesting idea. One that makes sense. As Lund said, once all your friends are on Facebook, no matter how many people join with others.
Lunn believes that there are two types of networks: those that are not “disordered human interaction and they have. The first are the public services (which include PayPal and Skype for example), they are platforms for human interaction (think Facebook and MySpace). And the former are largely immune to reverse the effects of network, while the second could be the victim of strong network effects in inverse ratio to Lunn.
If MySpace and Facebook in the world are too aggressive in cash, equal to its opinion (which can never be higher if they were public services), for example, can be used not only to see the board, but fall under a cliff.
Although it seems unlikely that at this point, we must bear in mind the example of Friendster, which is quickly becoming the hottest social network of both network effects, and then had their time reverse network effects. Off to performance problems, users left in droves. Overaggressive monetize a social network like Facebook can do the same and Facebook has played with fire before.
Lunn, I think the point is well made and operators of fast-growing social networks should be aware that good things could be a bad thing when it comes to network effects if not managed properly.
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