Metcalfe’s Law of Valuing Social Media is Dangerous — The Cost’s Need to brought under control — Here’s How:
The dominance of social media networks is wreaking havoc on innovation and is causing division.
This havoc is powered by Metcalfe’s law which states
“The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users. As the physical cost of the network grows linearly, its value grows exponentially”
This law generates value for the network orchestrator but it does generate dangerous side effects too.
Tomorrow’s networks must account for these impacts:
An Exponential cost of Exclusion — Crushing Innovation
Users who are outside the network a mounting price.
According to senior scientists if costs to excluded users were to be valued — the cost of exclusion becomes exponential as the platform increases its user base Think how time-consuming it becomes to get feedback on Podcasts without Spotify. Spotify’s dominance limits players who want to be in space and the cost to outsiders grows as folks spend greater time finding alternate channels rather than spending time creating.
This means Metcalfe’s law is actually squeezing out innovation.
A Rift and Divide within Social Media Networks
Users on Twitter have started to fill their bios with words like “Eth-User” or “Decentraland Citizen”
Tribal networks are becoming more common on platforms. People are identifying themselves in these networks as only part of these groups of people clearly demarcating their difference with others.
So, there is a growing division between folks.
De-Central Technologies can bring this under control
The dominance of a platform through the law raises the cost of de-platforming.
Value transfer needs to be shifted from the platform to the creator. This has to be driven through blockchain, crypto, and social tokens to create a model where the value of the network shifts from platform orchestrator to creator.
This creates a world where collective social media backed by crypto becomes the norm.
It is time for Metcalfe’s law to evolve
This post was created with Typeshare
