Metcalfe's Law of Networks is something I've regularly drawn upon and cited when discussing social networking, so I was concerned to see a paper from Spectrum effectively debunking if not Metcalfe's Law as such at least the most commonly-understood application of it. Connections are not all equally valuable: therefore the number of connections hypothetically engendered by a network do not in fact increase its value exponentially. So as John Maynard Keynes said, "when the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do?" Metcalfe's Law, it seems, is less applicable to an understanding of social networks than I had believed.
As MySpace tips over 100 million accounts, it is increasingly clear that to almost every MySpace user the presence of almost every other MySpace user is completely irrelevant. This is something I've touched on before, without really having a theoretical framework to explain it well - that for example the massive popularity of CyWorld in Korea should be expected to give them no leverage in the US, and today Peter Cashmore notes that the biggest network in France is a homegrown platform with little connection to the hordes of non-Francophone MySpacers. It comes back again to the Dunbar number (Yelvington) and the missions of the users and the fact that social networkers can't actually network with 100 million other people.
(Hat tip to Andrew Chapman who dropped the link into my delcious:for inbox.)
