Re:Facebook is not equipped to stop the spread of authoritar...
by tivert on Monday December 24, 2018 @05:14PM
(#18754570)
>> if I create a new social network, it isn't very useful until a significant number of people are on board.
> That's why when Facebook launched it was basically just a prettier skin over the Harvard student directory, so that way it was valuable even if there were no other people using it.
Facebook also launched in small, elite communities first, which allowed it to exploit network effects in communities that were more manageable than the global internet.
I think that many people make the mistake of thinking of the "social" network as global-level vat filled with a solution of essentially identical nodes, and the "network effect" as a power caused by a product having a high concentration in that solution. In reality, the global "social" network is more like a warehouse full of jars, and smaller players start by building up their product's concentration in a fraction of those jars, instead of all the jars at once.
> That's why when Facebook launched it was basically just a prettier skin over the Harvard student directory, so that way it was valuable even if there were no other people using it.
Facebook also launched in small, elite communities first, which allowed it to exploit network effects in communities that were more manageable than the global internet.
I think that many people make the mistake of thinking of the "social" network as global-level vat filled with a solution of essentially identical nodes, and the "network effect" as a power caused by a product having a high concentration in that solution. In reality, the global "social" network is more like a warehouse full of jars, and smaller players start by building up their product's concentration in a fraction of those jars, instead of all the jars at once.