Metcalf's Law and the Exponential Power of the Network

Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com corporation, is also known for a theory about networking that has come to be known as Metcalfe's law. In short, it states that the power of a network is the square of the number of connections. Add ten connections, and the value increases by 10^2 or 100. Now consider these numbers from the blogsphere. According to Henry Copeland, founder of blogads, more than 1.3 million Americans now blog at least once a week. Compare that to the estimated 50,000 daily journalists in the US (do the math, that's 26 times more bloggers than journalists). There are an estimated 1.2 million new blog posts every day. In aggregate, the top 100 bloggers attract far more readers than the NYT and Washington Post, which together have nearly 2,000 editorial employees. According to Metcalfe's Law, a system's value is the square of the number of its participants. That means that as the network grows, it becomes exponentially more valuable, and more powerful. It is clear that the power balance is shifting as Consumer Generated Media turns the old media system on its head. The former one-size-fits-all, top-down, one-way media aristocracy with its authoritarian power structure is slowly coming to grips with a post-modern, democratic, conversational, bottom-up, me-media mentality.