Social Media: Reverse Network Effects
Network effects explain how the value for a product increases when more people are using this. In class, we have discussed the importance of a large network to help sustain some of the largest social media companies such as Facebook. Although your friends on Facebook are not all strong ties, you stay on Facebook to keep up with weak ties, browse, and use various other features Facebook has implemented in recent years.
The article “Reverse Network Effects: Why today’s social networks can fail as they grow larger” aims to write about how these large companies might not be able to sustain themselves. The article writes that there are three sources of value: connection, content, clout. These three things explain how a user creates and interacts with content on a social media site. The article claims to show that the reverse of network effects is within these three components. An example is how a connection can be decreased as users continued to sign up for the social media platform because they could decrease the quality in interaction with other users. An example of this is if someone made an account and did not go on often to browse or create and just went on twice a year. This user would not have as much value to the product. A specific example of connection is with products like match.com which depend on users who value the product and interact with it often to create matches. As products continue to grow, I am excited to see how they will change the user’s interactions and future behaviors.
Link to article: https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/03/reverse-network-effects-todays-social-networks-can-fail-grow-larger/