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July 02, 2004
Orkut, Friendster and social networking
Google sued over Orkut bug replication feature | The Register. It's amazing how a trend can start and there can a be a whole host of players. A good example if Friendster and Google's versions called Orkut.
These are great examples of sites that are driving for popularity. Friendster has 2M users and they are not just chatting (uhmmm) online. Amazing what basic instincts lead you.
In any case, like online dating, these sites represent the epitomy of drag races, get out there, drive for momentum and get to a tipping point where if everyone is on a network, then you win.
These things combine two ideas, first there is Metcalf's Law, the value of network increases as the square of the number of users, and also the Tipping Point where, if you can get to that kind of geometric expansion pretty much you own the world.
Where is the Tipping Point, or the point where folks can't catch up. Well, for products we've worked on that point has been around the 5% mark if you can get at the influentials. Before the Tipping Point, there was the theory fo the influential end-users used at Microsoft in the late 1980s. This was all about getting the most influential core of users to talk about your product (whether hush puppies or Excel) and get them to recommend it.
Its why so many drag races like social networking, ebay auctions have this incredible property that lots of people an start and there is one sustainable winner.
Posted by rich at July 2, 2004 09:25 PM
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Comments
Good point, I was counting active not total users. For these free sites, that seems more relevant. In any case, an amazing number.
Posted by: Rich Tong at July 3, 2004 09:37 PM
Friendster has a little less than 10 million users, not 2 million.
Posted by: mike at July 3, 2004 11:11 AM
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