The Wikipedia entry on the law provides this example:
The law has often been illustrated using the example of fax machines: a single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases.
After reading this story (by none other than Publishing 2.0’s Scott Karp) things got really interesting. The inverse effect of Metcalfe’s Law might be appearing on Facebook:
Right now, Facebook feels like a free-for-all — there’s huge value in so many people I know professionally and personally being on Facebook, but the value is diminished because when I logged in everything is all mashed together. Doc Searls posted about the diminishing returns of Facebook, as he’s been overrun by non-value-creating requests from the network.
Food for Facebook thought.
