What is Metcalfes Law?
Metcalfe’s law is a mathematic formula for measuring the value that a communications network has. It was developed by Robert “Bob” Metcalfe, an electrical engineer who became a pioneer of Web technologies. Metcalfe’s law pits the success of a communications network on the number of users. More specifically, this law holds that the network value grows exponentially as the network accumulates more users. Metcalfe first formulated the law in regard to Ethernet — a local area networking (LAN) technology that he and researcher D.R. Boggs invented. This technology links personal computers, but it can be applied to the Internet in general, to Web 2.0 technologies, or to any number of telecommunications networks (telephones, fax machines, etc.) where cross-connections are necessary for the network as a whole to have value. For instance, a social networking site with only one registered user would essentially be useless. If 100 users sign up, however, it becomes more attractive and beneficial f
