Library clips :: Communities don’t rely on network effects to...

All it comes down to is do your members have a shared interest, know and trust each other, and want to participate (a willingness because they want to, not because they are told to)
- if they do, it will be used

BUT, Critical Mass of people or Network Effects is not as essential in communities as it is in networks, from wikipedia:

“The classic example is the telephone. The more people own telephones, the more valuable the telephone is to each owner. This creates a positive externality because a user may purchase their phone without intending to create value for other users, but does so in any case.”

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Community Congestion of late:

“The expression “network effect” is applied most commonly to positive network externalities as in the case of the telephone. Negative network externalities can also occur, where more users make a product less valuable, but are more commonly referred to as “congestion”

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A sweet spot in between this is a social bookmarking site like delicious which has inherent value for the individual even though it’s a network…from wikipedia:

“A more natural strategy is to build a system that has enough value without network effects, at least to early adopters. Then, as the number of users increases, the system becomes even more valuable and is able to attract a wider user base. Joshua Schachter has explained that he built Del.icio.us along these lines - he built an online system where he could keep bookmarks for himself, such that even if no other user joined, it would still be valuable to him.[2] It was relatively easy to build up a user base from zero because early adopters found enough value in the system outside of the network aspect

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