Network Effect as applied to business and publishing is a modern variant of “The rich get richer, the rest are left behind.”
In the context of Internet, Network Effect means: If you post one post, it will go unnoticed. You need to post 1000 (or 1M) good posts to take influence.
Network effect may harm in such ways as:
- Somebody having an important message to the world (it may be a mathematical discovery, for instance, or a description of a defect in computers controlling nuclear weapons) maybe unable to do this, unless he/she is joined to a big institution (what is not always the case, for example because of receiving no science degree due to discrimination). By the way, there is exact same problem: I, the CEO of Zon, have a trouble publishing my grandiose math discoveries and I found an error in Ada compiler, a software used in thermonuclear weapons. So, I decided to start my own social network.
- It is difficult for the outsiders to build an effective online business. As a result, outsiders may for example become sick because of poverty and spend governmental medical foods or to become homeless. That’s no good.
- There is a whole article in MIT university site on how network effect may bring down multiple industries or even the whole economy (here “network effect” term is used in a wider sense, as inter-influence of different industries, but poverty of a limited set of people may spread to the entire economy).
So, you see how harmful network effect is. We need a means to overcome it. How to do it? We need a site that provides every user equal “rights” for both publishing and earning money. It doesn’t mean that everybody would have equal number of views of his/her posts. But it means that the outcome of publishing is roughly proportional to investment of work and time of the user.
How do I claim to have created such a site? How does it work?
My idea is that the site consists of items in folders. The user controls his/her owned folders (he may for example sell something at his item), unlike Facebook or Twitter that have rules harmful for users. But there are also communal folders, where everybody can post. A user can post to an already established communal folder that has many readers already.
Unlike traditional sites like Facebook or Reddit, there are no moderation rules (such as disallowing paid posts or somebody to advertise himself), but moderation is entirely done by the mood of users: They will vote down your item if it is offtopic or otherwise offensive. Hopefully, items won’t be voted down just because somebody tells about himself or requests money (unless it is spam). Can’t somebody’s telling about himself be interesting? If yes, why to disallow it?
In other words, you in a sense get almost the same treatment of your posts as if you were an owner of the social network: you can sell, you can advertise yourself, and you can post to whatever folder you deem appropriate.
So, again, a user can post to an already established communal folder that has many readers already and this way have success in publishing from the first try.
Have I really overcome network effect for both publicity and amounts of money earned from a blog? The time will show.
Please try our social network Zon, at least it is a nice way to put items in folders, that I hope you will like more than Twitter.
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