

What If Metcalfe’s Law Is Wrong? - hshah
http://gigaom.com/2010/03/12/what-if-metcalfe’s-law-is-wrong/

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alan-crowe
The standard refutation of Metcalfe's law, by Andrew Odlyzko and Benjamin
Tilly, is hosted at <http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf>

On page nine they conclude:

Metcalfe's Law and Reed's Law both significantly overstate the value of a
communication network. In their place we propose another rough rule, that the
value of a network of size n grows like n log n. This rule, while not meant to
be exact, does appear to be consistent with the historical behaviour of
networks with regard to interconnection, and it captures the advantage that
general connectivity offers over broadcast networks that deliver content. It
also helps explain the failure of the dot-com and telecom ventures, since it
implies network effects are not as strong as had been hoped for.

