Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²). First formulated by Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe's law explains many of the network effects of communication technologies and networks such as the Internet, social networking, and the World Wide Web. It is related to the fact that the number of unique connections in a network of a number of nodes (n) can be expressed mathematically as n(n-1)/2, which follows n² asymptotically.
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 inthe network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases. [It can also be argued that the FIRST person to buy a Fax machine was an idiot as there was no other bugger around to fax to]
In fact, Metcalfe's law measures the potential number of contacts, i.e. the technological side of a network. However the social utility of a network depends upon the number of nodes in contact. For instance, if Chinese and Non-Chinese users don't understand each other, the utility of a network of users that speak the other language is at zero, and the law has to be calculated for the two networks separately.
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