Virality and network effects drive organic growth.

less than 1m read

·Nov 3, 2024

The best consumer companies incorporate both virality and network effect, which are different concepts but very closely related, in order to grow their user base organically.

Virality is the idea that one user using your product introduces it to other users somehow in the use of your product, whereas network effect is the idea that the product gets better the more nodes in the network exist.

I'll give you an example from Facebook's early days. So, when you took a picture on Facebook and uploaded it, you were prompted to tag your friends, even if they weren't already on Facebook. Those friends would get an email saying, "Hey, someone's tagged a photo of you; sign up to view the photo." That's a viral mechanic.

By uploading the photo and tagging your friends, you spread it to new users. A network effect comes from Metcalfe's Law: the value of the network is the square of the nodes in a network.

What that basically means is the more people who use this thing, the more valuable it gets. So, WhatsApp is a great example of this.

Helicopter Physics Series Intro - #1 Smarter Every Day 45

Do People Understand The Scale Of The Universe?

View All

LC natural response intuition 1

We’re going to talk about the natural response of an LC circuit, inductor-capacitor circuit, and this is an interesting one. This is a circuit that has two energy storage elements. In the past videos, we’ve done one energy storage element, either a C or a…

Colonial Weaponry | Saints & Strangers

[Music] Radio weapons, push off, push off design. Mr. Bradford, fire! This is your standard, uh, standard matchlock musket. It was the earliest firing, uh, musket that there was. This over here is a match cord; both sides were normally kept lit in case …

Resource | Vocabulary | Khan Academy

Gather your wits about you, word Smiths, because the word we’re talking about today is resource! Food in the pantry, diamonds in the mind, wealth, brain power—resource. It’s a noun; it means wealth, money, minerals, land, or other useful things. We can t…

Desining from Day One: Artists as Founders: Multiverse (S20) - YC Gaming Tech Talks 2020

Um, so we’re Multiverse. We did YC W20, so that was from like January to March of this year, just before Corona hit. Um, so, you know, Multiverse, we’re making next generation tabletop RPGs. You can think of us like a mix between D&D and Roblox. We wa…

See How This Avalanche Rescue Dog Is Enjoying Her Retirement | Short Film Showcase

[Music] This guy is an Australian Shepherd. We got her at eight weeks old with the purpose in mind of turning her into a search-and-rescue dog. A search-and-rescue dog, especially an avalanche rescue dog, is a dog that’s trained to find human scent that c…

Summarizing stories | Reading | Khan Academy

Hello readers! Today I’ll make a video about summaries. A summary retells the main ideas of a passage, but in a much shorter version. Cool, great, done! You can learn anything. David out. Sorry, I made a goof. See, I summarized what was going to happen …

Virality and network effects drive organic growth.

More Articles