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.

Watches You Buy As You Get Richer

Robinhood Just Got Cancelled

View All

Khanmigo: Create a Lesson Plan Activity

This is Kigo, an AI-powered guide designed to help all students learn. Conmigo is not just for students; teachers can use Conmigo too by toggling from the student mode to teacher mode in any course. Teachers can always access Kigo by selecting the AI acti…

Electric current | Physics | Khan Academy

Electricity that lights up a bulb looks very different than lightning strikes, but they’re actually more similar than one might think because they both have electric current. So, let’s understand what electric current is, how they are produced, and also g…

RFS: LLMs for manual back office processes in legacy enterprises

One thing I’d love to see more startups working on is the use of LLMs to automate complex back office processes in large enterprises. So, for example, in a bank, you might have a customer service team answering loads and loads of queries from customers. …

STOCK MARKET REACHES ANOTHER ALL TIME HIGH | DO THIS NOW

What’s up you guys? It’s Graham here. So, today has been a very eventful day. So eventful, in fact, that I had to replace the normal video I had scheduled today with this one because wow, today has been one of the best performing days for the stock market…

Initial value & common ratio of exponential functions | High School Math | Khan Academy

So let’s think about a function. I’ll just give an example: let’s say h of n is equal to ( \frac{1}{14} \times 2^n ). So first of all, you might notice something interesting here: we have the variable, the input into our function, it’s in the exponent. A…

Capturing Endangered Frog’s Song | Short Film Showcase

[Music] This is a real chance to use sound to save species from extinction. A lot of these frogs that we’re working with are endangered. They need our support, and sound can be a tool for conservation. The frog that we are looking for is called Electro Ho…

Virality and network effects drive organic growth.

More Articles