Robert Wright on Facebook history; also see The Social Diavlog for a Robert Wright interview with The Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick
But I am saying that to even think about Zuckerberg’s role clearly we have to first meet his real-life co-star, who, alas, went unnamed in the movie.
The co-star’s name sounds exotic because it comes from a foreign language, economics: “positive network externalities.” In English it means that the more members a network has, the more valuable membership in the network is. The reason you would join Facebook rather than some upstart rival is that Facebook has so many members that the people you’d like to “friend” are more likely to be found there than on the rival site.
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