Every user added to a network has an exponential effect on the network.
If you have one phone and that’s the only phone that exists, who cares?
If you have a phone and your friend has a phone, it matters. But you can’t do much with it.
If you and 3.8 billion other people have phones. Then a phone becomes one of the most powerful devices known to man.
This is the basic idea behind the network effect.
Ideas are beginning to be driven by network effects earlier and earlier in their formation process. The internet meme is a product of network effects. Someone can combine two photos that communicate an idea, share it with their friends, and a day later a person can be hired, fired, elected, or made a multi-millionaire as a result of that simple image that went viral.
This isn’t going to get smaller or less interesting as time goes on.
The internet is an ocean full of tides, ripples, and tsunamis of human interest and activity.
The more people come online, the more powerful that ocean becomes.
There is an old expression, “A sailor who isn’t afraid of the ocean is a dead sailor.” The idea was meant to communicate that someone who lives among such epic forces must have a healthy respect for their power.
The internet is powerful. It’s exciting. And if you respect its capabilities you can become a magician or a king… There are few limits.
You can weave spells with your words that impact the other side of the globe, you can work to guide and help others in ways that bring thousands to choose you to lead them, you can help millions and reap the economic rewards of doing so.
And we’re just getting started.
These effects can take you to places you never dreamed of.
Learn to appreciate what happens when an idea is empowered by network effects.
How does the local flower shop tap into them? How does the multinational corporation? It’s not a level playing field. But it’s more level than it’s ever been. Because people are looking for something useful to them and their BS meters are unparalleled. So, if you can offer something useful, you’re in.
Yes, you have to learn how to communicate it.
Yes, you have to learn how to package it.
Yes, it has to be all of the annoying things that aren’t the useful idea that’s in your head.
But that’s just because your idea isn’t useful to others until you can fit it into the puzzle of humanity.
So study what’s happening online. Learn how people talk, what they care about, how their struggling. And look into the ideas inside your mind. There are some you’re attached to, some you’re not. Don’t let your attachment get in the way of connecting the dots between what’s in your head and what people are looking for.
Once you’ve found something, then start communicating with people, learning to speak the language of whatever community you’re choosing to serve. And learn to communicate what you have that will impact them in a way they can understand.
Or, reverse engineer it. Simply start communicating. Become an explorer of the Internet Ocean and find an area that strikes your fancy. Learn, and come to a meeting of the minds with the locals. Seek to help and make things better. Practice it.
Get reps in on creating things that are unscalable, but helpful.
Do it enough times and the essence of what you’re doing will show itself. That part will scale.
And little by little, speaking the language of a small group of people on the internet, a gulf, an inlet, or a bay, to continue the analogy, you will start to create ripples that can move across the entire globe.
There are 4.66 billion people on the internet.
That’s a little over half the world population.
We have many billions to go.
Every user added to a network has an exponential effect on the network.
We’re just getting started.
Josh Terry