Here’s some new evidence that David P. Reed was right:

While growth is slowing at most top Internet sites, it is skyrocketing at sites focused on social networking, blogging and local information.

New Trends In Online Traffic, Visits to Sites for Blogging, Local Information and Social Networks Drive Web Growth, By Leslie Walker, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, April 4, 2006; Page D01

What Reed was right about was Reed’s Law, which postulates that the value of a network in which groups of users can form and communicate increases not just according to the number of users (N, or Sarnoff’s Law), nor even according to the square of users (N^2, or Metcalfe’s Law), rather according to 2^N.

What this means to the users is that broadcast content is no longer king, unlike in radio, TV, newspapers, or magazines. Sheer size is no longer queen, as in telephone or electronic mail. Groups rule, as in web pages, blogs, wikis, FOAFs, and P2P file transfer.

There aren’t many media other than the Internet where groups can form at all sizes from tiny to large and communicate without their members getting in each others’ way. Ham radio is a historical example, but it has never had many users. Teenagers use instant messages on telephones for similar purposes, but group size is limited, and poor input devices limit length and content of messages.

Groups using unmediated communications to talk about whatever they want with whoever they want, with pictures and movies. Hm, could this have broader social implications?

-jsq