Social Media and the Network effect? Metcalf’s Law will help more traditional media types gain more insight into the phenomenon of social media and why it is driving visibility.

I just came back from lunch with Frank Fortin. Frank leads communications and marketing initiatives at Massachusetts Medical and blogs at http://frankfortin.wordpress.com. Frank told me how Massachusetts Medical pursued traditional media outlets when communicating their law suit over the doctor ranking system. They found some typical results. However once the news hit the blogosphere, Google rankings and visibility shot through the roof. Association’s members were happy and the Association gained visibility and relevancy.

It makes sense - visibility increases exponentially with the “network effect” described by Metcalf’s Law. I am inundated by information and I wrote and article in 2004 on the topic (focused on enterprise information management – inside the firewall).

For the public web, the search box remains my window to the information and the conversations I access every day across the net. (the database of intentions) I also use Twitter and Facebook and that is how I get insight on the relevancy of content – what are my friends saying?

Next up - perhaps a better “relevancy engine” to filter my results?