Online Bulletin Boards

English is a useful language to know because many are fluent in it. Many students at Smith College, where I teach, use the Smith dailyjolt because it too can be easily used to communicate with many people. The Smith dailyjolt is a bulletin board on which students can post anonymous comments about anything. (During course selection time they write about their professors, seemingly without taking into account that their professors have access to the dailyjolt too.) The dailyjolt provides separate bulletin boards for many different colleges. I have noticed that many other colleges’ dailyjolts aren’t much used. There are clearly network externalities associated with a web bulletin board. I suspect that Smith students like writing for the Smith dailyjolt because they know that many other students will read and respond to their postings. The dailyjolt at Smith is popular today because it was popular in the past. Similarly, other schools’ dailyjolts are unpopular because few students have ever used them.

The popularity of the Smith dailyjolt provides a lesson for firms marketing goods with network externalities. The key to success results from getting many people to coordinate on your product. Consequently, when marketing goods with network externalities, perception becomes reality. If your new product has network externalities and many people think it will become popular then it has a good chance of actually becoming popular. Remember, people use products with network externalities because they like them, and because they think other people will use them.

www.DrudgeReport.com

The leading Internet news site belongs not to big media but to the eccentric reporter, Matt Drudge. The Drudge Report’s popularity stems from its being the first to break many news stories. Indeed, Drudge was the first to tell the world about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. I’m not exactly sure how the Drudge Report gets all of its scoops, but I suspect that coordination games create a virtuous circle for Drudge.

If you have an interesting story you want widely disseminated over the net, then the Drudge Report is an ideal venue for your story. Consequently, the circular logic that dominates coordination games benefits the Drudge Report. The Drudge Report gets the best scoops because it is popular. But the Drudge Report stays popular only because it often has the best in breaking news.