The “effect” part of the network effect describes how value increases as more people start using the product.

The Allee effect → The Network Effect Allee Threshold → Tipping Point Carrying capacity → Saturation

A small group of drivers, about 5 percent of Uber’s users, carry most of the load within the rideshare marketplace—riders are numerous but engage less frequently and deeply.

Snapchat’s Stories format—allowing people to broadcast a set of asynchronous photos and videos to their friends—can sit alongside their core photo messaging app, and increase usage. Some photos are better for 1:1 communication and others are better for a broadcast format—Stories allows Snapchat to collect both sets of photos instead of just one.

Dropbox, in the years before its IPO, came to orient itself in a new direction—to focus on highest-value users in the highest-value networks interacting with the highest-value files.

But the Economic network effect states that for networked products, conversion can go up over time as the network grows.

Spread a tool far and wide, and then grow it properly, and it might start to build networks upon networks around the tool.

Another source came from email analytics companies that had access to the emails—and thus receipts—of millions of consumers, and could offer market share metrics down to specific geographies and trip types.

Building a better product is one of the classic levers in the tech industry, but Uber focused much of its effort on targeted bonuses for drivers. Why bonuses? Because for drivers, that was their primary motivation for using the app, and improving their earnings would make them sticky. But these bonuses weren’t just any bonuses—they were targeted at