Google+ failed as a networked product even though it had nearly 300 million active users at some point and was promoted and integrated into all other major product categories of Google like its homepage, YouTube, Photos, and the rest of its ecosystem.

This shows even top business strategists at Google don’t quite understand how networked products should be launched and executed to have a chance of succeeding.

Network effect is a business defensibility strategy (or as Warren Buffett puts it: a business moat) that once achieved in a product can cause an almost winner-take-all scenario.

Network effect means as the number of users of a platform increases, the value of the product/service will also increase for each user.

Some examples include the telephone, credit cards, PayPal, eBay, App Store, WhatsApp, Social Media Apps, Tinder, and Uber…

Andrew Chen has developed a theory of all the major challenges on the way of launching, scaling, and succeeding with a networked product and strategies to tackle each challenge in different phases of execution.

This was a master class in business/product strategy!

Happy reading! 📙

Notes on the next book, straight to you