I’ve been fascinated by discussions of networks of networks for quite a long time, likely since 2003 whenI started paying attention to them.
Fred’s post today sparked a memory of one discussion in 2004. Here are some links I just came across as I went back to read some of the threads.
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2005/09/web-2.cfm
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2005/09/reeds_law.html
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2005/10/rethinking_reed.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20040803090232/http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2004/07/measuring_media.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20040806011746/http://www.pacificavc.com/blog/2004/07/08.html#a651
http://web.archive.org/web/20040806122844/http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/07/12/cost_per_influence.php
http://web.archive.org/web/20040803003823/http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_07_10.html#007472
There are links in all of these posts to other related posts–definitely check them out and the comments. Reading all of these will likely take an hour or so, but if your startup can benefit from its own community or network effects, these are really valuable for sparking your thoughts.