First, Metcalfe’s Law is a pretty simple idea:  The value of a network is equal to the square of the number of nodes in that network. The “value” is essentially the number of connections there are as a result of the increase of nodes. 

An example is telephones.  One telephone is basically worthless when there are no other telephones.  If there are two telephones the value of this network becomes 4.  2 phones have 4 possible connections.  Telephone A calls B and B answers.  A calls B and B doesn’t answer.  B calls A and A answers.  B calls A and A doesn’t answer. 

It isn’t that simple for fantasy sports but it is still relevant.  Currently a typical Rotisserie league has 8-12 teams.  Within that league you have a variety of interactions with other members.  You can trade with any of the other members of the league.  You can post messages for all members of the league to view.  You play games ( in head to head leagues) against one of the player each week.  The way fantasy leagues are currently set up are like mini social networks, where your network consists of only those players in your league. 

The problem is that there are millions of people not in your league that you have no connection to.  The value of my network in my fantasy baseball league on Yahoo! is 10^2, or 100.* Yahoo! keeps the other 999,990 users basically invisible to me.  I gain very little value by being a part of a 1,000,000 person network because my connections are limited to my league only. 

You can see the problem here.

To be fair, Yahoo! and other fantasy leaders have made some steps in harnessing the value of the entire network.  I have access as a fantasy player to free agency trends in the entire fantasy network.  I can see which players are currently being picked up off the waiver wires (fantasy equivalent to unclaimed free agents) the most by other users in Yahoo!.  I can post to community message boards to get advice on trades (extremely inefficient).  But I still have no direct connection to any of these users. 

What Yahoo! is currently offering in terms of connections with members outside your league is extremely limited.  What we need is a fantasy product built on a social platform.  One that understands the value, and harnesses the value of the endless number of connections that can be made between fantasy users not in the same league.

Hopefully this seems so obvious to you that you’re thinking, “Why hasn’t someone done this yet”.  Well, I’m still working on it.

*This isn’t exactly true because unlike with phones there are far more ways to communicate in an online network.  Direct mail, trades, message board posts, wall posts etc…