But seriously: I've had people on conference calls when they couldn't understand the language, but someone wanted them to see slides. The fact they could join the call (in that case on Skype) definitely made the network more valuable.
You might argue that the fact you can't speak to some of them drops the value per user, and that is true to some extent. But the fact they are on there and attract other people (some of whom you can speak to) adds value for you, too.
Orders of magnitude. Sure, adding someone else in china is in theory worth something. However adding one more friend that I regularly communicate with on a network is worth more to me than every person in China.
PS: For large networks X Log X is probably much closer to reality than X ^2. Just compare the amount of internet bandwidth between NY to California vs the bandwidth between the US and China.
Metcalf's law is not suggesting "The value of the network to any random node within the network." Because that measure is very subjective in the ways you say.
Instead, it's "The total value of the network to all nodes". Because the more people in the network, the higher the probability that the nodes you DO care about are also connected.
But seriously: I've had people on conference calls when they couldn't understand the language, but someone wanted them to see slides. The fact they could join the call (in that case on Skype) definitely made the network more valuable.
You might argue that the fact you can't speak to some of them drops the value per user, and that is true to some extent. But the fact they are on there and attract other people (some of whom you can speak to) adds value for you, too.