firms competing for consumer attention and advertiser dollars. The last two decades of online platform competition … model innovations, and cross-platform rivalry. The palpable threat of displacement prevents online platforms from taking … their customers for granted. The history of online platform competition also provides empirical refutation of the …

This article is about a type of business that connects distinct groups of customers on a "multi-sided platform." Such … significant web-based businesses such as eBay, Facebook, and Google are multi-sided. Multi-sided platform businesses must account …

groups of customers who need each other in some way, and the core business of the two-sided platform is to provide a common … between the two sides of the platform. As a matter of theory, for example, profit-maximizing prices may entail below …

other group for a variety of reasons that we explore. The platform helps these customers get together in many ways and … thereby creates value for these customers that they could not readily obtain without the coordination provided by the platform …

Market power on each side of a multisided platform, whether in the form of increasing prices or decreasing quality, is … business model, and competition, result in the platform allowing one type of customers to participate in the platform for free … by the participants on the platform as well as have heightened focus on non-price competition when the participation for …