Platforms operators act as private regulators to increase usage and maximize profits. Their goals depend on the development of the platform: overcoming the chicken-egg problem early on requires attracting platform participants while quality becomes more important later on. Private regulators...

Platforms operators act as private regulators to increase usage and maximize profits. Their goals depend on the development of the platform: overcoming the chicken-egg problem early on requires attracting platform participants while quality becomes more important later on. Private regulators...

We study the market for applications on Facebook, the dominant platform for social networking and make use of a rule change by Facebook by which high-quality applications were rewarded with further opportunities to engage users. We find that the change led to quality being a more important...

We study the market for apps on Facebook, the dominant social networking platform, and make use of a rule change by Facebook by which highly engaging apps were rewarded with further opportunities to engage users. The rule change led to new applications with significantly higher user ratings...

Today, many platforms rely on contributions by users to create value. While they play an increasing role in today's digital economy, little is known about how dominant user-driven platforms emerge and what determines the production of content here. We aim to extend our understanding of this...