Two-sided user generated content platforms on the Internet : optimal strategies for growth
Author(s)
Kelm, James (James Samuel)
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Other Contributors
Sloan School of Management.
Advisor
Catherine Tucker.
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Two-sided platforms aggregating user generated content have become increasingly common on the Internet, as highlighted by the recent emergence of two knowledge markets connecting user submitted questions with user generated answers. An experiment with marketing messages was run on Google to determine which side of a knowledge market offered stronger benefits. Advertising performed poorly on both sides, but led to an unexpected finding: site content, once indexed by search engines, resulted in an order of magnitude more traffic and more user conversions than search engine advertising. This finding suggested that optimal growth strategies for user generated content properties on the Internet focus on maximizing content reach, increasing production of content on the site, and acquiring new content.
Description
Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 20).
Date issued
2007Department
Sloan School of ManagementPublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Sloan School of Management.