Two-sided user generated content platforms on the Internet : optimal strategies for growth

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.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Kelm, James (James Samuel)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Catherine Tucker.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39524

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39524