David Evans’ paper, Markets with Two-Sided Platforms, discusses how these two-sided platform businesses serve distinct groups of customers and need each other in some way. They provide these customers a real or virtual meeting place, and they facilitate the interactions between members of these customer groups. They essentially act as intermediaries between the two groups […]

Perhaps not much of a surprise to those in the know, but Bloomberg announced this morning that it is buying the beleaguered Business Week property for somewhere between $2 and $5 million dollars, or the price of a nice apartment on the Upper East Side. Business Week is a media asset owned by McGraw Hill […]

The cable industry appears to be struggling to come up with a targeted advertising platform to compete with the internet according to an article in the Wall St. Journal on the 27th of May, Cable Industry Weighs Its Approach to Targeted Ads.
Here’s why this is important. The online advertising industry has demonstrated the […]

Welcome to the 171st version of the Carnival of the Mobilists, hosted by The Catalyst Code.
With competition in the Smartphone space getting so fierce, so fast, Mobile Stance thought it would be a good idea to take a step back and take a hard look as to whether App World has real legs or not, […]

I’ve had a number of interesting conversations this week with a variety of people about their take on the future of social networks. My discussions all devolved to one central question: will there be massive consolidation in this area down to the “Big Two” (and which two will that be) or will a thousand flowers […]

The latest comScore data shows that the time people are spending on social networking sites is increasing – to nearly 3 hours a month on Facebook and roughly 4.5 hours a month for MySpace. This information reveals several interesting insights. First, for those non believers, it should be abundantly clear that social networks are getting […]

Apple’s recent unveiling of a software developer kit (SDK) for its iPhone is further confirmation that this company is in serious contention to catalyze the mobile ecosystem and disrupt the operator-centric model that many believe has stymied the growth of mobile-phone based businesses in the United States and much of Europe. The SDK has […]

Steve Jobs has taken a lot of flak since his speech at MacWorld on Tuesday. Of greatest concern is whether Apple’s streak of luck in the digital media space has run its course. The content providers that make its iTunes store valuable and get people to buy those pricey iPods have been bailing in […]

Nokia’s gusty move to allow free music downloads is being reported as a major shakeup in the business model for digital music since the downloaded music becomes a permanent part of a music collectors’ library – and can even be burned to a DVD or stored onto a PC. “Comes With Music” is being lauded […]

The power struggle for the digital music ecosystem continues. NBC just announced that it wasn’t going to renew its agreement with Apple to sell its digital videos—about 40 percent of the iTunes downloads—through the iTunes Store. That follows Vivendi’s similar decision last month. NBC reportedly wants to be able to control its pricing and […]