PLATFORM REVOLUTION
HOW PLATFORM ARE CHANGING COMMERCE
Among 22 of the most famous global brands, 13 are platforms.
The global economy is relatively balanced, the platform economy is not: North America has the most platform firms
Platform definition
Is open, allowing regulated participation
Actively promotes interactions among different partners in a multi-sided market
Nexus of rules and architecture
They beat pipelines by:
eliminating gatekeepers
unlocking new sources of value creation
using data-based tools to create community feedback loops
inverting the firm
NETWORK EFFECTS
Scaling network effects
Negative network effects
Other growth-building tools
Four kinds of network effects
Demand economies of scale
Metcalfe's Law
Frictionless entry
Side switching
avoided through
curation
Positive and negative same-side network effects
Positive and negative cross-side network effects
LAUNCH
How to solve the chicken and egg problem
Reducing the friction
Paying customers to use the service
Users commitment
Positive feed-back loops
Platform marketing
The incumbent's advantage
Eight strategies to beat the chicken-or-egg problem
The follow-the-rabbit strategy
The piggyback strategy
The seeding strategy
The marquee strategy
The single-side strategy
The producer evangelism strategy
The big-bang adoption strategy
The micromarket strategy
Staging value creation
Designing the platform to attract one set of users
Simultaneous on-boarding
MONETIZATION
WAYS TO MONETIZE
Charging for access
Charging for enhanced access
Transaction fee
Charging for enhanced curation
WHOM SHOULD YOU CHARGE?
FROM FREE TO FEE
OPENNESS
Definition of openness
Pros and cons of innovation
Facebook's choice
Variant patterns of openness
Licensing Model
Joint Venture Model
Proprietary model
Shared Model
Developer participation
Core developers
Extension developer
Data Aggregators
METRICS
Steps: from measuring customer retention to measuring the conversion of active users to paying customers
Metrics during the start-up phase
Platform metrics need to measure the rate of interaction success and the factors that contribute to it
Liquidity
Matching quality
Trust
Metrics during the growth phase
Producer-to-consumer ratio
Frequency of producer participation
Metrics during the maturity phase
Drive innovation, have a high signal-to-noise ratio, facilitate resource allocation