Authors: Yufeng Wang Jing Tang Qun Jin Jianhua Ma
Publish Date: 2014/07/03
Volume: 70, Issue: 3, Pages: 1297-1317
Abstract
In contrast to the huge popularity of Mobile Social Network MSN services not sufficient attention has been reserved to the dynamics of revenue streams and business models in MSN In this paper we investigate how a twosided market TSM formulation can be used to provide insight for the problem above from the perspective of MSN platform Intuitively MSN service platform could be described as a twosided market in which the critical feature is indirect value flow indirect network externality one/both sides of the market benefit from increasing adoption and/or consumption of the other side For instance participants like consumers and the third service providers or advertisers are the “two sides” of MSN platform In this paper our contributions are threefold First we thoroughly characterize the economic features of MSN as TSM including mobility network externalities and herd effect as well as long tail property Second we provide the various revenue streams within the framework of TSM including advertising subscription and transactions and characterize the basic components of general business model in MSN Finally the free plus premium Freemium business model in MSN is formally analyzed Specifically we quantitatively characterize the relationship of participation levels among free and premium users as well as service providers and illustrate the mutual enhancement among those participants And moreover Freemium is theoretically compared with the traditional business model with no free users NF model The numerical results show that in Freemium the participation levels of premium users and service providers as well as the profit of MSN platform always exceed the corresponding terms in NF model
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