Media, Aggregators, and the Link Economy: Strategic Hyperlink Formation in Content Networks

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dellarocas, Chrysanthos; Katona, Zsolt; Rand, William
• 署名单位: Boston University; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2013.1710
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 2360-2379
• 关键词: Media economics; news and journalism; content strategies; network formation; Marketing

摘要

A defining property of the World Wide Web is a content site's ability to place virtually costless hyperlinks to third-party content as a substitute or complement to its own content. Costless hyperlinking has enabled new types of players, usually referred to as content aggregators, to successfully enter content ecosystems, attracting traffic and revenue by hosting links to the content of others. This, in turn, has sparked a heated controversy between content creators and aggregators regarding the legitimacy and costs/benefits of uninhibited free linking. To our knowledge, this work is the first to model the complex interplay between content and links in settings where a set of sites compete for traffic. We develop a series of analytical models that distill how hyperlinking affects the (a) incentives of content nodes to produce quality content versus link to third-party content, (b) profits of the various stakeholders, (c) average quality of content that becomes available to consumers, and (d) impact of content aggregators. Our results provide a nuanced view of the so-called link economy, highlighting both the beneficial consequences and the drawbacks of free hyperlinks for content creators and consumers.