Content-Hosting Platforms: Discovery, Membership, Or Both?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Casner, Ben; Teh, Tat-How
• 署名单位: Nanyang Technological University
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.70029
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: User-Generated Content; COMPETITION; media; aggregators; search

摘要

Our model classifies platforms in the creator economy -for example, Youtube, Patreon, and Twitch-into three business models: pure discovery (helping consumers search for creators); pure membership (enabling direct creator-consumer monetization); and hybrid (combining both). Creators respond to platforms' decisions by choosing their content design along a broad-niche spectrum, trading off between viewership size and per-viewer monetization. With a monopoly platform, moving from pure discovery to hybrid increases profit while inducing a more niche content design; moving from pure membership to hybrid can reduce platform profit while inducing a broader content design. We show how intense platform competition reverses these trade-offs.