A two-sided market facilitates interactions between multiple interdependent groups of customers. The value of the platform increases as more groups or as more individual members of each group are using it. The two sides usually come from disparate groups, e.g., businesses and private interest groups.
How they do it: In the Amazon Kindle store, publishers, authors and other rights-owners can sell their content to Kindle users. Hence, Amazon is just providing the marketplace but does not have to provide the content itself.
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How they do it: Humble Bundle doesn’t develop the games offered on its website itself but rather acts as a marketplace operator. On the one side, there are developers, which provide their games to be included in the offering and on the other side are the customers. Developer’s revenue is directly linked to the success of their game on the website.
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How they do it: Especially the hiring functions in LinkedIn function as a two-sided market. The value for both recruiters and candidates increase with the amount of jobs and candidates on the platform.
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How they do it: American Express facilitates interactions between two groups of clients, namely the vendors (businesses accepting credit card payments) as well as the end customers (customers purchasing goods and services with their credit card).
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How they do it: The experience on the platform for the individual user increases with the amounts of interactions he can have with friends, peers, brands and other associations.
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