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: Craigslist works as a two-sided market offering people to offer and search for various services and goods. The market participants can be both businesses as well as private individuals.
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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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How they do it: YouTube’s platform features a set of key stakeholders: Their users, creators, rights holders of music videos and copyrighted content, and advertisers. Reconciliating stakeholder needs in this ecosystem or multi-sided market is a key challenge for YouTube.
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How they do it: AWS has a markeplace for cloud computing applications. In a digital catalag with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors, users can find software to test, buy and deploy on AWS.
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How they do it: Google’s search engine operates as a two-sided market, connecting websites and users who search for websites. Google does not provide any content but utilizes data to make sure that users with a specific search query find the website which can best answer their need / search. It also utilizes the data to allow website owners to target the user’s they want to attract on their websites.
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