Blog
Notes on the platform economy
Shorter-form commentary between the papers: new findings, method notes, and takes on platform governance and performance in the wild.
Stop Defending the Questions ChatGPT Was Always Going to Take
The chatbot is not killing your Q&A platform. It is amputating the low-value half you should have been trying to shed anyway, and the strategic error is fighting to keep it.
Cutting Your Platform Fee Doesn't Buy You Better Apps. It Buys You More Bad Ones.
When Apple and Google halved their cut for small developers, the wave that followed wasn't hidden talent. A study of both fee cuts finds the fairness move drew a flood of lower-quality, less original apps and left the platform to pay the bill in catalog noise.
Certifying Your Best Listings Quietly Devalues All the Others
The moment a platform stamps a favored few "verified," the unlabeled majority stops looking ordinary and starts looking risky. The badge you gave to 3% can cost the other 97% real revenue.
A More Accurate Rating Can Provoke More Cheating
The backfire has a rule. When a score sets a price, half-cleaning it can raise gaming, because trust climbs faster than the loophole closes; when a score sets a rank, sharpening it is always safe.
Free Beats Paid: Why Giving It Away Grows the Tab
The instinct to wall off free features to protect revenue is backwards. In viewer gifting, gig bidding, delivery, and shopping, the free action is the on-ramp to the paid one.
Your Ratings Do Not Measure Quality. They Measure Who Holds Power.
When the rated side controls the rater's livelihood, your five stars are a fear reading, not a quality signal. Break the retaliation channel or govern on a flattering illusion.
Stop Fixing Your Dashboard. Give Your Data to Someone Who Cannot Lie.
The credibility of your analytics falls as your profit from bending them rises. The fix is to hand the raw numbers to a party with no stake in the answer.
Punish Your Best Users, Not Your Worst: The Enforcement Rule Most Platforms Get Backwards
The same suspension that makes an invested user better makes an uninvested one worse. Build losable status before you enforce, or your penalties will backfire.
When a Rival Platform Enters, One Big Sale Will Not Save You
The complementors most likely to defect are the ones your broad loyalty programs never reach. Here is how to spend your retention budget across food delivery, e-commerce, and home-sharing.
Fake Reviews Aren't a Content Problem. They're a Shape Problem.
Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba all catch fraud by mapping who transacts with whom, not by reading what anyone wrote.
Creator Platforms Don’t Govern Creators. Their Networks Do.
Multi-channel networks capture up to 70% of streamer revenue by telling talent a different story about the algorithm than the one they tell themselves. We call it interpretive arbitrage.
Raise Gig Workers’ Pay Floor. Their Earnings Stay Flat.
New York and Seattle data show delivery platforms neutralize a minimum-pay mandate through three offsetting levers: fee pass-through, tip compression, and task rationing. We call it the Wage Floor Offset.
The Friction Dividend: Why Ride-Hailing Apps Don’t Need to Be Cheaper
A one-week audit of 2,238 matched trips found a 14% price gap between Uber and Lyft, and riders check the other app just 16% of the time. The margin platforms collect when you don’t compare.