Content or Community? A Digital Business Strategy for Content Providers in the Social Age
Authors: Oestreicher-Singer, Gal; Zalmanson, Lior
Journal: MIS Quarterly (2013)
DOI: 10.25300/misq/2013/37.2.12
The content industry has been undergoing a tremendous transformation in the last two decades. We focus in this paper on recent changes in the form of social computing. Although the content industry has implemented social computing to a large extent, it has done so from a techno-centric approach in which social features are viewed as complementary rather than integral to content. This approach does not capitalize on users’ social behavior in the website and does not answer the content industry’s need to elicit payment from consumers. We suggest that both of these objectives can be achieved by acknowledging the fusion between content and community, making the social experience central to the content website’s digital business strategy. We use data from Last.fm, a site offering both music consumption and online community features. The basic use of Last.fm is free, and premium services are provided for a fixed monthly subscription fee. Although the premium services on Last.fm are aimed primarily at improving the content consumption experience, we find that willingness to pay for premium services is strongly associated with the level of community participation of the user. Drawing from…