流量分发视阈下的社交媒体平台竞争——从“去中心化社交”到“中心化媒体”

Competition of Social Media Platform Based on Flow Distribution——From“Decentralized Social”to“Centralized Media”

本文提出,“流量分发”是社交媒体平台的一种重要竞争手段。商业实践中流量分发策略被视为平台获取和留存高价值用户的利器。基于社交媒体平台“产消合一”特性,本文从消费和生产维度将用户划分为四种典型类型,并建立数理模型,分析了双寡头情境下不同流量分发策略对异质用户参与决策以及平台利润的影响。研究发现,在成熟市场中,平台倾向于与竞争对手采取相同分发策略。当高需用户的分享收益足够高时,所有平台都将采取去中心化分发策略;否则,所有平台都将选择中心化分发策略。比较静态分析结果表明,现金补贴水平的提升多数情况下有利于采取去中心化分发策略的平台,而技术赋能水平对竞争均衡的影响则取决于用户分享收益水平。基于抖音和快手的竞争案例分析进一步发现,随着市场成熟度上升和商业化进程加快,平台用户主体从“创作者”转变为“观看者”,平台定位逐渐从“去中心化社交”进化为“中心化媒体”。本文的研究为制定社交媒体平台竞争策略与明确政府对这类平台企业的监管方向提供了重要启示。

The business model of the platform economy is completely different from that of the traditional economy.The core of the platform economy is users,and the commercial transaction system built around users is the basis of its profit.For social media platforms characterized by user-generated content,how to reasonably allocate flow resources for different users’content is an important issue related to user experience and market competitiveness.However,most of the existing literature focuses on pricing-based platform competition,and the discussion on how the flow distribution strategy affects platform competition is scarce.This paper builds a mathematical model of social media platforms in a duopoly situation,characterizes the attributes of users as prosumers,and discusses the competition results of platforms under different combinations of flow distribution strategies.Results show that,in the mature market,platforms tend to adopt the same strategy as competitors.Only when the sharing value of high-valuation users is large enough,the platform will adopt the decentralized distribution strategy.Otherwise,the platform will choose a centralized distribution strategy.In addition,in most cases,the increase of the monetary subsidies is conducive to the decentralized platform,and the impact of technology empowerment on competition equilibrium depends on the user’s sharing value.Based on the case analysis of Kwai and TikTok,it is further pointed out that with the maturity of the market and the acceleration of the commercialization process of platforms,the platform positioning will gradually evolve from“decentralized social”to“centralized media”.This paper makes several theoretical contributions.First,this paper is the first to put forward the“flow distribution”as a new platform competitive means and conducts an economic analysis of it,thus enriching the platform competition theory.Second,this paper proposes two typical flow distribution strategies from the perspective of strategic tools,and investigates the influencing factors of platform flow distribution design,thus extending relevant literature on the application of digital technology.Third,existing literature on social media mainly focuses on its social network attributes,and pays little attention to its platform enterprise attributes.This paper enriches theoretical literature on social media platforms by investigating the competition mechanism of social media platforms as enterprises.This paper also has several practical implications.First,when designing a flow distribution strategy,the platform should“adapt to the time”,that is,keenly observing the core needs of the user group in different stages.Second,platforms should realize that“convergent evolution”is the inevitable trend of competition.As the market continues to mature,centralization strategy will become a common choice.Finally,when social media platforms gradually evolve from“decentralized social”to“centralized media”,the regulatory focus of the government on the platform needs to make adaptive changes.