An economic framework for Information Platform

Information platform is managed by IPSPs (Information Platform Service Providers) who aggregate and compile information from a large pool of source websites supported by Source Service Providers (SSPs). While information platform makes it much more convenient for users to browse information, there exists such an economic dilemma: Information platform may send extra user clicks to source websites (thus increasing SSPs´ advertising revenue), some users get stuck on the information platform since information excerpts are presented. In this case, SSPs tend to accuse IPSPs of intellectual property infringement. To boost the development of information platform, it is better to make IPSPs and SSPs allies rather than enemies. In this paper, we propose a business framework which involves a single IPSP and multiple SSPs. Within the framework, IPSP gets paid for the user clicks sent from information platform to the source websites and SSPs donate certain amount of information to information platform. We formulate the framework as a twostage game, assuming that IPSP and SSPs are selfish and rational players who target at utility maximization. We use backward induction to get Nash Equilibrium of the game and give the best strategies for IPSP and SSPs. The numerical results have shown that the enhancement of information quality provided by source websites and increased non-material profit of information platform will improve IPSP´s utility. In addition, the price charged by IPSP for user clicks and aggregated information contributed by SSPs are also affected by these factors.