Platform Innovation™ Weekly Round Up – May 16th

Here’s what we’ve been reading this week.

1. How tech is changing our relationship with strangers goo.gl/dYj5iA

Wired’s Jason Tanz discusses on MSNBC his cover story on platforms and their impact on the “sharing economy.”

2. Airbnb looks beyond flat-sharing to tickets and travel goo.gl/490Ogx

The Financial Times looks at Airbnb’s plans to expand beyond rentals to helping their visitors buy and pay for everything from event tickets to travel — a classic case of platform envelopment in action.

3. Pitfalls of Building the “Uber for XYZ” goo.gl/tgCjLU

This post analyzes some of the failed platforms of the last few years and identifies some of the key pitfalls that new platforms face. Particularly of note is the difficulty of scaling both sides of your platform’s ecosystem at the same time, also known as the chicken-and-egg problem.

4. Uber Learned the Hard Way: Transparency Rules the Sharing Economy goo.gl/wh3iqc

Wired looks at the lessons Uber has learned from the controversy surrounding its surge-pricing policy, highlighting the importance of being transparent with your users. A great lesson in what it takes to properly manage a successful platform’s ecosystem.

Filed under: Platform Innovation | Topics: Airbnb, news, platform thinking, platforms, sharing economy, Uber