Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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Marketplaces and two-sided platforms

Business models

Businesses that make money by matching two groups and taking a cut; economics and practice are both well covered here.

Books 9Experts 2Recommenders 7

Start here

  1. The Perfect StoreAdam Cohen, 2002
  2. Platform RevolutionGeoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary, 2016
  3. MatchmakersDavid S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee, 2016
Information RulesInformation Rules
T1 Information Rules
Carl Shapiro, Hal R. Varian · 1998
Open LibraryGoodreads

Economics for information goods: pricing, versioning, lock-in and network effects.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Tim O’Reilly

MatchmakersMatchmakers
T1 Matchmakers
David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee · 2016
Open LibraryGoodreads

How multi-sided platforms such as card networks get both sides on board at once.

Platform RevolutionPlatform Revolution
T1 Platform Revolution
Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary · 2016
Open LibraryGoodreads

How platforms create value by matching groups, unlike linear pipeline businesses.

Recommended by: Reid Hoffman

The Long TailThe Long Tail
T2 The Long Tail
Chris Anderson · 2006
Open LibraryGoodreads

Without shelf limits, sales of many niche products add up to rival the hits.

Recommended by: Jim Collins, Ev Williams, Jack Ma and 1 other

The Business of PlatformsThe Business of Platforms
T2 The Business of Platforms
Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer, David B. Yoffie · 2019
Open LibraryGoodreads

Innovation platforms and transaction platforms, and what each needs to succeed.

The Cold Start ProblemThe Cold Start Problem
T2 The Cold Start Problem
Andrew Chen · 2021
Open LibraryGoodreads

How to launch a network product that is worthless until enough people use it.

Recommended by: Reid Hoffman

The Perfect StoreThe Perfect Store
T3 The Perfect Store
Adam Cohen · 2002
Open LibraryGoodreads

eBay: the cleanest early case of a pure marketplace take rate.

Recommended by: Ev Williams

Platform ScalePlatform Scale
T3 Platform Scale
Sangeet Paul Choudary · 2015
Open LibraryGoodreads

Designing the interaction that a platform is actually built around.

Modern MonopoliesModern Monopolies
T3 Modern Monopolies
Alex Moazed, Nicholas L. Johnson · 2016
Open LibraryGoodreads

Practitioner account of how platform businesses capture a transaction.

More business models

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