Publications

February 2000 (Revised October 2000)
Case

Open Market, Inc.: The E-Commerce Wars

By: James I. Cash Jr., Janis Lee Gogan, Michael Haselkorn and Mani Subramani

Continues the story of Open Market, Inc., a company founded in 1994 to support electronic commerce on the Internet. Despite a very successful initial public offering, the firm had reached a growth plateau, and the management team was considering several strategic... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Product Development; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry

March 2008 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Facebook

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Aaron Smith, David Chen and Brian Feinstein

As Facebook topped one billion monthly users in October 2012, the online social network continued to face questions about how best to monetize its surging traffic. The company could invest further in new advertising products, which represented the majority of the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Profit; Open Source Distribution; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry

March 1998 (Revised November 1999)
Case

USA TODAY Online

By: John A. Deighton and Anthony St. George

How should USA TODAY use its brand franchise to build a publishing business on the World Wide Web? Advertising Age described the first steps as "a case study in how not to do it," but by the end of 1997 USA TODAY Online is the most visited news site on the Web. Now the... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Design; Profit; Revenue; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Information Industry

November 2001 (Revised January 2002)
Case

Monster.com: Success Beyond the Bubble

In 2001, Monster.com was an Internet site that, among other things, connected individuals seeking jobs with organizations wanting to hire. Its substitutes included help wanted classified advertising in newspapers. Monster was one of the few Internet companies that had... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Business Growth and Maturation; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Price Bubble; Growth and Development Strategy; Employment Industry

02 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

Do Online Dating Platforms Help Those Who Need Them Most?

we already know. The functionality of these businesses is clear, but their immense popularity can be perplexing. After all, people managed to get married and maintain friendships for eons before the Web ever existed. So, are these virtual... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology

May 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Improving Repurchase Rates at zulily

By: Thales Teixeira and Sarah McAra

In February 2015, zulily cofounder and CEO Darrell Cavens faced a major challenge in his business, a Seattle-based daily deals site that catered to moms. The more he spent to acquire new customers, the less he retained them in the form of repeat purchases. This was an... View Details

Keywords: Zulily; Repurchase; E-commerce; Online Shopping; Fashion; Customer Relationship Management; Internet and the Web; Digital Marketing; Customer Satisfaction; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry; Seattle

October 2016
Case

Triangulate: Stay, Pivot or Exit?

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Shikhar Ghosh and Christopher Payton

Sunil Nagaraj, Triangulate's founder had spent a few years trying to launch a dating application that matched users based on their behavior on social media. Based on input from advisors, the company changed its focus from a B2B site to a B2C dating site with a unique... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage; Pivot; Two Sided Markets; Business Model; Business Exit or Shutdown; Product Launch; Venture Capital; Failure; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Social and Collaborative Networks; United States; North America

August 2003 (Revised September 2003)
Case

Tower Software

Tower Software (TS) is a publicly traded corporation engaged in multiple facets of the computer software business. Its flagship product, TS SERVE, is a successful proprietary network operating system. TS also develops and sells applications software for word... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Product Launch; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry

December 2019
Case

Steemit: A New Social Media?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Alexander White and Karen Elterman

This case discusses the alternative social media site Steemit, including the principles it was founded on in 2016 and the challenges it faced in 2019. Steemit was a blockchain-based platform that aimed to differentiate itself from other social media companies by... View Details

September 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Angie's List: Ratings Pioneer Turns 20

By: Robert J. Dolan and Ayelet Israeli

In 1995, before people “googled” or “yelped,” Angela Hicks (HBS, 2000) was establishing her Angie’s List as a pioneer in the accumulation and dissemination of consumer rating information. Hicks focused on the home repair and maintenance market and, as she put it,... View Details

May–June 2011
Article

The Uninvited Brand

By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery

Brands rushed into social media, viewing social networks, video sharing, online communities, and microblogging sites as the panacea to diminishing returns for traditional brand building routes. But, as more branding activity moves to the web, marketers are confronted... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Brands; Brand Building; Brand Management; Digital Marketing; Advertising Campaigns; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Social Media; Advertising Industry; Consumer Products Industry

July 1998
Supplement

Bell Atlantic in Union City

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter

In this pioneering project to wire a school for the Internet and put computers in students' homes, Bell Atlantic combined its need for a beta site for a technology trial with the school reform efforts of the Union City, New Jersey public schools, under the leadership... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Social Enterprise; Internet and the Web; Education; Business and Community Relations; Education Industry; New Jersey

02 Nov 2010
First Look

First Look: November 2, 2010

the new content generators? Or were they providing a new stream of audience directly to new sites that needed to create innovative models to monetize their content? As more delivery models were on the horizon (location-based breaking... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2011 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Brightcove, Inc. in 2007

By: Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie

Brightcove, a technology and services provider to content owners in the Internet television field, aimed to become a media distribution company in its own right. On October 30, 2006, it relaunched its Website—and, in effect, its business. With its new, consumer-facing... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Diversification; Digital Platforms; Business Strategy; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Distribution; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

2016
Working Paper

The Empirical Economics of Online Attention

By: Andre Boik, Shane Greenstein and Jeffrey Prince

In several markets, firms compete not for consumer expenditure but instead for consumer attention. We model and characterize how households allocate their scarce attention in arguably the largest market for attention: the Internet. Our characterization of household... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Competition; Behavior; Resource Allocation; Household; Cognition and Thinking