Research On Social Networking Sites Business Model

With the faster pace of informatization, the traditional and monotonous functions canhardly meet the need of a definitely new one-stop network platform, which includes gettinginformation, developing relationship and doing entertainment. Social networking sites surelysatisfy this fresh demand. In recent years, social networking sites have been becoming theabsolute focus of the internet market and new favorite of web users.The forms of social networking sites are nearly consummate after a few years’development. So the competition among these sites turns to comprehensive comparison oftheir business models from the past contrast of advanced technology and senior products. Butbecause the operation of social networking site business model and their expansion ofbusiness is lack of balance, there are some difficulties and obstacles they have to face in frontof their further development. To break up this bottleneck, the deficiencies of business modelsmust be paid more attention and the pivotal problems must be handled seriously. As a result,in order to make a clear plan for future development, these enterprises have pressingrequirements of research on business model, with which they can make a comparison and takethe successful experience for reference. So it is extremely necessary for the research on socialnetworking site business model.In this paper, the domestic and foreign research results are explicit which is based on theacademic research on business model and literature analysis. At the same time, diversedescriptions of the concept of business model from different scholars, and compare thevarious ideas of business model elements with each other. Then a brief introduction of thedefinition, characteristic and development of social networking site is given. As a summary,the concept of social networking site is presented. Three main types of social networking sitewhich including general type, vertical type and micro-blogging type are introduced. After that,with theoretical system of business model and factual situation of Facebook, it represents thesituation and feature of social networking site business model operational mechanism fromthree levels and eight elements of business model. On this basis, it chooses Facebook andSina Weibo as research objects, to make an objective description of factual operationmechanism of social networking site through the methods of case study and comparativeanalysis. The key problems are found in the aspects of website user number, product core competence and revenue structure.Finally, there are some suggestions for perfecting the social networking site businessmodel combine with the new development trend of social networking site. With the goodwish of healthy development of social networking site, this paper may be able to provideseveral references in the future.