Launching a platform is not a simple job, we have seen this with the chicken and egg paradox and all the strategies and tactics to overcome it. Unfortunately, once the platform is launched we are again not faced with a simple entity to manage. Platforms are based on a balance between the sides, between the work that the platform does and the work that customers do with their various roles. The platform provider's task is then to manage the platform in its maturity phase. The first aspect we want to address in relation to this issue is the customers that get on the platform, whether they are on the demand or supply side, asking-for or offering something in the platform world. We know that we need many of them in order to activate network externalities and reach a sufficient critical mass to start growing...but is quantity the only driver? Let me tell you a story, that of an Italian platform that has achieved great results across Europe, I'm talking about BeMyEye. BeMyEye was founded by Gianluca Petrelli in 2011, as it often happens starting from a simple observation on a daily situation. In those months Gianluca made a commercial agreement with some American supermarkets for the promotion of an Italian olive oil. He wondered if the money spent to access a specific position on the customer shelf or on posters was well spent. He knew that, being on another continent, it was virtually impossible to check if the agreements were actually being respected. Everything changed when he realized that many people were in that same moment in those supermarkets and could easily send him a picture with their smartphone to show if and how the agreements had been broken. From this simple consideration he created BeMyEye, the platform that allows companies to give small tasks, related to the retail world, that can be solved with a photo or a similar action by anyone who wants to receive a small amount of money back. The demand side is companies, the supply side is eyes...those of whom want to accomplish at least one of these tasks. BeMyEye is now a leader in its sector in Europe. They created an established network of customers on the demand side. And here emerges a key point of the platform's maturity stage. What would happen if tomorrow BeMyEye was downloaded by millions of users, maybe concentrated in a specific geographical area, let's say for example Milan? They would probably find an almost useless platform within a very short time, because there might be no tasks for everyone. Moreover this might create asymmetries and malfunctioning also on the suppliers’ side. The same company might see the mission launched in Milan immediately fulfilled while a similar mission launched in other less populated areas such as Capri, might take much longer time to complete or even remain incomplete. Such a situation would heavily affect the credibility of the service offered by BeMyEye. This example allows us to highlight two things. The first is that platforms are not all the same. A service like BeMyEye has specific characteristics, similar to other cases like BlaBlaCar, but completely different from others, like eBay for example. First of all, there is a physical geographical dimension to the platform, even though it is a digital service. A company might require hundreds of missions of the same type, but scattered across the country, so the presence of eyes in large cities, but also in smaller towns, becomes crucial. Second, there is a temporal nature of the service. The match must necessarily take place in a reasonable amount of time. This is not true for all platforms, but it allows us to see how variables such as the physical size of the service, or being based on durable goods (like Airbnb rooms) or one-shot services (like BlaBla Car or BeMyEye), have significant implications on the platform management. The second thing we see, and it's a fundamental point, is related to the balance between the two sides. It is clear that each platform must have a certain type of balance between the two sides, but this case tells us how it is also necessary to choose, at least partially, who goes on one of the two sides. In other words, in addition to the quantity of customers on a side, it is also important to consider its quality. Some actors are more valuable to the platform because they possess certain characteristics, which in the case of BeMyEye is mainly geographical their location. Quality, at a certain point in the growth of a platform, can become more important than quantity and it is up to the platform provider to understand this and implement concrete actions to manage the balance. In the case of BeMyEye, the company decided never to do a generalist marketing campaign to directly increase the number of Eyes without control. They, instead, activated Facebook ads in a spot way, in the areas where new Eyes are needed. Similar dynamics happen in many platforms. An interesting case is that of Friendz. We saw them as a case to explain the chicken and egg paradox. Firendz asks users to take photos of products and to post them on social networks to do micro-influencing for brands which pay for the service. In this case, the quality of the photo is a crucial variable. On the one hand there is a filter, managed by the staff that controls the photos. Still, on the other hand they work to increase the quality of their providers. They developed a process - based on non-branded campaigns - that helps users, through a gamified mechanism to constantly improve the quality of their photos. We conclude by saying that there is not a single answer to the dilemma quantity VS quality, but the two strategies are often followed over time. A focus on quantity, often combined with a mechanism - such as feedback or filters at the entrance - aimed at creating a minimum level of quality, is useful in the early stages of the life of a platform, to reach the critical mass and begin to grow by overcoming the chicken and egg paradox. At the same time, a focus on quality can be useful in the maturity phase, even taking on different forms: Quality as a good mix: making an assessment that allows you to understand if adding someone to one of the two sides creates confusion, leading into the paradox of choice, or increases the perceived value from the other side. For example, avoiding adding a pizzeria to a food delivery platform when there are other 10 similar pizzerias in the area, but instead favoring a sushi restaurant if there are none. Quality as the right one: as in the case of BeMyEye, looking for the perfect customers to keep the match between the two sides balanced, in that case on the basis of geographical location. Third, quality as a process: as in the case of Friendz with gamification, going to create an experience in the platform that allows those who go there to reach a higher level of quality in the activity they do.
