Conventional wisdom seems to claim that, by lowering the cost of distribution and by making search easier for consumer, the introduction of the Internet is likely to intensify price competition. This paper intends to challenge this view by asking: When and how is the Internet likely to decrease...

This paper studies the competition between Web 2.0 communities in a game theoretic framework. We model three important features of these institutions: (i) firms' content is usually user-generated; (ii) consumers' content preferences are governed by local network effects, and (iii) consumers have...