Number of Sellers
The number of sellers in a market typically tells us a great deal about the level of
concentration that exists in a market. From neoclassical economics we know that
a single seller is a monopolist, and sets prices in a market, while at the other end
of a continuum is perfect competition, where an unlimited number of sellers
provide a similar product, and price is determined by the market. In the middle
are the theorized oligopoly (3-10 sellers each offering homogeneous products) and
monopolistic competition (multiple sellers offering slightly differentiated products)
market structures (Albarran, 2010a).
In applying this framework to the social media industries, we immediately
find a challenge in that the social media industries�at least in its nascent stage in
the 21st Century�consists of multiple markets that are differentiated by their
individual "products" or what they offer to audiences and advertisers (in a dual
product market). For example, we could begin to classify the broader social media
industries using several sub-markets of activity: