Exploring the Essence of Internet Platform Economy

Platform economy is the most important feature of economic industry of the Internet era. The main feature is that the Internet platform companies will idle resources through the Internet and multilateral market integration, which greatly reduces the transaction cost, and further spawns the economic subject differing from that under the guidance of traditional enterprises, as well as a large number of innovative behavior emerge. This paper first points out the emergence, characteristics and development status of Internet platform economy, and introduces the important role of Internet platform in China and even the global economy. Then, the essence of Internet platform economy is revealed through the literature review of platform and platform economy. This paper proposes that the essence of platform economy is to solve the transaction costs of Internet platform in the three relationships of business, social and information. Therefore, the generated platform has three different forms of expression, namely business platform, social platform and information platform. The main functions of the three platforms are respectively to meet the needs of the members of the platform for economic exchanges, to meet the needs of the members of the platform for social communication, and to meet the needs of the members of the platform to obtain the required information.