Smith Business Close-Up: Measuring Facebook’s App Economy

Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011, 7:30 a.m.

It seems everyone is using Facebook – including a sizable number of businesses built around the platform. It’s an entirely new industry – dubbed the “App Economy,” and for the first time, professors at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business have been able to quantify the economic impact of jobs created by this new industry.

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the Smith School, Il-Horn Hann, associate professor of information systems, talks about new research that measures the number of jobs created and the dollar value of Facebook’s app economy.

Hann co-directs the Smith School’s Center for Digital Innovation, Thought and Strategy, along with associate professor Siva Viswanathan. Center researchers explore how digital technologies make new markets and business models possible. Hann and Viswanathan spearheaded the Facebook research and are at work on several projects that seek to understanding the factors associated with the successes and failures of leveraging the power of information technology within organizations and markets.