«Facebook credits» e commercializzazione di beni virtuali per social games: l’abuso di posizione dominante alla prova di un mercato con piattaforma plurilaterale

Abstract

The Social Networks themselves don’t satisfy the minimal requirements needed to make a classical market. They are, in fact, just a background for gratuitous relations between (social) users, within a complex network. It’s nonetheless possible to look a the social networks also as an indispensable virtual infrastructure (a platform) for the functioning of classical markets, collateral to their own core business: the market of virtual gifts to be used within the social network, the market for apps. for social network and so on, wich is to say typical examples of multisided platform markets, whose functioning rests on network effects, network externalities. Within such a framework the Author examines what’s the main role played by the (social) network administrators and stresses that, by simply controlling and ruling the access to the platform, they are able to orient the network externalities to their own interest and convenience and to behave as a market player holding an eminent position over the others