How would you characterize non-SaaS software products?

[BrandEngineer]

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

There are certain software products that are more platform-oriented and their value lies in their user base. Then they're monetized B2B with ads, sponsorships, so on and so forth. The audience itself can be consumers or other businesses. You can even add a SaaS component to it depending on the niche.

Obviously the biggest examples are social media platforms (consumer audience). But there are also sites like G2 (business audience), Glassdoor (employee audience), any job board product (RemoteOK), and more that are not your traditional SaaS products.

How would you characterize this business model? Platform? Web app? Authority site? Two-way marketplace?

I guess it's going to depend on the product. I'm just curious what the terminology would be. It seems like everyone discusses B2C vs B2B software but there's never an open discussion on the middle ground.

If you have any thoughts on the business model feel free to drop them below.

 

[secretagentdad]

Non editorial content platforms.
Most of what I can think of seem like fancy ways of extracting content out of user participation.
If they’re not selling ads they’re advertising their own value capture rat traps in some way. They’re either a multi party marketplace or a user driven publication. Either way whats valuable is the traffic. Working out what to do with it is the make monies plan.