• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.64
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• pp.5-30
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• 2013

This paper conceptualizes the two-faced platform based on interface studies and two-sided market theory to critically analyze today's information technology culture such as the Internet. With this conceptual framework, the Internet can be investigated to have two faces, in which the square of user's openness, sharing, and participation is unfold on the front face, whereas the market of tracking, surveillance, and control of user's activities is formed on the other face. The two faces contradictorily coexist, resulting in technological and cultural dynamics on the Internet. Therefore, the Internet today as a two-faced platform can be described as a square-market interface. By analyzing on transformation of the web architecture, shift of informational commodity from content to data, and web bugs' user tracking across two faces, it examines how the world wide web itself can function as a two-faced platform. Lastly, implications and further works are suggested to improve the two-faced platform as a conceptual framework and to deeply analyze broader information technology culture based on it.