Tiny Digital Businesses Play Key Role in Local Economies, Study Says

There are millions of small, digitally enabled ventures across America. New research, based on data from 20 million websites, found that these small-scale entrepreneurs generate significant spillover benefits to their communities. The analysis also concluded that counties with more of these ventures experienced stronger recoveries from the last recession than elsewhere, suggesting that “these small web businesses can be an important buffer for individuals and local communities facing economic challenges,” said Marcela Escobari, an economic development expert and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who was not involved in the new study. The new analysis, conducted by researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Iowa, is based on a data set assembled and provided by GoDaddy, a large retailer of internet domain names and a website-hosting service.