"Demand-driven Value Chains are replacing old make-and-sell push models, as producers build business webs that link and respond directly to customers," note the authors of Digital Capital: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs (Harvard Business School Press, May 2000). The authors add, "The new value proposition is service-enhanced customization." Digital Capital uses the value-chain model to describe operations at manufacturers such as Dell Computer, but many parts of the model also apply to today's content companies. As a growing number of information producers form interdependent partnerships with aggregators, syndicators, and other types of infomediaries, the value chain is becoming more of a network that provides customized content solutions. "It's not really a chain we're talking about. It's a Web," said David Curle, senior analyst with the information-industry research firm Outsell, Inc. "It's a lot of different relationships. People who create content are finding multiple channels for distributing it, and people who buy content are getting it from different places than they used to. In between are all the complicated distribution models." Pay-per-view, subscription-based, advertising-supported, and ecommerce-enabled are a few of the models spinning the Web, but which works best for which type of content and which audience? What impact are the various models having on the overall content marketplace? And what type of value is most important to today's content consumers? By examining the roles organizations play at different places on the Web, we can begin to get some answers. FREE OR FEE? The complexities of the value Web have led some content companies to explore business models that are not only nontraditional but even counterintuitive. Examples include publishers offering current information for free but charging for archived articles. "That's typical in the news area," Curle said.
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