a company's good brand name relies on the trust it builds with its customers. Trust keeps them loyal and helps inform the company of what the customers truly want. When the company's primary product is the content on a Web site, trust and community become primary elements in determining the most effective and appropriate content. Content on a Web site is most powerful when it hits the bull's-eye of the visitors' interests. When those visitors share common values and concerns and are provided the means to interact online, they form communities that respond to the content and--through their digital conversations--create their own original content. My 17 years of working with online communities have shown me that women are especially active when provided with such conversational opportunities, and the most successful women-oriented Web site today is iVillage. ROOTS IN COMMUNITY Founded in 1995, iVillage has adopted at least four different Web business models over its 7-year lifespan. It began as an advertising-supported community site; then it tried ecommerce, to sell to a demographic known to make 70 of household purchasing decisions. Last year, iVillage acquired its biggest rival, Women.com, and today it's experimenting with the paid subscription model, attempting to leverage what it has learned about its members' interests to provide them with a service worth paying for. As a site that serves the interests of women, iVillage provides plenty of topical content, but also fosters online conversation among its members, producing what Kellie Gould calls "some of the most compelling content that we have on the site.
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