Software as a Service OR is it Community as a service

I was recently talking to a large online brokerage and they were making a business case around launching a website on the lines of SocialPics

the discussion was - should the website be exclusive to the customers of the brokerage house or should it be open to all. The general thought in the group was that a service like that should really be exclusive to the customers as it would be the "Value Add" on their current web site , a diffrentiator from their competitors , one of the reasons for propects to become their customers and hence a justification to charge more premium per trade.

The discussion was near completion when a 20's something executive (who has a blog on blogger.com) raised the question - "So how are you going to build your community with all these barriers to entry" . The whole point of having a community like Social Pics is to leverage the knowledge of wisdom of crowds. If you are making this crowd as an exclusive club what is the value of such a community.

The world of software has changed in the last 5 years. 5 years ago putting the software like that of SocialPics on the website would be viewed as a value add. Things like Financial charts was a differentiator. Today Everyone gives a good Financial charting capability free , what people are interested in is the community like this or this or this(for a specific Stock)

Let me make a bold statement and say that "Software in itself as no value in a Web2.0 world ". It is the community , the volume of usage , the masses that you bring along with a successful software that has the value.Once you have the volume (as a measure of usage OR as a measure of community involvement) you will probably have the best software - because you have the best usage data collection , best feedback mechanism (Concept of continuous and never ending Beta )and maximum user community to improve your software.