When Data Creates Competitive Advantage

A. Hagiu, J. Wright, here (and here).

Elsevier acquires online community SSRN

TheBookseller, here.
See also here.
See Elsevier's post here.
There is somewhere a lesson to be learned about how communities are formed and monetized in the platform society. Moreover, would authors respond/react by increasingly disintermediating (own blog, other more "private" repositories, etc.), possibly? Or what about a broader ArXiv?