by on 25 January, 2006 - 20:44
by: Karl Long
In the late 90’s when I was working with an Internet Consultancy a pretty significant buzzword was “disintermediation”, in other words, cutting out the middleman. Travel agents would be replaced by travelocity and orbitz, and car salesmen would be replaced by cars.com or edmunds.com and the like.
Now why on earth did anyone need disintermediating anyway? I think it was primarily because many of the intermediaries could not be trusted, they may have started as guides, but in the end they all became shills of the companies who’s products they were pushing. In the end intermediaries were sales people who worked on commission, so it’s no wonder they needed disintermediating. So now companies with they’re slick new web sites can talk to us directly and we can explore their products online. Problem is, I don’t trust many of these companies to give me the straight dope, i don’t know if it’s right for me, I don’t know if it’ll work for a lifetime or 5 hours. I’ve been burnt too many times by claims of what a product will do for my life and have been severely disappointed.
What I really need is a little reintermediation, someone to get in between me and the company. Well as it turns out Blogs are turning into the new intermediary, the trusted guides… for the moment.
Original Post: http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/the-new-intermediary-blogs-as-trusted-guides-or-reintermediation
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