Where did I hear this before: The Age of Empowered Consumers? Steve Rubel is writing about it. I should haev used the words Empowered People instead of Consumers, because people are more then just consumers. But the message is clear:

"….blogs are giving the ‘consumers’ unprecedented power"

And Feedster’s Scott Rafer is saying in iMedia Connection:

"Blogging itself is the leading indicator of what
customer interaction will be like in an always-on internet world, where
customers must be listened to because they are easily able to listen to
each other. It is easier to find out what individual shippers think of
UPS compared to FedEx than it is for me to find the official UPS
position on the topic. Treating the broadband-connected customer as a
consumer of information, viewer of keywords and clicker of links will
be a market-share losing strategy in two or three years."

Again the trend always-on. The user-in-control trend is here described as the empowered consumer and the trend superconnected is described here as ‘easily able to listen to each other’. In my dutch postings I call this trend starting from the human in the centre and not from the company or technology in the center. People want to speak for themselves in this new age of selfregulation and selfactualisation.