Doc Searls: Get Ready for "Fourth Party" Services | Linux Journal

Free markets need free customers. Right now "free" means "your choice of captor". Not good enough. Free customers are more valuable than captive ones. We know that in our bones, but we need to prove it in the marketplace. ...

To be equipped, we need tools of engagement. Customer Relationship Management has been providing this for the duration — but only on the vendor's side. CRM is how vendors manage their relationship with you, not how you manage your relationship with them. That is, you don't have means for managing relationships with many vendors in one set of easy and consistent ways. ...

That's why we're working on VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management. We need own box of tools, not just to debug vendors and their goods, but to invite products and services that help us relate as parties of equal power and responsibility in the marketplace. VRM tools will make us both independent of vendors and better able to engage with vendors. As the customer's box of VRM tools grows, we will become platforms functioning independently of any vendor's cathedral.