Over the summer many a reporter and newsroom writer has been offered a package to leave. Some weren't so lucky, getting a good-bye hand shake and a few weeks pay.
Now today comes word came to me that one of the more established analyst firms, The Yankee Group has laid off 20 or so analysts, some of whom were in the mobile and Internet/Networking/Telecom space.
Are we seeing the end of an era? In my mind we are. For years analysts have played a crucial role, but it has been the big firms where the mainstream media has looked for insight, just as the clients of the analyst firms have looked as well for market guidance and a sounding board.
Now, with a very connected environment, the independent analyst armed with a laptop, a VoIP line, a conference bridge and a web site can rise up and rival the bigger firms and provide the kind of custom insight they used to look to the big firms for.
What's more, the rise of the blogs have created an unbelievable wealth of information, much of it first hand that is starting to fill in the gaps that previously the private, controlled circulation, analyst reports used to fill. These bloggers, like pals Martin Geddes, Dean Bubley, Jon Arnold, James Enck and others are part of the breed of analyst who like the journalists who left the traditional world, are now blazing new trails via the net versus the ivory tower.
Just as we talk about Web 2.0, Voice 2.0 and PR 2.0, we can now add analyst 2.0 to the equation.
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