It's All P2P Now (Forget B2C & B2B)

Blogs, social nets and other networked media have atomised communication and made it all personal.  In short it's a P2P world now.   The term P2P itself has gone through a few machinations.  From platform-to-platform, peer-to-peer and the pirate-to-pirate swashbucklers who bypassed the whole music industry by going direct.  However, all P2P really means is person-to-person: normal folk using web tools - without the annoyance of an institution or mega-corp getting in the way.  They may be discussing the weather, sharing photographs, seeking opinion about a hobby or some other passion, but the common factor is no central organising body.  Yes, today's web is a very personal experience which means the terms B2B and B2C are redundant. Increasingly people aren't happy dealing with faceless bureaucracies.  They want to talk and relate to someone.  Wasn't this always so?  Probably but now we've got the means and the attitude to make it happen.  Just think about the impact Robert Scoble had when he ditched the traditional B2B approach and went person-to-person with the development community.  Or the countless blogs written by executives - speaking out from within the corporate machine.  Richard Sambrook at the BBC.  Randy Tinseth at Boeing.  Colin Wright at Birds Eye.  Jonathan Schwartz at Sun.  David Brain at Edelman.  Tom Glocer at Reuters.  All have gone P2P with good effect.  Sometimes the feeling is that this is all small potatoes compared to the Megacorp Marketing Machine of old.  But P&G's Tremor platform has put paid to that idea.  Of course, corporations and brands aren't about to disappear.  However, these days if you aren't thinking P2P you are immediately out of whack with the marketplace.