I wasn’t going to read The Power of Us, but then John Smart praised the article in the Accelerating Times email newsletter. And he’s right–it’s more than just a round-up, it has sharp new insights as to how ‘consumer-generated media’ are changing the marketplace.

BusinessWeek: The Power Of Us by Robert D. Hof

All of us will have to take on more responsibility. And to get the most out of the new cooperative tools and services, we’ll have to contribute our time and talent in new ways — such as rating a seller on eBay or penning a short essay in Wikipedia. But the rewards will be more personalized products and services that we don’t merely consume, but help create.

Click to the article online, and even if you don’t read the whole article, but sure and look at the ‘online extras’ including an interview with Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay. Here’s an excerpt from that interview:

We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people. It used to be, your connected group was really your immediate community, your neighborhood, your village, your tribe. The more we connect people, the more people know one another, the better the world will be.

Everywhere, people are getting together and connecting. And using the Internet, they’re disrupting whatever activities they’re involved in. It’s because it’s a fundamental shift in power toward the bottom, toward the people as they organize themselves, and away from a small group of people who want to impose a policy top-down. That’s really the promise of the technology, and we’re seeing it in all these fields.