A new breed of intermediate institutions is emerging to inform and advise customers, and to simplify their dealings with product and service providers. These metamediaries dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of transactions in the Networked Economy. Metamediaries also redraw the boundaries of markets by creating metamarkets, which have no parallel in the physical world.

As place and time become increasingly irrelevant in the networked economy . . . specialised mediators will offer better products and services at lower costs than full-service mediators. But in doing so, customers will be faced with a dizzying array of specialised product and service providers. Mohanbir Sawhney argues that this will in turn result in the emergence of "metamediaries", who will reassemble the offerings into bundles that are logically related from the customer's perspective.

Q But there are other instances, such as Edmunds.com, where what's going on is a new intermediary inserting itself.

A Absolutely, yes. From speaking to a variety of people, the in-phrase for that seems to be meta-mediary.

The notion is that these people bring together a whole pile of products and services that relate to a particular industry - so in the automotive area Edmunds is bringing together insurance providers, people who find dealers, warranty suppliers and so on, the whole shooting match under one roof.