TIME for You. Or Us. Or Something Like That.

There's been a lot of talk goin' 'round about TIME magazine's Person of the Year (="You"). For example, Jeff Jarvis says:

Only thing is, there’s no news here. This is nothing new. We have always been in charge. It’s just that the people who thought they had the power now have no choice to but hear us and recognize that we are, and always have been, the boss.

In the words of my Business Law professor at the University of Denver, I respectfully respond: BULLSH! Or, to put it another way, I disagree with Jeff on this particular point.

While this may not be considered news to most of us in the blogosphere, and may well be considered by many to be a PR effort with the intention to awaken the brand, this is new, relatively speaking.

Five years ago, arguably less, there would not have been a Dell Hell. The majority of our letters to the editors would not have been printed, customer service center complaints would go unnoticed and unanswered, and the 'power of us' was quite limited.

Not so anymore. That is the beauty of the Web as we know it today. Not as we knew it (or at least the major media knew it), just two years ago. Define it as you like, but it is new. And the power of us grows by the minute.