The Changing Face Of Influencer Relations

I was reading the article: Jeff Jarvis vs. Dell: Blogger's Complaint Becomes Viral Nightmare

In it, they interview Steve Rubel who states:

"Every company is going to have evangelists and vigilantes in the blogosphere, and they need a group of people focused on influencer relations, who are kind of watching all these different conversations and figuring out how to amplify the evangelists and how to calm the vigilantes."

Influencer Relations - Interesting term, isn't this what Public Relations firms do? Well, yes, but in the world of RSS and Blogging, the definitions of "Influencers" is changing. Influencers used to be primarily the media and industry analysts, but the list of influencers has expanded. Today, the purchasing process is influenced by a broad array of friends, colleagues and peers, pundits, academics, authors, researchers, and many others.

In an Article by David Kirkpatrick at Fortune Magazine he talked about how Google and Apple don't understand the importance of the new influencers. How will this affect them in the long run? He contrasts this to Microsoft's comparative openness with employee bloggers.