Great post from Jonny Bentwood here and again here on the allstar line up now gathered at Altimeter Group - love the description of the assembled luminaries as the Galacticos. Really hope that nickname sticks.

They are Charlene Li, Ray Wang, Jeremiah Owyang and Deborah Schultz.

It was always going to be hard for Charlene to refer to herself as a Group, with just the one employee, so now she has three partners, Galacticos one and all.

Altimeter aren't trying to pigeon hole themselves as an analyst firm, the term consulting is used and they distance themselves from competing directly with Forrester.

Selling consulting as a service is a tough gig though. Only so many hours in the day (and all those blogs and tweets to get done). And even at Galacticos day rates, one wonders whether the services model can be scaled to give them the leverage their massively high profiles should command. Interesting to see how it evolves.

For anyone involved in engaging 'influencers', well, yet more complications. Altimeter aren't an analyst firm or media or (exclusively) bloggers but are obviously critical influencers of buying decisions, both directly and indirectly, so need to be engaged. And, if Altimeter justify close engagement, then who else? Defining exactly 'who is what' consumes a lot of time among professionals in analyst relations and influence.

Increasingly in the world of influence, taxonomy, tiering and segmentation, just can't be bent around every evolutionary twist in the story and the players involved. My new answer is: trust me, they are influencers, Because They Are. It's as simple as that.