Why brands will mean more, but ownership of a brand will mean less

Chris Anderson makes some great points about the difficulty of owning the exclusive franchise for a brand.  He also references Surowiecki's and Hagel's arguments.  At core, the idea  is that the number of brands will explode - not that they will get less  important, but that the number of truly huge brands will decline.  Instead,  certain brands will have followers, and tastemakers will continue to drive  product choice.

Does this mean that product will become less important?  No.  But it does  mean that securing the right distribution at the right time will become more  difficult.  Instead of Nikes, you might need Pumas tomorrow.  And when you start  talking to Puma, everyone now wants K Swiss.  Suddenly, the Nike exclusive is  less valuable, since it's two cycles ago.

Where value can be captured and defended is in being the media filter,  creating the relationships to the tastemakers / trusted agents, and helping to  drive choice across a truly comprehensive set of products.

I wonder - does this have any connection to what the Yahoo! Shopping guy was talking about?