Get ready for "fourth party" services  The time has come to re-
define "parties" in business.  In software, "third parties" have
always been accessories to supply more than to demand, because
their job in most cases was to add value to a vendor's platform.
But growth in customer power will invite a new kind of software
and service into the marketplace: a kind that adds value to the
customer's platform and weight to the customer's side of the
market's equation. What do we call that new kind of software,
and the kinds of companies that put it to use?  It's odd that
the term "third party" grew popular in business without much
attention being paid to the first two parties. Still, the
meaning has always been clear: The first party is the vendor.
"First party" games, for example, are those made by the vendor
itself. We see this in Wikipedia's First-party developer entry,
which (currently) dwells mostly on the example of games, and
doesn't mention a second party. Same with this article about
Sony's line-up of games f