For Example: not sure whether you guys heard about Speedrent.com
Formed by a group of 5 team members, this is to connect the owner and tenant and bypassing the agents one way or another. And recently they even launched speedsign (digitally signed tenancy agreement) for the owner and tenant.
Motive is not bad, they just wanted to introduce owner directly to tenant helping the owner to save on commission and hassle of engaging agents to do their work.
But come to think about it, if you are a customer with tons of property, would you prefer to manage all these rental and ads yourself or you would rather just have it outsource to a professional agent to do it for you?