I wouldn't say it's new persay but I don't think they're quite recruiters. I generally think of recruiters as being paid by a company to find employees rather than the payed by an employee to find companies. Both agents and employees act as the middle man for the same transaction but they represent different people's interests. It's new in that this it's just now becoming the case that programming talent is valuable enough that 15% of it can actually buy a full time employee to represent the employees interests.
"... programming talent is valuable enough that 15% of it can actually buy a full time employee to represent the employees interests."
I doubt that finding jobs for a developer requires anything close to a full time employee. If it were, freelancing and consulting (without an agent) would not be viable ways of making a living (you'd spend 100% of your time finding work and 0% working). I'd guess that each agent represents several developers and a large fraction of that 15% fee is pocketed by the agency as profit.
The danger here is that their role can become muddled, this is a concern in every industry that has an agent model, in whose interest is the agent working? Good agents work for the talent, bad agents just try and get as much out of each deal as possible, word gets around...
