Now user-generated content sites like Youtube and Flickr and social networks like Facebook and Bebo are almost mainstream, with brands both big and small harnessing them to great effect.
Now having embraced 2.0, marketers want their brands to be on the next emerging channel and are looking for the next big thing -- the next Facebook or Google, but this misses a trick.
Instead, we need to understand what, or who, defines the "next big thing". The spark that made Google the size it is today is the same one that grows Facebook every day and that will drive the "next big thing". And that "thing" is the consumer.
There have been conflicting reports on marketing budgets this year, with some predicting a drop in expenditure as the recession kicks in and others projecting growth as brands try to get closer to the consumer.
But what's missing from this whole equation is the consumer.
As the consumer migrates across the web, brands taking a silo approach will miss valuable opportunities.
Marketers need to make the consumer, not the channel, their focus, connecting with them in whatever location or medium they choose to dwell on.
Social networks may evolve to become brand outposts and contact centres, Twitter may become a CRM tool -- Dell has made a reported $1.5m in spare parts sales from Twitter -- while Google remains a core driver of query-related business.
But the most successful brand strategies will make the consumer and how they interact online its focus, harnessing the strengths of each of the channels to connect with them and allowing them to interact with the brand how and they want to.
To emulate a wonderful advertising strapline -- your brand needs only to be in two places -- everywhere and right next to the consumer.
Jamie Riddell, director of innovation, Cheeze.