Twitter. Digg. Del.i.cious.

The above may sound like a bird’s thought process at breakfast, but these are in fact emerging cornerstones of what is commonly known as Web 2.0 (aka social media). Social media is a reflection of ourselves and the world we inhabit: our likes, dislikes, relationships and patterns, and the technology we use. Rather than the one-way nature of traditional media (i.e. TV, radio, print) - social media uses a dialogue between speaker and audience, marketer and consumer. In an age where viewers Tivo or download their favorite TV shows, commercials are disposable.

Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and blogs are all major tools in Web 2.0 - who hasn’t yet seen or posted something about their favorite band, comedy clip or upcoming event? Politicians from Barack Obama to Vancouver mayoral hopeful Gregor Robertson have gotten in on the video frenzy. Global corporations such as KPMG have their own Facebook page. A couple years ago, without a record deal, the Arctic Monkeys reached #1 on the UK charts solely on the strength of their Myspace page. The author of Perezhilton.com, a celebrity ‘news’ blog, has become a celebrity himself. After each entry, post or upload, people from around the world can chime in with their kudos or protests, and pass it on to their networks. Aside from moderation (a story for another day), there are no class, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, or socio-economic restrictions for comments. Posted feedback links back to commenters’ pages, and the symbiotic relationship expands.

As of this writing, Obama’s “Yes We Can” music video, which splices snippets of his speeches with cameos and endorsements from various celebrities, had been viewed 8,475,705 times on YouTube (it was posted 5 months ago). If the public hates your new widget, you’ll find out. If there’s a positive reaction, the word will not only spread, but the public will do the work for you, and for free.

Scary? Yes. Compelling? Undoubtedly. Word-of-mouth marketing has always been a mysterious creature, but social media puts it on steroids. BzzAgent, a successful American marketing company, manages to recruit unpaid ‘agents’ to push its word-of-mouth campaigns. Secret bloggers risk their lives daily to expose life in turbulent countries like China, Iraq, and North Korea. Half of the fun in all of this is that we’re still figuring it out. The book on Web 2.0 hasn’t been written yet, but once it has, the feedback is sure to be plentiful, provocative and powerful: that, is after all, the nature of the beast.

-Patrick Lok