With the increased popularity of Web 2.0 among marketers, it is important to understand why it is becoming increasingly difficult to compete with those who know how to use these sites, and know what their specific functions are. In this article I will take a brief look "under the hood" of 7 top Web 2.0 companies that the online marketing community will soon be unable to live without.

Del.icio.us

If you want to learn about social bookmarking and what it can mean for your business, you must use and study the grandaddy of all social bookmarking sites. Del.icio.us is arguably the largest and most well known social bookmarking site, as it is actually considered to have given birth to them all.

FeedBurner

FeedBurner innovated and developed an amazing way for marketers to publicize and optimize the distribution of their web content. This innovation in both content delivery and advertising capability was noticed by Google. Yes, its official: Google has acquired FeedBurner. This tells you something about the immense power that FeedBurner has and will continue to have in the future. FeedBurner provides everyone with high quality statistics on their feed readership, absolutely free. Their statistics are some of the best I have seen. The only drawback about FeedBurner is the use of advertisements on your feed page. This keeps FreedBurner free for all. I have found the advertisements to be of little worry as they are not intrusive in any way, nor do they take away from the content your readers are getting from you.

Flickr

Flickr is yet another great brand in this Web 2.0 jungle. It continues to grow in popularity by leaps and bounds, but it is important to understand why, as the reason for their growth teaches an important lesson. People are joining and using Flickr in droves, because they get to interact with the entire process. Members can upload their own photos and artwork, get positive feedback from others, and leave feedback of their own. This constant activity of user generated content is what puts the search engines in your corner, and what can make your Web 2.0 promotions so powerful.

Skype

With the original release of Skype, thousands upon thousands of users finally found phone bill relief! It certainly falls into the Web 2.0 category, and when you have a product that has become part of the language and culture online, you know it is here to stay. We all have told someone that to find things online they just need to "Google it" right? Well now for communication purposes I have customers and business partners saying, "just Skype me."

Technorati

Is Technorati even more popular than Google? All things considered, the answer to that is a big no, but this brings up a good point. Many people out there ARE starting to use Technorati more than the search engine monster, Google. This is causing marketers to take notice and is enabling Technorati to capitalize on this trend by making sure they remain as technologically advanced as possible. This potent combination is what has made Technorati one of the most valuable Web 2.0 companies today and its search speeds are hitting warp drive.

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