A funny story from a friend that's far too good not to share. After picking up his son from an appointment, my friend gets into a conversation and lets his six-year-old son play with his laptop in the backseat of the car. When my friend starts to drive away several minutes later, his son yells "Stop!". "What's the matter?," my friend asks bringing the car to a quick halt. His son excitedly replies, "I've got a wireless [Wi-Fi] connection and I'll lose Nick Jr. if you drive away". That's funny.

I was reading a story last night about MySpace in the latest issue of Wired, and it twigged me about a discussion I had with my brother, Sean, about whether marketing really matters within Web 2.0. If you think about it, many of the biggest brands and most popular services - MySpace, Google, YouTube, PhotoBucket - were mostly created on the strength of low-cost viral marketing and word of mouth. There were no expensive advertising campaigns or well-crafted public relations initiatives. Instead, these companies offered compelling and useful services that resonated with consumers. So what role does marketing play within an environment that prides inside on low development, distribution and marketing costs? Is there room for hotshots like Tara Hunt, who expound new marketing theories for the Web 2.0 world. You could probably make a good argument that Web 2.0 companies with interesting and useful services can get away with a single marketing person (albeit someone who can wear a variety of hats). Instead of marketing campaigns, companies should just focus making their services, meeting the needs of users, and using nontraditional tools (blogs, podcasts, self-generated e-mails from the CEO when someone signs up for a beta, etc.) to build a community and create a brand. Of course, you could argue these are marketing tools but they are grassroots as opposed to hiring some slick marketing agency to "build" your brand.
Update: Ben Barren has a few bon mots about the Wired story while Om Malik takes the opportunity to highlight a Business 2.0 story he wrote on News Corp.'s Internet strategist, Ross Levinsohn.