Flock started the Web 2.0 browser craze with many social networking tools built directly into the core of the browser.

A new release of Firefox 3 on tuesday, has spurred another download frenzy across the Web, with downloads at nearly a million already.

Now, 3rd party developers are leading the way on Firefox, with a rise in handy Web 2.0 style-addons being up uploaded onto the Firefox site

Some of my favourites:

Shareaholic

offers an easy way to submit the sites you’re browsing straight to Facebook, del.icio.us, Digg, Friendfeed, Google Reader, pownce, Stumbleupon and Twitter, as well as using the cool Bzzster ‘Email to a friend’ Web 2.0 App.

Clipmarks

gives you the tools to create your own online scrapbook from the websites that you browse.

PicLens

is one of my new favourites. Not strictly Web 2.0 (although it uses Web 2.0 APIs), this tool is very handy none-the-less!

Scribefire

is a great way to manage your blog.

Being an Australian, and with the majority of our media channels owned by American corporations, we’ve had our share of US Democratic Candidacy news here in Sydney, Australia. Politics aside, the online strategies of both democratic candidates has been an interesting thing to watch. Aggressively harnessing the power of online advertising, and Web 2.0 techniques such as social networking and social media channels, this US election has displayed a massive shift in media spend away from traditional media into the online arena.

According to Clickz, one of the web’s authority internet marketing sites, Obama’s online strategy has paid off. Taking corporate blogging into the political realm, Obama has regularly posted videos online throughout his campaign.

Indicating a significant difference in strategy (and deeper pockets), the Obama camp has spent considerably more on their online strategies. To say that online Viral Marketing is a force to be reckoned with is an understatement in 2008.

With Clinton spending 58% of her online spend - that’s $292,200 in 2007 and 2008 - on Google ads alone, and Obama spending $2.08 million just this year indicates a major difference in online strategies.

Has the online campaign paid off?

Well, some might say yes. Obama is now, after all, the Democratic Presidential candidate.

Obama’s online strategy towards generating donations has also been different to Clinton’s.

Eric Frenchman, chief Internet strategist at political consulting agency Connell Donatelli, agrees with the notion that savvy search efforts contributed to the success of both Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s primary season wins by helping them build lists of potential donors. Frenchman handles much of the McCain camp’s online advertising. Commenting on his Pardon My French blog last week, he wrote, “We get $3 - $4 in donations for every $1 we spend online.”

Viral marketing is perhaps the most powerful global marketing tool today - a veritable Web 2.0 weapon…

A bold statement, and seemingly over-simplistic, yet in this day and age is it unrealistic?

Take this example.

One post on a blog in Sydney, Australia can spark a reaction which spreads to hundreds of websites all over Asia within hours. That’s all of China and India already - almost 2.5 billion people.

That blog post can in turn, be replicated, with no more than a swift CTRL-C CTRL-V flip of the keys, to thousands more. And within 24 hours, something - be it a photo, or a statement, or a quote - can be in front of the eyes of hundreds of millions of users.

Several hours later, as Europe awakes, and comes online, that post has spread to a handful of European sites. Hours later, bloggers in Germany, France, and Italy have harvested and acknowledged that information, and on, and on, across the Atlantic, to another billion or so people…

Sometime in 2005, we quietly passed a major milestone - the billionth web user went online. Statistically, that person would likely be a 24-year old woman in Shanghai. It took 35 years for the first 1,000,000,000 users to come online. The second billion will likely be somewhere between now and 2015, all rational arguments considered.

Morgan Stanley estimates that 36% of web users are in Asia (surprisingly China has nearly five times as many users as India). 24% of users are in Europe and 23% are in North America (in 1995, North America had 66% of users).

So, put simply, when a blog post is picked up in the Viral Marketing maelstrom of the web, the ripples move outwards, and spread their influence. This is the new internet. This is Web 2.0: user-generated and user-moderated content.

The proverbial butterfly flaps its wings, as James Gleick might say…

As one of the first Fortune 500 companies to set up a home in the blogosphere over two years ago, Southwest Airlines is making some major upgrades to its blog, Nuts About Southwest.

Nuts About Southwest was originally launched as a means of giving Customers a look inside the culture and operations of Southwest Airlines and allowing them to interact and build personal relationships with the airline’s employees. Over the last two years, the blog’s function has evolved to also serve as a virtual focus group, assisting the Company through crisis and new product launches.

Southwest Vice President of Public Relations and Community Affairs, Linda Rutherford, said “From the debate over assigned seating to the timeframe in which we release our flight schedules, the passionate comments and opinions shared on our blog have unquestionably influenced several business decisions.”

Nuts About Southwest features more than 30 Employee bloggers that represent a mix of Frontline and behind-the-scenes Employees including Mechanics, Customer Service Agents, Schedule Planners, Executives, Marketing Representatives, Flight Attendants, Pilots, and more.

The blog’s readership continues to grow steadily month-over-month, and has more than doubled year-over-year since its launch in Apr-06. The airline estimates that it has reached more than 500,000 customers through Nuts About Southwest alone, and they expect that number to exceed one million in 2008.

Blogging is an effective way to reach a wider audience with a more personal message than a website may present.

Companies that employ a well thought out blogging strategy encourage the strongest community goodwill, and that goodwill, in turn, promotes significant marketing and sales gains. It is said that success breeds success. This holds very true for successful blogs. There is chain reaction that begins with a real desire on the part of the blogger to provide value and connect with their audience. The blogger shares useful and engaging content —the latest information, help, discussion topics and ideas.

More than 5% of the Fortune 500 companies blog externally.

Market research done in the first half of 2006 indicated that 34% of large companies had established weblogs. Another 35% planned to do so by the end of 2006, thus bringing the total to nearly 70%

A business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. The informality and increased timeliness of information posted to blogs assists with increasing transparency and accessibility in the corporate image. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.

External corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.

Greater word-of-mouth buzz on- and offline, higher search engine rankings, increased press coverage and superior lead generation are just some of the potential benefits of blogging in a corporate setting.