In the first days of the internet the biggest buzz word on the street was eyeballs. Wall Street had no problem giving billion dollar price tags to companies that showed potential for a wide audience of website visitors. Soon enough, with the burst of the bubble it became apparent that a large user base is worthless without a marketing strategy and a business model for making money. This doesn't mean that volume doesn't matter and the most successful companies were the ones that combined a way of making money along with a large user base. That's why mailing lists are so popular and so effective. They provide an ultra cheap method of reaching a mass audience in order to sell or promote your product and service.

But as the web evolves, marketers are realizing that consumers are becoming more sophisticated and it you want to properly build your brand you must gain a more active participation from your target audience. That's what web 2.0 and social sites are all about. This notion did not go unrecognized by Icontact, one of the web's leading email marketing companies that boasts over 100,000 users worldwide. That's why they launched their iContact Community this week. The Icontact Community is the first true web 2.0 email marketing platform. It signifies the next generation of email marketing by encouraging consumer participation through an online public profile which allows readers to interact and provide their own input on the newsletter's content. Users can easily create discussions around the newsletter and vote on its contents . The launch is a great hit and in only a few days that the system has been live over 120,000 members have registered and 212,000 pieces of content have been posted. It will be interesting to follow the development of this platform and how it effects the future of email marketing.