Over the past few decades, the Internet has transformed the way firms communicate with consumers, how consumers communicate with brands and how consumers communicate with one another. The development of social media and other platforms for user-generated content, known as Web 2.0, has created a seismic shift in the relationship between the brand and consumer and, indeed, in the very nature of branding. Gone is the day when the firm controlled brand meaning via 'one-to-many' mass media. In its place, is a new, 'many-to-many' paradigm, in which the firm and the consumer are active co-participants in the process of brand management.