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I’ve seen this a few too many times now – a business starts talking about interactive strategy. They become convinced that they need to do more with the web to leverage the power of their brand and find new customers. (Yes!) They start to understand that people are starting to spend more of their free time on the web than in front of most other media. (Bingo!) They learn that people are more familiar with how to use a search engine than they ever were with setting a VCR clock. (Huzzah!)But then we start talking interactive: using social networking, integrating with social media, optimizing for universal search, utilizing web productivity tools. You know, the fun stuff. The homeruns. The exciting fresh kind of ideas. And we start seeing some eyes glaze over, and that hesitant “Now what is Twitter again?” question.

So here’s my best advice: if you’re ready to start thinking about interactive, take a few minutes and play with the best of the best tools out there. Just start with the greatest hits. Get a feel for how they work, and how powerful user-created data and content has made Web 2.0.

For quick reference, we just ran across this list of the 100 best Web 2.0 services. You’ll see things you’re probably already familiar with like Google (of course), Yahoo, MySpace. But then other tools that we still find ourselves introducing for the first time – great tools like StumbleUpon, Basecamp, Flickr, and more.

And, funny enough, they even left Twitter off the list. Guess we’ll keep explaining that one. (All kidding aside, though, we’re here to explain these things and show you the value in using them. And the geek in me really kind of likes explaining Twitter.)