Drinking wine leads to deep thoughts.

This past weekend, my wife and I held an informal wine tasting for our neighbors. We were joined by Simon Beck, Editor – Special Editions, The Globe and Mail.

Simon had become exhausted in completing his latest project: the University Report Card 2007. The Report compiles the results from a survey of 43,000 Canadian students on their schools. (Fortunately Simon summoned the energy to sample the wine.)

In the Report, Dr. Tim Blackmore a professor at the University of Western Ontario was quoted: This isn't the MTV generation we're talking about — this is the everything, all-the-time generation. It's difficult for a professor to compete with that. It's like trying to capture the attention of a cat." Dr. Blackmore struggles to keep students engaged but continues to achieve high student ratings as he incorporates video and audio in his lectures.

As one is often prone to do, I compare this to my days in university, when we had to jealously share PCs in a PC lab to complete our required assignments. My generation was grossly underwired and under-social networked in comparison.

Therein lies the rub, are all audiences equally attracted to Web 2.0 media? Is a blog (insert any Web 2.0 medium) required for my company?

In our pursuit of the next new thing, we sometimes forget that it all starts with the customer.

With a deep understanding of the customer, the path becomes clear. Yet , the low cost of entry for Web 2.0 makes these media ideal for testing.

So if your knowledge of your customer is limited, even a small scale test is probably worthwhile.

And like Dr. Blackmore, the level of your customer engagement is a key metric.