The stark invitation to join the 21st century was extended by Marc Charron, the European MD of travel website TripAdvisor, a leading aggregator of "user-generated content", hosting reviews from hotel guests and spinning out top 10 lists about particular destinations.

"What right have individuals to make derogatory comments on the web and thereby influence others?" was a question posed to Charron by a travel writer last month.

Charron believes that it's a point of view that defensive marketers are going to have to ditch.

"Consumers now see the ability to comment as an entitlement, " said Charron.

What's new is that Charron was urging his audience not just to listen but to respond.

He points to a review about a London hotel in which a guest reported that there was a problem with mice. "The guest reported that the hotel dealt with the problem well.

Your first instinct might be to try and pretend that it didn't happen. You might even prefer to ignore it. But this hotelier got online and posted a response to the review, detailing how they'd gotten in a company to deal with the problem, that it came after some construction works next door, and that the problem . . . and the construction . . .

were now over."

"It's not something to be feared, " he said. "It's an opportunity. You generate more goodwill by fixing a problem than by never having a problem in the first place.

It's a thicker relationship."

It's a perspective that will be alien to most Irish companies. "Most Irish companies would think that was crazy, " said the MD of one Dublin-based PR agency, who asked not to be named. "Management is so conservative here, they absolutely will not engage with customers that way until they actually start feeling the heat. I agree they're missing out, but it's going to take a first mover to show the rest that they can survive it."

Irish companies are by no means alone. The buyout of video-sharing website You Tube by Google for $1.6bn represents a watershed moment for those two companies, but it was agreements signed earlier in the day between YouTube and some other firms, including Universal music, that in some ways are more significant.

Only a few days previously Universal had threatened to sue YouTube for copyright infringement. Overnight, it seems, attitudes changed.

Another watershed came in September. Television programme makers noticed that episodes, or partial episodes, of shows were turning up on YouTube among other places.

But rather than sue the website, American TV network NBC signed a deal by which it would release promos for its autumn schedule via the website.

When some YouTube purists objected, posting video entries incandescent with rage, NBC did something remarkable, by posting a response on YouTube, featuring 'Bill the promo guy', walking around the NBC promotions department, done in a sort of Office oeuvre, cracking wise while mixing in promotional messages about upcoming shows. Comments that followed were more than favourable . . . because it was genuinely funny and irreverent . . . and decidedly 'in your face', honestly telling the viewer that she was going to be sold to. Some 250,000 people downloaded the video on its first day.

It's a way of dealing with the public that all companies, sooner or later, are going to have to come to terms with.

"It's inevitable, " said TripAdvisor's Charron.