The Evolving Digital Market

I was chatting to Mike the other day about how much the work we do at Soap has changed in the last 12-18 months. The type of work, the clients and the expanded team are all obvious ones but I was more referring to the marketplace and tools available.

For me the change has been for the better and things have gotten easier to produce good results (if not more complicated due to all the options.)

Here's a list of things in the last 12-18 months that have become part of my my daily working life.

1. Facebook/Myspace (I don't use either daily but that's all you hear people talking about)
2. Mochibot
3. Mochiads
4. ClearSpring/Gigya
5. Widgets
6. Google Reader
7. Google Analytics (OK this one we got into earlier but it's more prevalent now)
8. Google Adsense
9. Google Adwords
10. Disqus
11. Feedburner (again a little older than 18 months)
12. New blog systems (Word Press, Expressions Engine) I used Moveable Type exclusively since 2000 until recently.
13. Backpack
14. Wiki's
15. VPN's (somehow I have to use 3 now (after going years without needing one) which are all a pain in the ass to upload files though)
16. Tube Mogul
17. Technorati
18. Tumblr
19. Yahoo! Pipes
20. Vimeo

Mike would have to add Twitter to that list but I've got enough on my plate to not micro blog my life.

Some tools I wonder how we ever managed without them!

The next big thing is Flash 10. This is a huge visual update for the player. Flash 9 brought with it just AS3 which did wonders for performance but didn't add much in the way of Eye Candy. Flash 10 though is the Eye Candy step we've been waiting for. It's hard on enducing the stuff that the player can do.

It's the same WOW factor that 8 had over 7 but multiplied and I can't wait.