Hello Webverse, I haven’t said much over the past few months, it’s been busy in a good way.  I wanted to say congrats to the winners of 2008, and welcome in 2009.

First the winners:

Firefox: Coming from behind, firefox has grown its share of the browser market nearly 10%. This browser has become a standard in usability. While there are others with more, and flashier, Firefox has been building strong inroads with online users in Windows, Apple, and Linux environments. For 09 the Fox faces a strong challenge from the smooth running Chrome

Adobe: With the integration of deeplinking and a strategic partnership to make flash SEO friendly, Adobe has anchored its position as the rich media plugin preference. Already a staple, online pro’s shyed away in fear of the lack of indexing. Adobe and Google came to the rescue with the introduction of the deeplinking architecture, or better yet, the simplification of it.

Online Marketers: This is a weird one. 2008 saw a proliferation of IPTV sites trying to scam advertising dollars with purchased traffic, and weird traffic models built specifically to milk media buyers dollars. At the begining of 2008, many media buyers got hip to the crap, and started pulling dollars from IPTV sites, pinching the wallet of video sites, forcing them to take a real look at honest traffic.

Online marketers got to take a peek at sites stats with Quantcast, Google Trends for Websites and other tools showing where the traffic was coming from. With greater transparency, the ability for publisher fraud has greatly decreased, and is trending more so in this direction.

Iphone: A no brainer, obvious inclusion. The Iphone made huge inroads in 07, but 08 was the year it made RIM shake in its boots. Launching the Iphone 3G with corporate friendly features such as Exchange support, and a faster web connection, the Iphone has taken a commanding lead in the mobile browser market.

The application community has launch an entirely new device platform, rich with opportunity for marketers who are savvy enough to understand the balancing act between usability, entertainment and functionality.  Handset manfuactures have been playing catch up with a slwew of Iphone clones, including Blackberry’s poorly executed Storm.

XBOX Live: This might be a WTF for those who are not partaking in the platform. The XBOX Live community got a major overhaul with the launch of the new XBOX Live. Replete with Netflix ondemand streaming, a slick user friendly interface, XBOX Live positioned itself well as the new “Media Center” in family homes. Consumers have flocked to the platform for its robust global network of players, media rich entertainment, and the sheer volume of content offerings.

I expect to see alot more from this new entertainment platform, and hope they broaden their market share by opening the doors to low-cost third party applications, much like Apples Iphone.

I could definately add more, but for the sake of brevity I wont. Like every year prior, last year was big for digital. In short order we will see online video and content consumption eclipse TV, print and radio combined. The publics appetite grows and new markets open, increasing the likelyhood that the digital platform, desktop or mobile will be the first choice for branding and marketing pro’s. The old platforms have passed from brand makers, to brand maintainers, and with that the dino-like calcification of traditional marketing has fully set in.