We've come a long way in terms of digital advancements over the course of the first decade of the 21st century, and this week, I came across a great wrap up of the past decade by Josh Bernoff on AdAge.com.  In his article, Josh offers a number of statistics to show just how far we've come digitally in the past ten years.Check out some of those stats (based on U.S. consumers) below:

• 1999 - Google was virtually unknown; 2009 - Google is ... well, Google!
• 1999 - 1 in every 40 homes had broadband cable connections for quick Internet access; 2009 - 2 out of 3 homes have broadband cable connections
• 1999 - 51 million households owned mobile phones; 2009 - 270 million (out of 307 million) U.S. adults own mobile phones
• 1999 - almost no one owns a portable digital music player; 2009 - 76% of U.S. households own a portable digital music player (the iPod debuted in 2001)
• 1999 - no one owned a digital video recorder; 2009 - 31 million homes have DVRs
• 1999 - no one had HDTV; 2009 - 51 million homes have HDTV

And here are a few more reminders of how the Internet morphed into Web 2.0 thanks to digital advancements over the past ten years:

• YouTube debuted in 2005 (Google purchased it in 2006)
• Twitter came on the scene in 2007
• Wordpress was introduced in 2003
• Blogger.com debuted in 1999 (Google purchased it in 2003)
• LiveJournal launched in 1999
• TypePad launched in 2003
• MovableType launched in 2001
• Facebook was created in 2003
• MySpace was created in 2003 and became a social networking site in 2004
• Friendster launched in 2002
• LinkedIn debuted in 2003
• Flickr launched in 2004

It's been an amazing decade.  Today, information travels faster than ever before and people from around the world can converse in real-time thanks to the social Web.Newstex also played a part in launching new digital services over the past ten years.  For example, during the first decade of the 21st century, Newstex launched the first full-text blog syndication service, the first full Twitter stream syndication service, the first full video syndication service to include transcriptions and added enhancements, and an iPhone app -- all with the goal to help content distributors provide their customers with easy access to the Authoritative Content found in social media conversations.The next decade can only be more exciting for digital technology, and Newstex is actively working to stay ahead of the digital curve by offering new and innovative digital content syndication products!  Subscribe to the Newstex blog, so you don't miss anything!