"CHRISTMAS (OR TAKE YOUR PICK of any other seasonal holiday) came early this year for rich-media companies and advertising agencies when MySpace, Yahoo and YouTube were among the publishers that pushed user-required Flash 8, enabling penetration rates to reach nearly 90 percent in less than 12 months. But the real surprise was when Adobe Media released the Flash 9 player in July, just a little over a year after the company acquired Macromedia. As users updated their Flash players, they were upgraded to Flash 9, getting two, as opposed to the usual one, versions ahead. This marks the first time Adobe released a plug-in so soon before the development environment was to be released (slated for spring 2007, reportedly) which will lead to significantly higher--and faster-- adoption rates, already at 40 percent."Read more here.