Since the Internet started to go commercial in a big way back around 1997, it has been a rapidly changing medium. In fact, from a marketing viewpoint, easily the fastest changing medium since advertising was in its infancy.
Is that still true?
Look at all that’s happened in the last year alone – Twitter, the ascendancy of Facebook, real-time search, Bing, Caffeine (Google’s latest major change, now in the works), the popularity of Joomla, etc. etc. etc.
Two years ago we wouldn’t have thought of putting video on a website. Now we try to put video on every website we do.
All media eventually become mature. They don’t stop changing, they just change more slowly.
The Internet hasn’t reached that point.
Sure, there are a lot of things about the Internet that you can count on. What Google is generally looking for. What, fundamentally, makes a website effective or not. Many other things.
But it still takes, and will in the foreseeable future take, a considerable amount of time to stay on top of what’s happening online.