Written by: Cara Sterio | Bubblejobs
2006 may sometimes feel like a lifetime ago , reflecting on a year where people still had flip phones and there was no MailOnline to waste your lunch hour on reading what Kim Kardashian did last night. But you’d be surprised at how far technology and the digital era have come over the years; so far in fact that some of todays jobs didn’t even exist! Back in 2006 Amy Winehouse dominated the charts with Valerie and the Scissor Sisters didn’t feel like dancing, check out these digital jobs that weren’t around then…
SEO Specialist
If I said to you SEO 10 years ago you’d probably look at me and ask if it’s a new girl band. But search engine optimisation unquestionably has become a great driving force behind any successful website and without a doubt is one of the few methods in getting your website up the rankings. With over 50,000 Google searches a second, SEO has never been more important.
App Designer
Apple hadn’t even created the first iPhone, Androids were the stuff of sci-fi movies and apps were completely non-existent. Can you believe it? Back then you actually had to go to a ATM to check your bank balance and I’m afraid Angry Birds wasn’t even created. Thank you to the geniuses at Apple who saved every smartphone user the hassle of having to carry an AA map in the car; how did we ever survive without Google Maps?
Vlogger
The now go to career for any teen that wants to become rich and famous without having to sing or act. Vlogging has now seen the likes of Zoella and Smosh make millions within a few short years and with the vast majority of vloggers in their 20s or younger, why wouldn’t teens see the huge appeal in vlogging? Once upon a time the closest thing to vlogging was the Blair Witch Project and look how that turned out, so we should be very grateful for platforms like YouTube who make vlogging possible.
Content Marketing Executive
One of the hottest digital jobs in recent years, marketing has come a long way in 10 years as roles like Content Marketing have surfaced. Since the rise in blogs, online quizzes and the constant traffic to websites through articles, someone has to be in charge of these and lucky for us there’s a job specifically designed to do so. What else would we do on our Sunday nights without the people behind creating quizzes like ‘Which character from Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets are you?’
Online Advertising Manager
With interactive banners and PPC at the forefront of online advertising, to think in 2006 the frontrunner of the online advertisement industry were those dreaded popups, which was enough to completely shut down your computer all together. Now with online advertisement at the biggest it’s ever been there needs to be someone designing the ads, creating catchphrases on campaigns and spotting online trends.
Social Media Manager
As far as 2006 was concerned we were still using the likes of Myspace, MSN and Bebo to communicate, asking our best friends to ‘share the love’ or nudging people on MSN who weren’t replying… although they did say BRB. Now social media is one of the biggest things to hit the internet since keyboard cat. With the likes of Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , Snapchat and Pinterest to name a few, there’s no wonder that companies need to employ extra hands to oversee and use these free platforms to the companies best ability.
3D Designer
There was a time that having your own printer at home would cost an absolute bomb, never mind the ink cartridges to fill them up. So when that was the case, off you went to your local library or convenience store, anywhere that you could print out anything and everything. Now thanks to how amazing technology is we’re exposed to 3D printers that can print off keyrings to tools. Imagine if we were exposed to these in 2006? We’d be making a lot of CD covers because your sibling sat on your favourite Nelly Furtado CD.
Cloud Services Specialist
Although cloud has been around since the early noughties, Cloud Services Specialist first came onto the scene when Google announced it in their 2006 annual conference and since then we haven’t been able to get enough of it. Looking after the technologies, mechanisms, devices etc of cloud storage technologies and services, it’s these guys you need to thank that are behind the running of being able to store all those selfies on your phone.
Data Scientist
It’s not rocket science to guess what a data scientist does. No, there not in lab working on some big research experiment but actually analysing all the data the internet has to offer. Sounds fun hey? The UK is actually expected to create an average of 56,000 big data jobs a year until 2020 so the jokes on you if you’re not part of the data science phenomenon.
User Experience Design
These designers are the wonderful people behind making you’re daily digital and technology interactions a joyful experience. Controlling the HTML and CSS of websites, without these professionals we wouldn’t be able to surf our favourite websites with such pleasure. How did we even survive without them?
Whilst we may now take for granted the hashtag and when we need help we simply just YouTube ‘how to’ videos, in 2006 YouTube surprisingly was only a year old and Twitter had just been born! 10 years later and we’ve advanced so much that we no longer need to give our computer what’s probably equivalent to the death penalty in order to download songs and Wi-Fi actually exists not only in your own home but in public places.
So to all you budding digital professionals, be fortunate that you weren’t born 10 years earlier, as you wouldn’t be sitting in the job you are today.