The market applauded. Adobe's full earnings come out tomorrow.

During a time when seemingly nothing is going according to projections, Adobe's preliminary financial report was welcome news. It sent the company's stock soaring for the week, too.

So what's Adobe doing right? Market analysts like the way the company has kept a lid on its expenses even during a time when sales of its strategic creative software applications have been a little sluggish. Solution providers I spoke to last week, at the XChange Solution Provider conference in New Orleans, like what Adobe has done with applications like its Acrobat Pro 9 - - software that allows for the integration of multimedia and neat graphics into digital documents.

Mostly, though, Adobe has stuck to its guns. During a time when companies like Microsoft seem to change technology strategy by the day or week, Adobe has continued plugging away at its Creative Suite franchise, has continued to add nifty software like the Adobe AIR platform to the market, and has continued to make its presence known. Consider that one of the most popular third-party applications on the wildly popular Twitter social networking service is TweetDeck - - an Adobe AIR-based application that many Twitterers now say they can't live without.

Today's new power users are very close to becoming hooked on the Adobe AIR platform. Must-have software like TweetDeck (which is still in beta) is the technological equivalent of a gateway drug. And Adobe is pulling this off with what seems like very little marketing or hard sell.

The financial analysts and investors are liking Adobe for decent numbers in a dour economy. But the company seems to have figured out that when the economy does come back, it could have real bust-out growth by providing a nice platform for the hottest area in tech right now: social networking. And by sticking to its guns.