December 23rd, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
The ReadWriteWeb team will be live today for a 45-minute discussion about the year's best products and biggest trends.
You can listen to the show at noon today on Blog Talk Radio. We will post the recording after the live event.
Show Details:
RWW Live Special: 2009 Year in Review
Time: Noon PST, (GMT -8)
Link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/readwriteweb
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December 21st, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
Don't worry, it's not Twitter! For our Best LittleCo of 2009, we've chosen a small company whose product launched in 2009 and quickly became a leading example of one of the year's big trends: the real-time web.
Our pick for Most Promising is something that could change the way people search on the Web.
Last week we announced that Google was our choice for Best BigCo of 2009, due to its product innovation in 2009. Today we're announcing Best LittleCo and Most Promising Company, as selected by the ReadWriteWeb writers.
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This is the 6th year we've done this and many of the small companies we choose each year go onto much bigger things. Here's a quick look back at previous winners:
Now let's find out who is ReadWriteWeb's Best LittleCo of 2009. Then on page 2 we name our Most Promising company for 2010.
Aardvark (our initial review and then a comparison review) is a social search engine that combines artificial intelligence, natural-language processing and presence data to create what the company calls "the real-time Web of people." The company was founded in 2007, but the product only launched in March 2009 at SXSW. It quickly became one of the companies we point to most when we discuss the Real-Time Web, one of the most significant trends of this year.
In our report on the Real-Time Web released in November, we described how it works:
"You can ask Aardvark any question, and it will try to find a person in your extended social circles who knows about that topic and is available to answer at that moment. Aardvark facilitates these conversations through a very polite IM bot, an iPhone app with push notifications, the company's website, Twitter or email. Instead of broadcasting your question to every one's stream of information, Aardvark delivers the question only to people who are relevant and available."
Unlike Yahoo Answers or similar services, Aardvark doesn't keep a repository of frequently asked questions. The service's mission is to get you current answers from experts in your own social networks. On most days, over 85% of all questions get answered.
As we noted in our report, Aardvark's got an all-star team of engineers from Google and Yahoo and high-profile investors. It's already cutting deals with major tech brands and is rumored to be on Google's acquisition list. Whatever happens to the company, the use cases for Aardvark are just beginning to be explored.
In short, Aardvark impressed us a lot this year and it made no fewer than 3 of our 2009 best-of lists:
Aardvark's iPhone app was also popular with our writers, two of them putting it in their top 5 mobile web applications of the year.
Next page: ReadWriteWeb's Most Promising Company for 2010...
December 19th, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
In this special edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our weekly newsletter, we summarize our end-of-year series profiling the best web products of 2009. We also carried out a Reader Poll this week, asking our readers to select their favorite products of the year. We present the results of that poll here.
Finally, this week we announced our 6th annual Best BigCo award. Read on to find out which big Internet company impressed us the most in 2009.
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If you think Twitter is big, get ready for the real-time Web by reading The Real-Time Web and its Future. We conducted interviews with 50 companies and innovators in real-time technology.
"The report is excellent - a great synthesis of why the real-time Web is different, what changes, what doesn't and what the industry needs to do in order to press forward."
- John Borthwick, CEO, Betaworks
"It blew our minds... inspiring."
- Favit
"Recommended."
-Hewlett-Packard Official News
We're flattered by the initial praise. You can download the report, take a look at the Table of Contents and this sample chapter, and keep an eye out for the 2-report package that allows you to save money on previous reports when you buy our latest installment.
The print version is coming soon!
This week we ran a reader poll, asking for your votes on the top Web products of the year. Thousands of you voted for up to 10 products, from a list of 100 selected by the ReadWriteWeb authors over December.
The poll has now closed and we're pleased to present the ReadWriteWeb community's Top 10 Web Products of 2009.
Here is the final top 10:
1. Twitter
2. Google Chrome
3. Google Maps
4. Facebook
5. WordPress
6. iPhone platform
7. Google Apps
8. Adobe AIR
9. Hulu
10. TweetDeck
For more analysis, read our announcement post.
In one of ReadWriteWeb's longest-running traditions, every year we review the top Internet companies and their impact over the past 12 months. This week we announced the 6th annual Best BigCo, a.k.a. big Internet company. In 2008 the Best BigCo went to Apple, due largely to the iPhone and App Store. Facebook won in 2007, Google in 2006 and 2004, and Yahoo! in 2005.
For 2009, the ReadWriteWeb team chose Google as our Best BigCo.In our top 100 products list for 2009, seven Google products made the cut:
And we didn't even include Google Wave, its biggest launch of the year. We think Wave has a lot of potential, but it's clearly at the experimental stage still. The web browser Chrome was probably the Google product that had the biggest impact this year.
Read more about Google and the other nominees...
In what's become an annual tradition, every December ReadWriteWeb selects the best Web products of the past year. In a series of 10 articles, we examined the top web products in categories ranging from consumer web apps to RSS and syndication platforms.
Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2009
We kicked off the series with a look at the top mobile web products of the past year. This is a subjective list of editorially selected products, but one which includes some of the biggest names in mobile web applications for 2009.
Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2009
Every year at ReadWriteWeb, we look at hundreds of new web apps aimed at everyday users. Occasionally, we come across a service that stands out from the pack because it offers a novel solution, disrupts the way incumbent market leaders do business or changes the way we experience the Web. Here is our list of the top 10 consumer web apps of 2009.
Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2009
2009 has seen a lot of Semantic Web and structured data activity. Much of it has been driven by Linked Data, a W3C project which gained momentum this year. The 10 products we've picked out for this end-of-year review are ones that have done interesting things with data. Connecting to other data, building new applications with data, sharing data, and more.
Top 10 International Web Products of 2009
Thriving tech communities exist around the globe, from Toronto to Tel Aviv, and the success of internationally-based web products serve as a reminder to all of us that innovation knows no borders.
Top 10 RSS & Syndication Technologies of 2009
The web isn't about pages any more. Now it's about streams, feeds and syndication. Only one service makes a repeat appearance this year.
Top 10 Enterprise Products of 2009
2009 may be remembered as the year that enterprises truly understood the importance of social software. This was manifested by the rise of enterprise collaboration services, cloud computing technologies and the growing importance of mobile technologies for the enterprise.
Top 10 Internet of Things Products of 2009
2009 has been a turning point for the Internet of Things, when real world objects (such as lights, cars and packages) get connected to the Internet. This trend has added a significant amount of new data to the Web, so for that reason alone it is an important development.
Top 10 Real-Time Technologies of 2009
The real-time web was hot this year and it's likely to become a standard expectation on sites all around the world next year. We've tracked this trend extensively with a face-to-face summit of industry leaders and an 84-page research report on The Real-Time Web and Its Future. Who were the big movers and shakers in real time this year? Check out our list of the top 10 to find out.
Top 10 Startup Products of 2009
There were a ton of great products launched in 2009 by big companies and startups alike, but in this post we focus on the best products released by startups.
2009 has been a big year for mobile and real-time technologies, which is reflected in our selection of the top 10 Web platforms of the year.
That's a wrap for another week. Enjoy your weekend everyone and happy Christmas!
Discuss
December 18th, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
This week we ran a reader poll, asking for your votes on the top Web products of the year. Thousands of you voted for up to 10 products, from a list of 100 selected by the ReadWriteWeb authors over December.
The poll has now closed and we're pleased to present the ReadWriteWeb community's Top 10 Web Products of 2009.
Here is the final top 10:
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1. Twitter
2. Google Chrome
3. Google Maps
4. Facebook
5. WordPress
6. iPhone platform
7. Google Apps
8. Adobe AIR
9. Hulu
10. TweetDeck
So there you have it, Twitter was the best product of 2009 according to ReadWriteWeb readers! Relatedly, Twitter desktop client TweetDeck made the list at #10.
Google had 3 products in the top 3: Chrome (#2), Maps (#3) and Google Apps (#7). This more than justifies their selection by our editors as Best BigCo of 2009.
The following products missed out on the final top 10, but they were all popular picks among our community. Many of them are startup products, so they can be proud to say they're among the top 25 products of 2009 according to our readers. In alphabetical order:
That's it, the culmination of our Best Products 2009 series. Hope you all enjoyed it and we look forward to another year of innovation in web technology in 2010!
Discuss
December 17th, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
We're down to the final day of voting for ReadWriteWeb's reader-selected Top 10 Web Products of 2009. You can vote for up to 10 products, from a list of 100 selected by the ReadWriteWeb authors over December.
Make your picks in the poll embedded below. You can cast up to 10 votes. If you don't see one of your favorites in the list, note it in the comments and we'll count that as a vote too.
The year's top 10 products, as selected by the RWW community, will be announced tomorrow. Here is the current top 10, in alphabetical order:
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Adobe AIR
Facebook
Feedly
Google Apps
Google Chrome
Google Maps
Hulu
iPhone platform
Twitter
WordPress
| Aardvark |
| ActivityStreams |
| Adobe AIR |
| Amazon EC2 |
| Android platform |
| Appsfire |
| Apture |
| Arduino |
| Basecamp |
| BBC's Semantic Music Project |
| Bing |
| Blip.fm |
| BNO (Breaking News Online) |
| box.net |
| Boxee |
| Brightkite |
| ChartBeat |
| Cisco Collaboration |
| Citysense |
| Clicker |
| Cliqset |
| Collecta |
| Data.gov |
| DBpedia |
| Echo (JS-Kit) |
| Evernote |
| Evri |
| Facebook iPhone app |
| Fedex SenseAware |
| Feedly |
| Fever |
| Foursquare |
| Freebase |
| FreshBooks |
| Glue |
| Google App Engine |
| Google Apps |
| Google Chrome |
| Google Maps |
| Google Search Options and Rich Snippets |
| Google Voice |
| Hootsuite |
| HP CeNSE |
| Hulu |
| IBM's sensor solutions |
| ioBridge |
| iPhone platform |
| Jimdo |
| Jive Software SBS 4.0 |
| Jolicloud |
| Layar |
| Microsoft Windows Azure |
| MindTouch |
| Mint |
| Mir:ror |
| MOG |
| Moshi Monsters |
| Mozilla Raindrop |
| New York Times APIs |
| OneForty |
| Open Calais |
| OrSiSo |
| Outside.in |
| Pachube |
| Posterous |
| Postrank |
| present.ly |
| PubSubHubbub |
| Rackspace Cloud Drive |
| Regator |
| Ribbit |
| RSSCloud |
| Salesforce.com |
| Seesmic |
| Shazam |
| SocialCast |
| Socialtext |
| Spotify |
| StockTwits |
| Superfeedr |
| Tornado (FriendFeed framework) |
| Tumblr |
| TweetDeck |
| Tweetie |
| Tweetmeme |
| Twidroid |
| Twingly |
| Vuze |
| Wetoku |
| WideNoise |
| Wikitude |
| Wolfram Alpha |
| Woopra |
| WordPress |
| Yahoo Query Language (YQL) |
| Yelp |
| Zemanta |
| Zoho CRM |
December 16th, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
In one of ReadWriteWeb's longest-running traditions, every year we review the top Internet companies and their impact over the past 12 months. Today we're announcing the 6th annual Best BigCo, a.k.a. big Internet company. Next week we'll announce Best LittleCo and Most Promising Company.
In 2008 the Best BigCo went to Apple, due largely to the iPhone and App Store. Facebook won in 2007, Google in 2006 and 2004, and Yahoo! in 2005. Who will be Best BigCo of 2009? Will Apple be the first company to win it two years running? Will Google win the honor for a 3rd year? How about Facebook, which grew significantly this year. Let's find out...
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The ReadWriteWeb team has chosen Google as our Best BigCo of 2009! Google last won it in 2006 and this is the third time we've honored the Mountain View company.
Google is without question the predominant Internet company of our time; in large part because it continues to innovate and stay one step ahead of its competition.
In our Top 100 products list for 2009, seven Google products made the cut:
And we didn't even include Google Wave, its biggest launch of the year. We think Wave has a lot of potential, but it's clearly at the experimental stage still.
The web browser Chrome was probably the Google product that had the biggest impact this year. Launched in late 2008, Chrome still only holds a small share of the browser market and doesn't offer a stable version for OSX or Linux yet, however it has already changed the browser market. As we wrote in our Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2009 review, Chrome's relentless focus on speed helped to reignite the browser wars and is changing the way developers and Google's competitors think about browsers.
Chrome is also the basis for Google's upcoming Chrome OS, designed for netbooks - a growing fad in computers. So expect to see a lot more of Chrome in 2010.
It's been another good year for Apple and its iPhone platform. The iPhone is the leading smartphone in the market and the App Store now features over 100,000 applications. This year, as we mentioned in our Top 10 Web Platforms of 2009 review, Apple extended the SDK with version 3.0 of the iPhone OS. The updates included better support for 3D gaming, augmented reality apps, easier access to maps, in-app purchases and support for push notifications.
With these kinds of improvements, we expect Apple to continue its success on the Mobile Web in 2010 - despite increasing competition from Google's Android platform.
Facebook had a stellar year too, passing the 300 million active user mark in September. It also continued to add features to the site, ranging from vanity URLs to a new sharing widget and a focus on real-time updates of its users news streams.
Facebook's user base is increasingly diverse and it is now clearly the number 1 social network in the world, leaving MySpace in its dust. What's more, Facebook's user base is now bigger than the population of all but three countries in the world.
Next Page: Honorable Mentions & Also Rans
December 15th, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
Over December we have published our best Web products of 2009 over ten posts. This week we've opened up our selections for you to vote on. The poll is embedded below and we invite you to select your favorite web products of 2009. You can vote for up to 10 products. If you don't see one of your favorites in the list, note it in the comments and we'll count that as a vote too.
We will announce the final top 10, along with the full results, this Friday. After one day of voting, here is the top 10:
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1 |
|
2 |
Google Maps |
3 |
Google Chrome |
4 |
|
5 |
Hulu |
6 |
Adobe AIR |
7 |
WordPress |
8 |
TweetDeck |
9 |
iPhone platform |
10 |
Evernote |
Note: the poll is randomly ordered, but you can also view an alphabetical list below.
| Aardvark |
| ActivityStreams |
| Adobe AIR |
| Amazon EC2 |
| Android platform |
| Appsfire |
| Apture |
| Arduino |
| Basecamp |
| BBC's Semantic Music Project |
| Bing |
| Blip.fm |
| BNO (Breaking News Online) |
| box.net |
| Boxee |
| Brightkite |
| ChartBeat |
| Cisco Collaboration |
| Citysense |
| Clicker |
| Cliqset |
| Collecta |
| Data.gov |
| DBpedia |
| Echo (JS-Kit) |
| Evernote |
| Evri |
| Facebook iPhone app |
| Fedex SenseAware |
| Feedly |
| Fever |
| Foursquare |
| Freebase |
| FreshBooks |
| Glue |
| Google App Engine |
| Google Apps |
| Google Chrome |
| Google Maps |
| Google Search Options and Rich Snippets |
| Google Voice |
| Hootsuite |
| HP CeNSE |
| Hulu |
| IBM's sensor solutions |
| ioBridge |
| iPhone platform |
| Jimdo |
| Jive Software SBS 4.0 |
| Jolicloud |
| Layar |
| Microsoft Windows Azure |
| MindTouch |
| Mint |
| Mir:ror |
| MOG |
| Moshi Monsters |
| Mozilla Raindrop |
| New York Times APIs |
| OneForty |
| Open Calais |
| OrSiSo |
| Outside.in |
| Pachube |
| Posterous |
| Postrank |
| present.ly |
| PubSubHubbub |
| Rackspace Cloud Drive |
| Regator |
| Ribbit |
| RSSCloud |
| Salesforce.com |
| Seesmic |
| Shazam |
| SocialCast |
| Socialtext |
| Spotify |
| StockTwits |
| Superfeedr |
| Tornado (FriendFeed framework) |
| Tumblr |
| TweetDeck |
| Tweetie |
| Tweetmeme |
| Twidroid |
| Twingly |
| Vuze |
| Wetoku |
| WideNoise |
| Wikitude |
| Wolfram Alpha |
| Woopra |
| WordPress |
| Yahoo Query Language (YQL) |
| Yelp |
| Zemanta |
| Zoho CRM |
December 14th, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
Over December we have published ten Top 10 lists for the best products of 2009, in categories ranging from Consumer Web Apps to Real-Time Technologies. Now we're opening up our selections for you to vote on. We've embedded a poll below, with all 100 products that the ReadWriteWeb team selected.
We invite you to vote for your favorite web products of 2009. You can select up to 10 products. If you don't see one of your favorites in the list, note it in the comments and we'll count that as a vote too.
Sponsor
We will announce the top 10, along with the full results, at the end of this week.
Note: the poll is randomly ordered, but you can also view an alphabetical list below.
| Aardvark |
| ActivityStreams |
| Adobe AIR |
| Amazon EC2 |
| Android platform |
| Appsfire |
| Apture |
| Arduino |
| Basecamp |
| BBC's Semantic Music Project |
| Bing |
| Blip.fm |
| BNO (Breaking News Online) |
| box.net |
| Boxee |
| Brightkite |
| ChartBeat |
| Cisco Collaboration |
| Citysense |
| Clicker |
| Cliqset |
| Collecta |
| Data.gov |
| DBpedia |
| Echo (JS-Kit) |
| Evernote |
| Evri |
| Facebook iPhone app |
| Fedex SenseAware |
| Feedly |
| Fever |
| Foursquare |
| Freebase |
| FreshBooks |
| Glue |
| Google App Engine |
| Google Apps |
| Google Chrome |
| Google Maps |
| Google Search Options and Rich Snippets |
| Google Voice |
| Hootsuite |
| HP CeNSE |
| Hulu |
| IBM's sensor solutions |
| ioBridge |
| iPhone platform |
| Jimdo |
| Jive Software SBS 4.0 |
| Jolicloud |
| Layar |
| Microsoft Windows Azure |
| MindTouch |
| Mint |
| Mir:ror |
| MOG |
| Moshi Monsters |
| Mozilla Raindrop |
| New York Times APIs |
| OneForty |
| Open Calais |
| OrSiSo |
| Outside.in |
| Pachube |
| Posterous |
| Postrank |
| present.ly |
| PubSubHubbub |
| Rackspace Cloud Drive |
| Regator |
| Ribbit |
| RSSCloud |
| Salesforce.com |
| Seesmic |
| Shazam |
| SocialCast |
| Socialtext |
| Spotify |
| StockTwits |
| Superfeedr |
| Tornado (FriendFeed framework) |
| Tumblr |
| TweetDeck |
| Tweetie |
| Tweetmeme |
| Twidroid |
| Twingly |
| Vuze |
| Wetoku |
| WideNoise |
| Wikitude |
| Wolfram Alpha |
| Woopra |
| WordPress |
| Yahoo Query Language (YQL) |
| Yelp |
| Zemanta |
| Zoho CRM |
December 14th, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
2009 has been a big year for mobile and real-time technologies, which is reflected in our selection of the top 10 Web platforms of the year. It's the final instalment of our series of top products of 2009.
As we noted in last year's round-up, a web platform can be as simple as an API (like Twitter's) that allow external developers to tap into a company's data. It can also be software and services, like Amazon's Web Services. Or it can be a fully fledged development platform, such as iPhone SDK and Adobe AIR. Whatever the case, platforms on the Web allow people to build on top of another company's product, so we think it's an appropriate way to close our Top Web Products series.
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As Twitter's director of platform, Ryan Sarver, repeatedy pointed out during his presentation at this year's LeWeb that Twitter and its ecosystem of third-party developers have a highly symbiotic relationship. Twitter's APIs are still rate-limited and Twitter won't make the full firehose of feeds available to all of its developers until early 2010. There can be no doubt, however, that Twitter has managed to create one of the most vibrant developer communities around its platform.
Over the course of the year, Twitter introduced a number of new APIs, including a geolocation API that makes it easy to attach geodata to a tweet, and the controversial retweet API. With Twitter Connect, Twitter also released a competitor to Facebook Connect, although this tool hasn't found widespread adoption yet.
Just like Twitter, Facebook's success has increasingly become dependent on the third-party ecosystem that has grown up around the Facebook platform. According to Ethan Beard, who manages development of the Facebook Platform, over 500,00 applications have been developed on top of the Facebook platform and over 250 million users use at least one of these.
The Facebook platform is not just about letting users play games like Farmville and or novelty apps like SuperPoke. Facebook Connect, for example, is becoming increasingly popular as a sign-in mechanism on third-party sites. Over 80,000 sites now utilize Facebook Connect, 60 million Facebook users use it and two-thirds of all the sites in the Comscore 100 index currently use it.
Without any doubt, the world of blogging would look very different today if it wasn't for Automattic's open-source version of WordPress. The core open-source WordPress project is driven by a passionate group of developers, but a majority of development happens in the community that builds plugins for WordPress.
Earlier this year, WordPress released version 2.8 of its self-hosted product - a major overhaul of its core product. It includes a new interface and new options for plugin developers, including the ability to install and search for plugins from within the admin interface. Among some of the most popular WordPress plugins are an image gallery, an SEO tool and an analytics package.
We admit that our choice of the iPhone as a top web platform could be somewhat controversial. After all, Apple's less than efficient approval system and the closed nature of the platform have even led some developers to abandon development for the iPhone altogether.
There can be little doubt, however, that Apple has created one of the most successful mobile developer programs. The App Store now features over 100,000 applications and an increasing number of web services now offer versions of their products that are specifically geared towards the iPhone's Safari browser.
This year, Apple extended the SDK with a number of new and improved features when it released version 3.0 of the iPhone OS. These updates include better support for 3D gaming, augmented reality apps, easier access to maps, in-app purchases and support for push notifications.
Android came of age in 2009. It was still a relatively unknown mobile operating system in the consumers' conscience in 2008, but this year not only saw a large increase in developer activity, but also a strong interest in Android phones like the Motorola Droid.
Thanks to the open-source nature of the project, Android made it easy for developers of augmented reality applications to test their ideas long before Apple offered the necessary APIs on its platform. While the Motorola Droid features Android 2.0 already, most other manufacturers don't offer this update for their customers yet.
Next page: Top 10 Web Platforms of 2009, 6-10
2009 saw a number of interesting developments in the Government 2.0 movement. One of the most high-profile backers of this movement was - surprisingly - the U.S. government. With Data.gov and similar government projects that feature APIs, developers can now find a wealth of information that was previously hard to access.
By providing API access to this data, the U.S. government has opened itself up to more scrutiny, as citizens can now analyze this data with unprecedented ease.
No other news organization offers as many APIs as the New York Times - although the Guardian's Open Platform was also a strong candidate for this list. Over the course of this year, the New York Times opened up an API for accessing an archive of all the paper's stories since 1981 and APIs to access information about the U.S. Congress and the New York State legislature.
There can be little doubt that the newspaper industry needs to find new ways to monetize its product. For some papers, this has meant making it harder for consumers and developers to mash up their content. The New York Times, however, has decided that increased openness is a better strategy. [disclosure: RWW syndicates content to NYT]
With App Engine, Google gives developers an easy way to develop and deploy cloud applications through a comprehensive set of services and APIs. This year, Google introduced Java as an additional language in the App Engine's repertoire. App Engine now also supports XMPP, which has allowed a number of developers to create services that push real-time updated to IM clients or third-party applications.
In addition, Google also announced a pricing structure for App Engine in February.
In November, Google had to face some negative publicity around App Engine when it became known that some hackers were using the service to host a bot net. Overall, however, the service has not suffered from any major security issues so far.
Azure is Microsoft's big push towards cloud computing. While it is still too early to judge the success of this platform, we think it would be wrong to underestimate Microsoft's commitment to this space and the size of its developer ecosystem. While Amazon and RackSpace's cloud services are clearly more popular than Microsoft's new service, there can be little doubt that the arrival of Microsoft in this market will help to push the incumbents towards more innovation.
While Adobe AIR is nowhere near perfect, very few other platforms have the same cross-platform reach as AIR. It allows developers to create one application and distribute it for all the major operating systems. Thanks to its auto-updating features, AIR also makes it easy for developers to keep their install base up to date.
This year, Adobe launched AIR 2, which now allows developers to access mass storage devices, drag-and-drop support for remote files and rudimentary support for P2P networking. In addition, AIR 2 also enables developers to use the multi-touch capabilities of modern screens.
Those are our picks! In the comments let us know your thoughts or what we may have missed.
December 10th, 2009 — 2009 in Review, Improve Life, News
The real-time web was hot this year and it's likely to become a standard expectation on sites all around the world next year. We've tracked this trend extensively with a face-to-face summit of industry leaders and an 84-page research report on The Real-Time Web and Its Future.
Who were the big movers and shakers in real time this year? Check out our list of the top 10 below and let us know if there are any important ones we missed.
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Pubsubhubbub, created as a 20% project by Googlers Brett Slatkin and Brad Fitzpatrick, is described as "a simple, open, server-to-server web-hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol as an extension to Atom and RSS." It delivers updated content in real-time from a pinged hub server out to all subscribers that have requested updates.
Real-time PubSubHubbub feeds are already being published by FeedBurner, Blogger, LiveJournal, LiveDoor, Google Alerts, Feedoor and the feed republishing service Superfeedr. Facebook's FriendFeed, LazyFeed and the newest version of Netvibes are consuming Hubbub feeds so far, as are a number of small sites and services that are using the feeds for machine-to-machine communication.
Hubbub consuming applications are reporting server traffic savings of up to 85% and engineers love it.
RSSCloud is a technology that's been a part of the RSS 2.0 spec for years but got a new burst of development energy this year when creator Dave Winer began working on it in part as a way to create a decentralized Twitter experience.
RSSCloud is similar to Hubbub, is often implemented in conjunction with it but doesn't deliver full content updates with the notification of changes to a feed. The first major move to adopt RSSCloud was by blog publisher WordPress.
The latest addition to the technology is a new feature called CloudPipe, which will enable delivery of real-time feeds to desktop and mobile clients, even behind a firewall.
Creator Dave Winer has been a key figure in an incredible number of the most important technologies of the read/write era of the web. He created the first popular blogging software (Radio Userland), was the first to enable podcast delivery in an RSS feed visa-vi the now standard method of enclosures, he built the web's leading blog ping server (weblogs.com), he ushered RSS into the mainstream, he created the format for sharing bundles of RSS feeds and other outlines (OPML), he wrote the XML-RPC framework (predecessor of SOAP) and the MetaWeblog API for remote blog management.
Now Dave Winer is working on real-time web technology and we'd be fools to not watch what he's doing.
Facebook, for all its shortcomings, has turned more than 200 million new people on to real-time streams of content pushed to their browsers in 2009. If you think this paradigm is important, Facebook deserves a medal.
Just this week the Big G showed of its new real-time search feature. It kills what Bing and Yahoo are doing. It's simple but elegant and effective. For certain search queries, real time web pages, Twitter updates, Facebook content, MySpace updates and more will appear in a subtle, streaming box in your results page, with a pause button. It's not live on the public site yet, it's just a demo, but it's going to be very, very big next year. Big enough that it belongs on the list this year just for being demoed.
Whether you're watching brand mentions for your work or participating in a semi-obscene public ritual of riffs on a trending meme - millions of people now regularly watch the real-time updates on Twitter search results pages.
Twitter bought a search engine called Summize in July of 2008, built by a group of former AOL scientists and originally intended to be a sentiment analysis technology. It has become incredibly important this year. When the site's new GeoLocation API gets put to more substantive use, that search engine is going to become all the more important - in ways that could change our day-to-day lives.
Next page: Top 10 Real-Time Technologies of 2009 6-10