Last year we reviewed YouTube's 10 most popular videos. It's time to update that list and see what, if anything, has changed. Last year we concluded that 7 of the top 10 videos were music - with 5 of those being professional videos. That trend has continued, although there are now no amateur music videos in the top 10. There are 6 music videos this year, all of them from professional musicians and their record labels.
While YouTube became famous from user-generated content, this year's top 10 list shows that professionals still create the most popular content. Of the 4 non-music videos, 2 are comedy (professional comedians), 1 is a sappy foreign love story, and the last is a cute baby video. Only the baby video seems to be an amateur one.
UPDATE: Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time, 2010 Edition
To kick off our new Gritty Entrepreneurs interview series, at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York we sat down with Jim Fowler, the Founder and CEO of Jigsaw, a business information and networking service that we noted in our recent review was a complement to LinkedIn rather than a competitor. As we sat sipping espresso in the Starbucks in the lobby, the CNN screen above us told of market mayhem. Ho hum, just another day in the life of a gritty entrepreneur. Let's find out how this particular web 2.0 company is competing in this climate...
Microsoft is slowly releasing a new version Windows Live Hotmail this week, though, as LiveSide.net reports, many users are having problems with the new design and want Microsoft to revert back to the old layout. We have been looking at the new version of Hotmail for most of the morning and have not seen any problems with it so far. The new layout will take some getting used to, but overall, it is simpler and faster than the old Hotmail and Microsoft has significantly increased the storage limit.
The 20th century news and stock ticker used to be one of the most archetypal images of newsrooms all around the world. It was timely and exciting, if a bit impersonal, for editors to watch the wires for breaking news from the big news syndicates and select stories to run in the local paper. That ticker doesn't print everything out any more, though, and a constant stream of news is something that millions of consumers now see for themselves inside their RSS feed readers.
How are newspapers adapting to digital syndication? Today the Associated Press announced that more than 500 newspapers are using their service called the AP Member Marketplace. To web savvy consumers, the Marketplace might look like an RSS reader that publishes selected stories to a webpage built out of Del.icio.us badges. It's a pretty interesting program.
In the past, we have written extensively about the potential of BOSS, Yahoo's open search web services platform. BOSS is an open API that lets developers access and manipulate Yahoo's search results. A wide range of companies, including Hakia and Me.dium, are currently using it to power their own search engines. One of the more interesting applications of BOSS we have come across lately is PopGist. PopGist blends search results with Techmeme-like discussion sections that list related stories from other sites.
In this web-enabled world of ours, you have to wonder why business cards are still so popular. Shouldn't there be a better way? A number of startups have attempted to address this problem with ingenious solutions that range from iPhone apps to custom URLs. Others are calling for the use of QR Codes for mobile data exchange. Unfortunately, no one service has hit the sweet spot just yet, but newcomer "E" thinks they have it figured out. Will "E" succeed where the others have failed? Or is this one industry that refuses to become digitized?
WordPress may be one of the best blogging platforms around today, but that hasn't stopped a worldwide community of developers from thinking they can do better. Desiring a more open environment where individuals can contribute and extend the project with their own work, they designed a platform called Habari to utilize a unique community participation model. Within this model, users whose contributions are consistently of a high quality are granted more privileges within the project. What has resulted from their efforts so far is a next-gen blogging platform that may eventually give WordPress a run for its money.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Times are now tougher. Which makes most people head home. The half-hearted entrepreneurs, the wannabes who thought it was going to be easy, the folks with connections to VCs who could get a $5m Series A for a copycat app. Who will be left? The gritty entrepreneur of the old school who knows that it is really, really tough to build a great company. At ReadWriteWeb we celebrate these gritty entrepreneurs and in a series kicking off today we will be writing about them - and for them.
Last week rumors were swirling that eBay was looking to sell StumbleUpon. eBay purchased StumbleUpon in early 2007 for a bargain price of $75 million.
We've still yet to have these rumors confirmed, but what if eBay were to actually sell StumbleUpon? Help us predict whether eBay will sell the service by the end of this year and if so, the price tag that it might fetch.
Last.FM has finally released the highly anticipated update to their iPhone application. Initial App Store reviews for the debut of the Last.FM app weren't very high. The app is currently rated at three stars, compared to its competitor Pandora's five star app.
However, we think this update to the Last.FM app is incredible and will probably improve its ratings. Here's a hands-on review of the latest update to the Last.FM app.
