Top 10 Most Exciting Web Apps or Services
Yesterday we asked what 3 web apps or services you find the most exciting right now. Not your 3 most used or favorite, but the apps that currently make you tingly with excitement. We got some great responses in the comments, so in this post we pick out our top 10 from your choices.
We've chosen the 10 in two batches. Firstly, the services that got the most number of mentions. As expected, these are well known apps that millions of people are using (or will use when it's launched, in the case of Google Wave). We didn't want this to be purely a popularity contest though, so we've also selected 5 lesser known web apps or services. Those apps all got multiple mentions and in our estimation they're each worthy of being labeled 'exciting.'
Note: we offer the full list of apps voted for at the bottom of this post.
Top 5 Apps
1. Twitter 25 votes
2. Gmail 17 votes
3. Google Reader 11 votes
4. Google Wave 11 votes
5. Facebook 6 votes
This was fairly predictable, with Twitter well out in front. There's been such excitement and activity around Twitter this year, that nobody could really argue against Twitter being the most exciting web or service around in 2009.
Twitter was followed by no less than 3 Google products, one of them as yet unreleased! (Google Wave). This shows that Google still has that aura of being 'exciting,' at least with ReadWriteWeb's early adopter readers.
Facebook slipped in at number 5, so it too seems to have kept up its reputation for being innovative.
Top 5 Lesser Known Apps
6. 
Spotify (RWW coverage): this Swedish online music app is about to launch in the U.S. and is highly anticipated by that market. It's so exciting that we've predicted it may even threaten Apple's near monopoly iTunes product. We'll have to wait and see what happens on that front, but Spotify certainly has a lot of people salivating! Other online music services mentioned multiple times in our poll were Blip.fm and last.fm.
7. Dropbox: this was listed as one of ReadWriteWeb's 5 Favorite Online Storage Services in September last year. At the time it had only just opened to the public, but it has since gained many fans. Its integration with the desktop is perhaps the most exciting feature of this product. Other features we like are the sharing of folders and preservation of every revision of every file.
8. 
Seesmic: A number of Twitter clients were mentioned, like Hootsuite and TweetDeck. But one which has impressed us a lot in recent months has been Seesmic. In July we reported that Seesmic, previously only a desktop client, had released a web-based version and a new version of the Seesmic desktop. The web-based version of Seesmic recreates most of the features that are currently available in the desktop application. Our own Frederic Lardinois listed Seesmic Web as one of his 3 most exciting apps.
9. Wolfram|Alpha: Ever since Wolfram|Alpha's admittedly much hyped launch in May, we've been tracking this innovative product closely. It's a self-described "computational knowledge engine" and while it's not quite the Google killer some predicted, it has many potential uses - which makes it an exciting app to follow for us.
10. Pubsubhubbub: With a name harder to say that 'ReadWriteWeb,' this new Google Code project has excited the web development community. It's not a product, but a protocol. The project page describes it as a "simple, open, server-to-server web-hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol as an extension to Atom (and RSS)." In laymans terms, it delivers your RSS feeds to you much quicker - in near real time.
To understand the context of Pubsubhubbub and similar exciting initiatives more, read Marshall Kirkpatrick's fine analysis of Distributed Social Networking.
There you have it, the top 10 most exciting web apps and services according to the ReadWriteWeb community! Let us know your further thoughts in the comments.
Here is the full list, a snapshot taken when the original post had 66 comments (sans links, but Google - or Bing - any app that catches your eye).
Twitter 25
Gmail 17
Google Reader 11
Google Wave 11
Facebook 6
Blip.fm 4
Dropbox 4
Hootsuite 4
Wolfram Alpha 4
Pubsubhubbub 3
Scribd 3
Seesmic 3
Spotify 3
Wordpress 3
Apture 2
Boxee 2
Delicious 2
Flickr 2
foursquare 2
getsatisfaction 2
Google 2
last.fm 2
PixelPipe 2
Posterous 2
Skype 2
TweetDeck 2
Xmarks 2
Appboy
Bespin
Bit.ly
Bloom
Brightkite
Caspio
chi.mp
Cliqset
Deezer
Digg
Dizzler
Dopplr
Edmodo
Evernote
Feedly
FriendFeed
Gmail chat
GMX Mail
Google Analytics
Google Analytics API
Google APIs
Google Docs
Google insight
Google Maps
Google Notebook
Google Voice
Hype Machine
Instant XRay
Instapaper
iWantMyName
JaJah
JobTitled
Jolicloud
Jott
justbought.it
Know Thy Congressman
kreeo
Lala
Layar
LinkedIn
metafilter
mint
MobileMe
My Name is E
Nanovor
Newsmap.jp
Pachube
Parade
Peoplebrowsr
PocketSmith
Ponoko
PopUrls
Prezi
Primal Fusion
Salesforce
Shapeways
SocialText
SoundCloud
Sweetcron
Tarpipe
TimeXchange.net
Tracer
Tumblr
tweetworks
Twitterfall
urtak
W3C QA Toolbox
XCODE
Youtube
Cat pic: Mr.Thomas
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Comments
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I missed casting my vote, but I'd throw my vote in for Foursquare. Extremely addicting game and huge marketing potential for local biz
I like the aspect of polling the crowd. I'm surprised that no one mentioned Pandora or Slacker Radio.
Pandora is "exciting" to me, since my MP3 library's outdated, and you never know what you're going to hear next.
Gmail is 10000000000000 times better than twitter
Facebook slipped in at number 5, so it too seems to have kept up its reputation for being innovative.
+1 for Foursquare, though not sure when it will hit the UK.
dropbox is my all time favorite app.
I'm wondering How can you forget Google Voice? It's a really a Game changing technology that Google is bringing.. another one is Semantic web and Google Wave these r the technology to watch
Richard,
I missed our company on the list. We offer a true 5GL platform as a service. Let me know if you would like to see a demo of 5 tools and building blocks.
Jake
I tried Seesmic desktop and found it buggy as hell - gave up and went back to TweetDeck, DestroyTwitter and Spaz
I'm bummed I missed the vote. I would love to have voted for Delicious.
I would have voted for Colayer of course! - especially the next version Davos ...
PubSubHubbub is realluy somethingthat existed for years. And now that google's behind that, it's next big thing. That's LAME : stop thinking that everything is new or golden because some engineers from Google just said "it's the new cool thing". Please give more attention to the small ones, they're the ones innovating!
Even though they are a client, I have to put in a vote for BumpTop (www.BumpTop.com). They are re-thinking all aspects of the UI -- not just the desktop -- to be more intuitive and more productive. That said, their innovations for Windows 7 are smart, simple and useful (and a little mind-blowing).
Thank you for sharing, I thought.
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i'm ashamed to say i still don't really know what Google Wave is. however the computational power of Wolfram is nuts. i've seen it auto-generate music! sure it feeds off of simple MIDI instruments for now but i'm curious to see what it'll do when it really soars!
Love that all mine made it. Whoop whoop!
oo I love Thank you sharing the good cat
Ha! Two out of three, in top five, for me is not bad. Lol.
I missed the opportunity of voting process but still these are my priority services (Gmail, Google Reader, Google Wave, Facebook, Orkut, Linkedin, Skype, Gmail Chat, Wordpress, Youtube)on which I am most dependant & love to spend my most of the time with them.
Google mail an exciting app? There are a couple other robust competitors for that niche. Their reader smokes everyone though, so have to agree with you on that one.
+1 for Google Wave
Google Wave looks cool, Google Voice is great too but its lacking a little in some areas.
1) Evernote
2) FriendFeed
3) Twitter
4) Google Voice
5) Box.net
6) PalmSync
7) Zotero
8) LastPass
9) Flickr
10) Gmail
Many are fun, but in terms of improving productivity and making financial gains, I'd like to plug my own startup web service http://www.pay4bugs.com
Posted by: cs.87id.com
|
August 23, 2009 12:23 AM
Google Reader, Gmail is very useful. Wolfram Alpha is odd.
Twitter not crazy, but some guy twit.
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I think gadgets (like dumb and buggy twitter clients) should be separated from game-changing applications. Otherwise you're just generating too much noise with such a poll which, in the end, becomes useless.
So the right question to ask is not "what's the most exciting xxx" (mind you, exact same question in summer editions of hype teen magazines) but rather "what are the 3 web apps that have changed the way you work / live / interact with people". Then, provided you collect enough answers (meaning: definitely more than 10), you'll might have a hint at what web apps are worth to follow (at least for your readers). Much more interesting.
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Although I like Twitter, Yelp is also something worth adding to your list....
Yelp is my flavour of the month as well!
A mere online presence won’t serve the purpose of reaching out and impressing your target audience, to beat the competition you need a well designed website with a good search rank and for that you need help of companies which provide complete solutions in website designing and development and search engine optimization.
delicious is great, but Diigo is better with sticky notes and highlighting.
Aviary
i like twitter.
Although Twitter has taken most of the word by storm, I have not yet warmed to it. I am however completely enamored by Facebook and its ability to constantly improve itself, despite its poor security features.
dfd
Vote up for all top 5 apps!
Awesome article
Very nice post
thanks
Google is definitely leading the charge with some great apps. As a developer myself, I wish I had more time to play around with their web services on Google Code.
I think Wolfram|Alpha is the most interesting.
Apple (http://adwido.com/view_content?vkey=45f860d0c3dcd6dae30230b50e32a6af)has developed so many innovative products and apps for the iPhone - so why don't they gear some of that energy towards web apps??
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