Our recent coverage of trends in the first half of 2010 have not fully touched on Facebook. The dominance of the world's most popular online social network has gone beyond being just a trend. It has become much bigger than that. This week alone we have posted about use cases for Facebook's OpenGraph as well as the introduction of OpenGraph for the mobile Web.
ReadWriteWeb has kept a close eye on not only the latest innovations of Facebook, but also on extensive privacy concerns, as well as what happens when you try to cancel your account. These 25 posts highlight what's trending in the first half of a busy year for Facebook.
Remember PleaseRobMe? The social experiment (now shuttered) formerly displayed real-time updates from Foursquare users who publicly broadcasted their current location via Twitter. In aggregate, the site's founders said, this data could be used by burglars looking to find empty houses to rob.
Although many in the tech community dismissed the experiment as engaging in fear-mongering and scare tactics to make its point about the potential dangers of location-based services, it may have actually hit a nerve among mainstream users. According to a new survey of over 1,500 social networking users who own geolocation-ready mobile devices, over half (55%) are worried about the loss of privacy that comes with the use of mobile applications which broadcast your location.
Mobile searches account for an estimated 10% of Google queries, says Citi analyst Mark Mahaney in a research note released earlier this week. The report, which examined the new comScore search market data, mainly focused on how the use of slideshows by Yahoo and Bing perhaps unfairly boosted their search share ratings.
The mobile search mention itself was nearly overlooked, as it was more of side note in the larger report. Although comScore doesn't include mobile search results in its findings, said Mahaney, those queries now account for "almost 10% of total GOOG queries."
Headed out to do some shopping and looking for a few good deals? Thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and their accompanying mobile applications, the ability to access geo-targeted coupons from nearby merchants on your handheld device is easier than ever.
Or is it?
In theory, you should be able to go into any store, launch an app and find a coupon for that business which could then be presented to the cashier. We have the technology - it is possible. In practice, however, this sort of mobilized "discount shopping" experience is still quite a ways off.
This week we ran a poll asking you to vote for the Web product or platform that has most impressed you in 2010. The overwhelming winner was the Apple iPad, launched in January. This isn't a surprise, but the fact that the iPad garnered over twice as many votes as the second-place getter shows just how much impact the iPad has had on the Web landscape this year.
Second was the Nexus One, an iPhone challenger that runs Google's mobile OS, Android. This shows another significant trend of 2010: the increasing market penetration of Android as a smart phone platform competing with the iPhone. Full poll results below...
How do we explain the Web and what it means? With so many innovations changing our lives, that's a complex explanation. Now what if you had to do it in only a few words?
Marshall Kirkpatrick recently asked some of our readers that very question. We then picked 10 responses most worth sharing. Congratulations to those who made the list. And if you'd like to add more ideas to this ongoing discussion, please do so in the comments section below.
Yesterday, we posted part one of the findings for "Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet" (PDF summary), an open innovation study by Latitude Research and ReadWriteWeb. The study asked children aged 12 and under to illustrate their ideas for new Web and computer technologies.
In our previous post, we looked at the findings from an interaction angle. We discussed how younger generations expect to have increasingly intuitive interactions with technology - and not just localized to swiping and tapping an iPad, but really moving things in the world of physical activity and objects. This represents "a shift from smartphones that can go anywhere to The Internet of Things which is everywhere," said Jessica Reinis, the analyst who headed up the study.
We already know the iPad is popular - it sold 2 million units in its first 60 days, and then 3 million by the 80-day point. But how big of an impact will the iPad have in 6 months? A year from now? Analysts are starting to weigh in on this topic, and the numbers they're coming up with are big. Very big.
According to Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi, Apple could sell 25 million iPads in 2011. Barclays Capital, meanwhile, predicts 28 million tablets will be sold in 2011, with Apple owning the majority of that market for several years.
If we were to ask you to name one thing you wish your computer (or another Web-enabled device) could do, but doesn't now, what would you say? How about the ability to "touch the things that are in the screen, to feel and move them." That's what 7-year-old Daniela* wants. Matthew, 6, wishes he could play 3D games on his computer, and Jenna, 7, would like a solar-powered laptop. Cristina, 12, thinks it'd be great to travel more - to experience new, far-away places with the help of virtual reality.
Understanding that kids are excellent innovators, Latitude Research in conjunction with ReadWriteWeb recently conducted a study asking children to ideate concepts for new computer and Web technologies - and the results are in.
It's now a little over 6 months into 2010, so a good time to reflect on the highlights of the year so far. At the beginning of the year, we identified some key trends to track: (in alphabetical order) Augmented Reality, Internet of Things, Mobile, Real-Time Web, Structured Data.
Mobile and Real-Time Web have been particularly eventful in 2010, as you'll see below. Augmented Reality and Internet of Things are both early stage trends, but have continued to edge towards the mainstream this year. The movement towards Structured Data has made significant progress in 2010, primarily thanks to RDFa and the adoption of that Semantic Web format by Facebook, Google and other big companies.
