ReadWriteWeb

In America, 240 million people are wired...to the Internet. And in Russia, 60 million people are online. That's nearly half of Russia's population of 142,946,800. Russia is currently the largest Internet market in Europe, and its Internet population has been steadily growing year over year. The population of Internet users has just hit 42.8% of the entire Russian population. Last year, we wrote about the top 10 startups of 2011. But what are the top Russian startups? And are they all just American knockoffs?

This year was another huge one for the Web and the companies, technologies and individuals that make things happen on it. We saw groundbreaking new devices unveiled, key companies go public, a few tech fumbles and we lost some visionaries.

Narrowing down the ten biggest Web news stories of 2011 was no easy task. Lots of stories had a massive impact. Some of them fit into a larger, ongoing trend, while many are singular, important events. Some stories broke to extensive attention and fanfare, only to see their significance fizzle out within a few weeks. We've painstakingly whittled down ten of the biggest stories of the year and rounded them up for you here.

We wind down the top trends of 2011 with one that's perfect for the holidays. Just as the frantic, real-time nature of the social Web hit fever pitch, the market trends this year made way for "content shifting." It's the simple idea of saving your articles, videos and podcasts for later.

With the rise of the smartphone and tablet, all kinds of content can be saved until after work or school. Content shifting helps us concentrate on the tasks at hand. It also reformats it for more enjoyable experiences. Now that the Web is no longer limited to our desks, content shifting allows new media to take their rightful place on the couch.

ReadWriteWeb is all about what's next on the Web, so our team has been busy making their predictions for next year. Before I began writing my own, I took a look back at my predictions 12 months ago. Predictably, I had mixed success. But that's a lot of the fun with predictions. Why not make some bold bets on the future, because that's in the spirit of Silicon Valley. Plus it makes you think about what you wish will happen. Maybe, just maybe, a startup or bigco will make it happen for you.

This year I have 5 more predictions (and a bonus silly one). Leave a comment with your own predictions, to see if you can out-seer me!

2011 saw the biggest boom in personal computing since the Apple II invaded homes and offices across the world. This time around it was not a desktop computer, or even some fancy new laptop. The smartphone has penetrated society with such speed and to such depth that basic human interaction with information has yet to adapt to the change. Enterprises are scrambling to handle the era of "bring-your-own-device" and it is, at times, a painful process.

There is no possible way that the boom could continue, right? It will. Mobile is on a vertical trajectory through the rest of the decade. What will happen in 2012? We make a stab with our best educated guesses below.

As part of our annual review of the Web, we single out a big Internet company that has impressed us the most over the calendar year. The first Best BigCo was chosen back in 2004, so this is the 8th year we've done this. Only four companies have won it up till now. Google has been our selection three times (2004, 2006 and 2009) and Facebook has won it twice (2007 and 2010). The only other two winners have been Apple (2008) and Yahoo (2005).

This year we're pleased to etch a fifth name onto the Best BigCo trophy (although like our own little company, the trophy is virtual). Our Best BigCo of 2011 has been around since the Dot Com era, but what's most impressive is how it has disrupted entirely new markets over the past year. Our Best BigCo for 2011 is...

This time last year I listed my favorite Web products of 2010. I enjoyed that process so much that I'm doing it again this year. These are products that I liked and used the most during 2011, but I hope my list is useful to others too.

I wondered whether my top 10 products for 2011 would look similar to 12 months ago, but it turns out that only 3 of the same products made the cut again. Most of my favorite Web products this year are new, or at least newly popular with me. I've attempted to put this list in order, from my top product of 2011 to my 10th favorite. I'm curious to know how my personal top 10 matches up with yours. Let me know in the comments!

It was quite a year of mistakes, with Carol Bartz leaving Yahoo, HP trying once again to re-orient itself and hiring ex-California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. On top of this comes various reports that once again email is dead or dying (this could be a tedious repetition of the "year of the LAN" that we went through in the 1990s, even though email has been incorporated at the main notification mechanism of just about every piece of corporate software). But there were some spectacular enterprise Web blunders of the year that we've seen that are worth noting here.

Every year since 2004, ReadWriteWeb has selected a best "little company." These are small companies (loosely defined as less than 100 employees) that have had a big effect on the Web over the calendar year. Last year we chose Tumblr, which experienced extraordinary growth during 2010. In prior years we've given this honor to Aardvark (2009), Zoho ('08), Twitter ('07), YouTube ('06), 37Signals ('05) and Flickr ('04). Many of those companies went onto much bigger things, either through acquisition (Flickr, YouTube) or by ramping up independently (Twitter, Zoho).

This year there were a number of worthy contenders for Best LittleCo. Square, Evernote, Flipboard, BetaWorks, SoundCloud and Tumblr (again) have all had cracker years. So our winner must be something pretty special, right?

We all like a good success story, and we've had a lot of those this year. But we would be remiss not to mention some of tech's biggest flops. We don't want to indulge in too much Schadenfreude, but you've got to admit that the Qwikster saga was pretty funny.

There were some plain old duds this year, as well as some gross miscalculations. There were even a few serious transgressions. What follows is our list of the seven most spectacular tech failures of 2011.