It's time for our annual predictions post, in which the ReadWriteWeb authors look forward to what 2009 might bring in the world of Web technology and new media.
Looking back at our 2008 Web predictions, we got some of them right! "The big Internet companies will [embrace] open standards" (Google, Yahoo and others did this); "Mobile web usage will be a big story in 2008" (check!); "Web Services platforms will be a fierce battleground" (Microsoft Azure and Google App Engine were released and AWS grew). We also got some wrong, including most of our acquisition picks! Digg, Twitter, Zoho, Tumblr - all remain independent. Not to be deterred, we've made new acquisition predictions for '09... although the names will be familiar ;-)
For the final RWW Live show of the year today, the ReadWriteWeb writers and a couple of special guests got together to review the year in Web technology. Joining host Sean Ammirati were Marshall Kirkpatrick, Sarah Perez and Richard MacManus from ReadWriteWeb. We had two special guests who joined the call while we were live: Allen Stern of Center Networks and Kevin Marks of Google. Thanks to both of them for jumping in at the last minute. Here is the audio recording of the show:
Over December we've published ten top 10 lists of the top products of 2008. We intend to open these lists up for public voting in 2009, to tap into the wisdom of the intelligent crowd that reads our site. But for now, you'll have to make do with the choices of us here at ReadWriteWeb. In this post we've done a megalist, the top 100 products of 2008. Come join us on RWW Live - our live podcast show - at 3pm PST today, as we discuss these products and the big trends of 2008.
Of course there are far more than 100 great Web products out there, so there are some excellent ones not included in our megalist. Please leave a comment here and tell us what we've missed!
Every year we do a review of the top Internet companies, to identify the ones that had the biggest impact. Last week we announced that Apple was our choice for Best BigCo of 2008. Today we're announcing Best LittleCo and Most Promising Company, as selected by the ReadWriteWeb writers. There were a number of small companies that were in contention for Best LittleCo: FriendFeed, Meebo, and last year's winner Twitter would all have been deserving winners. In the end, we chose a 'little company that could' in the enterprise space. Our pick for Most Promising is something you could be using a lot on your mobile phone next year...
2008 has seen a proliferation of new Web platforms, including a few major ones built using open standards. In this final instalment of our series of top products of 2008, we choose the top 10 Web platforms of the year.
We've written a lot of times about platforms for the Web. A web platform can be as simple as an API, like the one offered by Twitter, which allows external developers to tap into a company's data. It can be software and services, like Amazon's Web Services. It can also be a fully fledged development platform, such as iPhone SDK and Adobe AIR. Whatever the case, platforms on the Web mean 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.
Editor's Note: This list was contributed by Charles Knight, editor of AltSearchEngines, a former RWW network blog.
In terms of user experience, the gap between the major search engines and their alternatives continues to widen -- a lot. Google has been compared to a luxury liner that turns around very, very slowly, whereas the startups are speedboats that can turn (or innovate) on a dime. I guarantee that if you try any of these top 10 alternative search engines of 2008, you won't come away saying, "Hey, that was just like Google."
Editor's Note: This list was contributed by Steve O'Hear, editor of last100, a former RWW network blog.
There was lots of activity in the digital lifestyle space in 2008, with new devices, services, and platforms being launched and some of our favorites from last year getting significant updates. One notable trend throughout the year was the way these products and services began to converge; not in the sense that they were becoming all-in-one devices, although some of that was happening, but rather by hardware, services, and content playing together nicely, often through open standards and platforms, with the Internet acting as a conduit. On that note, here are our picks of the 10 best digital lifestyle products of 2008.
Every year we do a review of the top Internet companies, to identify the ones we think had the biggest impact. Today we're announcing the Best BigCo of 2008 and next week we'll announce Best LittleCo and Most Promising Company - all selected by the ReadWriteWeb writers.
In 2007 the Best BigCo went to Facebook, due to the launch and subsequent impact of its development platform. Google won Best BigCo of 2006 and 2004. In between, in 2005, Yahoo! won the award. This year we've chosen Apple, which almost single-handedly brought the Mobile Web to life in 2008.
Here at ReadWriteWeb, we love to talk about the latest and greatest Web 2.0 applications. However, while a lot of these services make our life on the Internet a lot easier, another group of services on the web helps to keep our offline life organized. Here is our list of the top 'real world' apps that have made our offline lives easier in 2008. We will look at the following five six categories: finance, travel, education, health, politics, and non-profits.
Enterprise adoption of cloud computing, SaaS, and social media (whatever you want to call it) is accelerating. This is a healthy market, in which vendors are doing well in a tough economy. As we near the end of a year that will go down in history with the words "meltdown," "panic," "crisis," and "depression" attached, it is time to celebrate the winners in this market, enterprise-focused web products that are already doing well and poised for even greater success in 2009. And if these products excite you, we invite you to subscribe to the ReadWriteWeb Enterprise Channel.
