We're starting with online music. No industry, except arguably the newspaper one, has been rocked (pardon the pun) more by the Internet than the music industry.

The online music decade started with Napster, a music file sharing service created by Shawn Fanning that operated between June 1999 and July 2001. Napster enabled people to freely share MP3 files over the Internet; however it quickly ran into major legal trouble. Napster was the subject of lawsuits in 2000 by touchy metal band Metallica and others. It was eventually shut down by court order, after several major record labels went after the service.

After Napster's demise, a P2P application called Kazaa became the most popular service for music file sharing. But it too eventually succumbed to record industry attacks.

Curiously, both Napster and Kazaa were recently reincarnated as law-abiding services. After years of re-launch attempts, Napster was acquired by Best Buy in September 2008 and was born again in May 2009. Meanwhile Kazaa turned into a legit music subscription service in July this year.

iTunes / iPod: Digital Music Goes Commercial

While Napster and Kazaa tried to skirt around the commercial imperatives of music, like paying artists, Apple took on the record industry in an entirely legal way. In January 2001, Apple launched a digital music player for music called iTunes. Then in April 2003, the iTunes Store was launched. It offered the ability to buy songs for 99 cents each, which had a major impact on the music industry.

Soon after Napster's demise in 2001, Apple launched what was to become a revolutionary device in the music industry. The iPod was launched in October 2001 and it became the most popular portable music player since the Sony Walkman in the 1980s.

Fast forward to 2009 and iTunes continues to evolve. In January Apple announced that iTunes would go DRM-free. In September 2009 Apple launched version 9 of iTunes, which included a Genius-like recommendation feature for apps and 'iTunes LPs' - a feature that brings liner notes and artwork to digital albums.

MySpace: Music & Social Networking

MySpace was launched in August 2003 and soon became a popular hangout for local bands, especially indie rockers. MySpace provided a way for those bands to promote their music and reach a wide network through social networking.

As ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez wrote last month, it was a virtuous circle for MySpace. The bands' presence on MySpace "began to attract a young, hip crowd of users who were interested in following pop culture, and, in particular, the up-and-coming artists they discovered while browsing through the network. Only eight months after its launch, MySpace began to experience exponential growth, as its users created profiles and friended others who would then, in turn, invite more users to join the social network. Thanks to the "network effect," MySpace soon became the place to be online. Everyone was there."

However by 2008, MySpace had ceded the social networking crown to Facebook. In 2009, MySpace is once again trying to reclaim its heritage as a music service. In October MySpace launched "Artist Dashboards" and integrated its music video vault with recent acquisition iLike.

Pandora & last.fm: Online Music Discovery

Online music services have flourished in the 'web 2.0' era, when the ability to find new music and share it with others via the Web became increasingly sophisticated.

Two services in particular stand out. One is Pandora, a free online music discovery service. Pandora was founded in 2000 and continues to grow, despite various legal issues over the years. As ReadWriteWeb's Frederic Lardinois noted earlier this year, Pandora derives its revenue from targeted audio advertising in its music streams and affiliate sales through Amazon's MP3 store and iTunes.

Last.fm is another online music discovery service. It was founded in 2002 and was sold to CBS in 2007. It continues to innovate in 2009, for example in May this year last.fm announced combo stations, allowing a user to create a station with up to three artists or tags.

Conclusion

This post and series was inspired by one of my favorite blogs and podcasts, NPR's All Songs Considered. They're currently looking back at the decade in music and much of the discussion is about how the Internet helped define it.

And it's true, when you think of music at the end of 2009 you think of iTunes, Pandora and last.fm - MySpace even. The record industry is still coming to terms with these and other changes.

Tell us your online music memories of the past 10 years. What's been your favorite online music product or service during that time?

Does this mean Shazam is about to give Pandora and the like a run for their money?

The free Shazam application is best known for its nifty tune identification trick. Mobile users can hold their iPhones up next to a speaker or other source of music and the application "listens" to what's being played in order to identify the song and artist. It also lets you read track and album reviews, read artist biographies and tag songs to share with friends over Facebook and Twitter.

The new application, Shazam Encore, adds even more functionality including improved speed performance, trend lists that highlight what's popular among other Shazam users, a search function that taps into a database of 8 million+ songs, music recommendations and a "drive-and-tag" feature that lets the app recognize when it's in an in-car dock so it can identify what's playing on the radio while you're driving.

But How are Those Recommendations?

Out of all the new features, however, it's the music recommendations option which is the most interesting. Recommendations are the killer feature which can either make or break a mobile application these days. With services like Last.fm and Pandora already providing mobile users with playlists based on a user's likes or dislikes, Shazam needs to be able to do recommendations well - really well - in order to compete with these already popular applications.

In addition, the up-and-comer streaming music service from Spotify also partnered with The Echo Nest's music intelligence platform earlier this year to help improve on Spotify's playlist and music discovery functions. The end results of that partnership have been touted as being like the iTunes' "Genius" feature, only better. Although not yet available in the U.S., Spotify's mobile application is one of the most highly anticipated applications as it provides a new way to enjoy music - through playlist creations that can be listened to both online and off. It, too, will be heavy competition for any application entering into the music recommendations game, including, of course, Shazam.

So where does that leave Shazam Encore? At the moment, its recommendations offering provides you with a list of other songs you might like based on the one track you have pulled up. While this might help you discover new music, you aren't able to create a playlist based on those songs. Instead, Shazam's focus remains more on the sharing of music via tagging and posting to Twitter and Facebook.

As far as how good Shazam's recommendations are, we would need to do a lot more testing before giving a solid opinion - the app is just too new. In fact, it's so new that it wasn't even showing up in an iTunes Store search at the time of writing. The provided screenshot in the App Store doesn't look all that encouraging, though. (Really, a fan of indie band My Sad Captains wants to listen to Katy Perry singing about "kissing a girl?" I don't think so...)

But whether or not the recommendations are up to speed, it remains to be seen whether iPhone app shoppers will be willing to fork over the $4.99 US (£2.99/ €3.99) to have access to them, especially when there's no playlist option included.

Those interested in trying the new Encore application can find it now in the App Store by clicking here.

According to Ek, the notion of overnight success is "very misleading and actually rather harmful to any hope for long term and sustainable growth in this industry." Despite this fact, he calls out the music industry for doing just that and expecting to see business models proven "within months of inception."  That's just not how it works, he says, reminding us how iTunes was not initially the powerhouse it is today. In its first year, the company missed its revenue targets by 30% and most label executives doubted its staying power at the time.

While Ek realizes that comparing iTunes to Spotify is wrong given the very different business models for each company, it does prove the overall point: success in this industry takes time.

Spotify, which is currently hugely popular in Europe, has yet to launch in the U.S. due to contract negotiations over licensing agreements. However, as popular as the service is, it still has a long way to go in terms of both product and monetization. Ek acknowledges that one thing which needs to be addressed is how difficult it is for Spotify users to actually buy the music they're listening to. Yet despite the fact that nearly 80% of the company's users are unaware that they can purchase the tunes they're hearing, Spotify is still one of the biggest affiliates to music downloads.

Another challenge facing the company is how to earn a profit considering the large costs of licensing the music it plays... especially when reliant on an ad-supported model. (Spotify offers multiple service levels, one being ad-supported. It also offers subscriptions.) Earlier this year, another streaming service, Last.fm, had to do away with its ad-supported model for the same reason.

The Music Industry Needs to Change

If it was up to Spotify, the music industry would be embracing the future instead of constantly fighting against it. Ek says that in order for the industry to find success, it needs to realize that the new business model is "a mix between ad-supported music, downloads, subscriptions, merchandising and ticketing where the user comes first and where the key to monetization comes from portability and packaging access rights." If willing to adapt, the music industry could then have the potential to become a $40-50 billion industry and one that could grow stronger than it ever was.

Until that time, it looks like Spotify has a long road ahead of it, but it's good to know that it is up for the challenge. "We aren't interested in just trying to hype the company and then flipping it," Ek says. "We are in this for the long haul."

We want to take a moment to highlight five international companies that will be at the Summit. We really appreciate the distance they are traveling to help make this event an important one. You can learn about more highlighted participants signed up so far on this page and you can sign up to join us here.

Faroo (UK)

Faroo is a P2P real-time search engine that combines explicit and implicit data to power its indexing and ranking technologies. The company specializes in difficult real-time analysis of international content, like breaking up long strings of Chinese characters for text analysis. Faroo is also a sponsor of the Real-Time Web Summit, so they are helping it happen as well as helping its international relevance!

PostRank (Canada)

PostRank provides social media analytics on top of traditional web content analytics. We've written about PostRank over and over again here (we're going to again later today) and we use their technology every day. We're very excited that PostRank is going so strong that it's a major sponsor of the Summit as well.

Mendeley (UK)

Mendeley Research Networks is a fascinating real-time citation tracking, recommendation and organization tool for scientific research papers. It's backed by founders of Last.fm and Skype. It's like Last.fm for scientific research. The company believes it is on a pace to have the largest online repository of academic articles in the world sometime next year.

Twingly (Sweden)

Twingly offers blog search, trackback discovery and comment aggregation in real time. The company already has a thriving business providing real-time inbound links for European newspapers and just launched a new product called Twingly Channels this week. (Watch this space for a review later today.)

Sysomos (Canada)

Some of these companies are bringing multiple representatives and we hope that even more international participants will sign up in the next two weeks leading up to the event. To register to join these companies and many more at the ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit, please visit this link. Feeling unable to make it? Make sure to put the event down on your calendar anyway, we'll be broadcasting select discussion sessions live via Justin.tv. See you on the 15th!

Although the data repository Infochimps has been open for a year or so now, the company is making a big announcement at the DEMOfall 09 conference today. Now, in addition to simply being one of the best sources for finding raw data online, you're able to share your data - or even list it for sale - through new site features which the company hopes will encourage businesses to open up their commercial datasets to the world.

At Infochimps, data can either be hosted on site in a standard format like CSV, XML, or YAML, or it can simply point to an external source. While the data itself cannot be manipulated on the site, the metadata like the description and tags can be edited by anyone who creates an account at Infochimps.org. The site founders have seeded the site with some data already - like the data from the comprehensive knowledge archive network - but the majority of the data is user-submitted. They've also partnered with Amazon to share Infochimps data with Amazon's Public Data Sets service. To date, one-third of Amazon's Public Data Sets were contributed by Infochimps.

New Announcements: Sell and Share Your Data

Today, the company is opening up and allowing anyone to upload their own datasets. The data can be any raw data that has an open license. To get started, users just upload it to the site and Infochimps will then handle the storage and distribution. Also, for any truly valuable data, be that commercial data a company wants to share or some sort of data manipulation - like editing awful census data into a format for use with MySQL databases - users can now charge for downloads, too. The price for the dataset can be set to any amount, however Infochimps makes its money by taking a 20% cut of all data sold.

There really isn't a company that's doing anything like Infochimps. Amazon's Public Data Sets comes close, but isn't nearly as extensive. And although other repositories of data exist, (Archive.org and the newly launched Data.gov come to mind), these resources focus on one particular type of data as opposed to providing a search engine for all data.

Those who have data to share or sell can now do so as of today: just visit Infochimps.org to get started. ReadWriteWeb readers who use this service can use the code RWWrocks to get in.

Gelato is the kind of web site that's going to make married and attached folks almost wish they were single again - it's that much fun to use. Getting started is one of the simplest processes we've ever seen. Not only does it offer Facebook Connect as an alternative to creating an account, it actually imports your Facebook profile information to create an instant dating profile on Gelato. (You can select and deselect which items you want to import, too).

However, Gelato doesn't stop with just Facebook - the site actually supports eight social services in total and has more on the way. Obviously, there's Twitter support, a key component to any good lifestream, but there's also Last.fm, Netflix, Flickr, Hulu, Amazon, and Seesmic. By adding a mix of these sites to your profile, it's much easier for someone to get an idea of what sort of interests you have than by reading some sort of self-created profile list. Think about it: you may have a rather typical list of favorite movies which include everything from "Forrest Gump" to "The Godfather," but your recent viewing of Dollhouse Season 1 on Hulu will out you as the sci-fi geek you are at heart.

Your updates on these social networks are combined to form a lifestream of your activities, just like they would on FriendFeed. Also like FriendFeed, you can "like" and comment on the items posted. And if you don't know what to say, various "icebreakers" are available to help you be witty on the fly. However, because Gelato is focused on making one-to-one connections, those likes, comments, and icebreakers remain private. The only person who can see them is the recipient. They can then respond to your comment if they want to start a conversation with you.

Real-Time Search

A real-time search feature, another borrowed idea from FriendFeed, helps you find topics you're interested in. For example, if you're looking for someone who's talking about the latest Harry Potter movie, you can search for that using keywords. Of course you're also able to filter your searches by age, sex, and location, too, so you can find someone local to chat with.

Legit Accounts and "Friendships"

One unique feature to Gelato that didn't come from elsewhere is what they're calling your "SCOOP" rating, aka the "social confidence of online profile." The higher the "SCOOP" rating, the better chance you're legit. This feature is designed to combat those who post fake profiles on dating sites. To bump your rating up, you can post to Twitter or Facebook and ask your friends to confirm who you are. Obviously, this isn't foolproof, but it should help highlight legit accounts as being so.

The only area that may need a little finessing is the way friendships work on the site. As with Facebook, you can send friend requests to other users and they must accept your request before you can be friends. This in and of itself isn't so bad...or all that different from how many other sites work for that matter. However, since a lot of online dating interaction is typically of the "try-before-you-buy" sort (live chats, email messages, etc.), it could lead to some sticky situations when you decide that the person you "friended" isn't someone you want to get to know better after all. To get them out of your friends list, you have to unfriend them and they will know you've done so. Considering all the other smart features in Gelato, it would have been nice if they could have come up with a less hurtful way of saying "I'm just not that into you."

Still that's a minor complaint in what is, overall, a unique entry to the billion dollar marketplace that is online dating. Despite the fact that much of the site's inspiration comes from FriendFeed, we won't hold that against them. In fact, we applaud them for it. Taking FriendFeed's innovations and applying them to a marketplace decidedly lacking in such technical innovation is a brilliant idea.

If you're ready to give the "stream dating" of Gelato a try, you can join now at ge.la.to.

Many people are only just coming to know the newer services like Posterous, so in this post we give you 5 tips to get the most out of them. The post is in the same vein as our earlier How to use Facebook one.

Blogging started out in the early days as a text-heavy medium; and to this day professional blogs (such as ReadWriteWeb) rely mostly on text. But the whole point of light blogging - sometimes called micro-blogging - is to be more casual and colorful. So post lots of media: photos, video, audio. Most light blogging services offer a browser bookmarklet, which enables you to post media at the click of a button.

Here's an example of easily published media from a Posterous blog called ReflectionOf.Me:

2. Subscribe to Other People (& Re-Blog)

One thing that hasn't changed about blogging is the sense of community. Half the fun of maintaining a blog is reaching out to your network. So be proactive in finding people who blog about similar things as you, then link to them and even re-blog their posts (copy and paste - it's much more accepted in light blogging than in professional blogging!).

At this stage, the market leader Tumblr still offers you the best chance of finding like-minded souls - due to the sheer number of people using it. Here's an example of community from a Tumblr user called rudie. Note the "following" panel on the right, which lists the other blogs that rudie follows.

3. Aggregate Content From Your Other Apps

With light blogging, you needn't even spend time actually blogging - because you can pull in content automatically from other apps. While FriendFeed and even Facebook are common methods for many of us to aggregate our content from across the web (a.k.a. 'lifestreaming'), it's just as easy to do so using Tumblr, Posterous or Soup.io.

To the right is an example from my own Soup.io blog. Every week Soup.io polls last.fm and automatically publishes the top 5 artists I've listened to in the past week.

4. Customize Your Theme

All of the leading light blogging services offer a variety of colorful themes. If you're handy with HTML and/or CSS, you can customize your template too - if you want to make it unique. Here's a cool MySpace-esque design from Tumblr user Juice in a Box:

5. Don't Take it Seriously

It's not called light blogging for nothing (actually it wasn't called light blogging at all, until we clumsily coined it!). Services such as Tumblr, Posterous and Soup.io make it very easy to experiment with blogging, have fun, see new things, meet new people. Why not give it go...

From Sween's Tumblr blog

According to recent reports, however, Spotify may do things a little differently when it reaches the States. Says Andres Sehr, Spotify's global community manager, the company is considering going the "freemium" route for the U.S. market.

"Freemium" is a word coined to describe a business model where basic services are free while special or advanced features are available for a fee. That's a slightly different spin on the business model Spotify uses today. Currently, Spotify offers its European users a choice between a free, ad-supported application and a paid app which costs around about €10 (around $16.60) a month. With a Spotify "freemium" service, however, there would be just the one application in which users would pay for the extra features they want to use. Details on how exactly this would work and what features would come at additional cost is still unknown. Sehr says it's far too early say at this point. Also unknown is whether this "freemium" model would forgo the monthly subscription fees in favor of the premium upgrades.

In an interview published today in the Wall Street Journal, Sehr explained why the company is considering making this sort of change. "The U.S. is a completely different market, and the competition landscape's different," he said, adding that "when we launch there, it'll definitely be a challenge for us."

What Sehr is referring to is the particularly crowded market here in the U.S. where services like Imeem, Pandora, Last.fm, and many others are already well-known and popular destinations for streaming music online. In other words, Spotify isn't just rivaling iTunes in the U.S., it's going up against a number of other companies doing nearly the same thing, too.

Spotify on the Mobile

Where Spotify has an edge over its competition is on the mobile front. Although there are plenty of streaming music applications available for both the iPhone and Android platforms, Spotify's app does things a little differently...and considering the glowing reviews, better. Instead of simply providing a streaming radio of sorts based on a user's musical preferences, Spotify's mobile users can actually pick and choose the songs they want to listen to and build a custom playlist. That playlist can also be streamed when the mobile device is offline thanks to Spotify's caching technology.

For this reason, there were originally concerns that Apple would reject the streaming music app because selecting tracks, making playlists, and playing music offline puts it in direct competition with iTunes itself. Those concerns were soon discovered to be unfounded as Apple recently approved the app for distribution via App Store - a decision no doubt influenced at least in part by FCC scrutiny over the company's app approval process and anti-competitive tactics.

While the initial launch of the Spotify mobile iPhone/iPod Touch app is only in the European counties where Spotify is currently licensed, the Apple "seal of approval" means that (in theory), Spotify won't have any trouble making it into the American App Store, too. That is, once they get the American licensing agreements worked out.

Although the company already has European deals with Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI and it solidified an American licensing agreement with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) in July, its the Stateside licensing agreements that are holding up the service's U.S. launch. Still, the company remains optimistic and expects to make its American debut later this year or in early 2010.

Many of us have high hopes for Android. It's not as polished, as popular, maybe not even as good as the iPhone so far - but if I had to choose between them right now...I might pick Android. Below are some thoughts about the hardware, the learning curve, the App Market and Augmented Reality apps in particular. I've also included one paragraph about the cost. Bottom line: Android is pretty cool and I'm really excited to have a phone that's more open than the iPhone.

Many people say that they don't want to buy an Android phone until the HTC Hero comes out in six weeks because the handsets are so bad. I bought a MyTouch, the most recently released Android handset, and am happy enough with it so far. I think I even like the small size better than the big brick of an iPhone I've also got in my pocket.

The Learning Curve

The iPhone is very easy to learn to use. The Nokia N95 that I tested some time ago was frustrating enough for me that I decided I hated it within hours. Android appears to be somewhere in between, speaking as an iPhone user. It takes a little time to get used to the controls and features; but that's ok - it's a computer, after all.

Multi-app Processing

One of the best things about Android is its ability to do more than one thing at a time. Listening to Last.fm while checking my email? That's cool. More interesting than literal simultaneous use of multiple apps at once though is the system's ability to watch for new email, new tweets, completed downloads or other activity in the background and notify you while you're using other apps.

Live dashboard widgets and the pulldown list of notifications fall into this same category. Those make a big difference in creating a very different user experience than what you get with an iPhone. I've got a URL bar/google search box/google voice search box, an analog clock display and a widget showing me the next item coming up on my Google Calendar - all on the front page of my phone. That makes the phone useful even with minimal interactions. Little things like that can make a very big difference.

The App Market

The Android App Market isn't as big as the iPhone app store and you won't find many apps like Pandora, Facebook or Tweetie there. The Android App Market is easy enough to use, though, and is wide open. There's no lengthy, arbitrary and anti-competitive approval process like there is in iTunes. That's really important.

Right now there are too few Android users compared to iPhone users for many developers to build apps for Android. (Though at least one report says that the number of Android developers is growing fast.)There are a whole lot of apps in the Android store none the less. Android hasn't solved the problem of discovering the best new apps any better than Apple has. It's hard to know after one day how the Android Market compares to the iPhone App Store. It may be a matter of supporting Android on principle but prefering the experience of the iPhone app ecosystem.

The Android Market is about to undergo a radical transformation, though. Check out this video below that was just posted to the official Android Blog.

Augmented Reality

I bought this phone in large part to use the new class of technologies called Augmented Reality (AR). These are tools that display a set of data on top of your otherwise naked view of the world around you. So far the AR apps I tried out were a little disapointing.

These are early days of AR but the dream of pointing my phone at a row of businesses on the street and seeing information about them displayed on top of my camera view of those buildings - that's still just a dream.

So far I've tried out two AR apps on Android, Layar and Wikitude. I'll be writing in-depth reviews of both over the next few days but I will say this for now. Both clearly have a lot of potential, both have a lot of obstacles to being useful and neither is a good excuse for pointing my phone in the direction of women in the coffee shop where I'm testing the apps out. If I'm not careful I'm going to get punched sometime soon.

I think these AR apps and I are going to need to meet half-way; I need to learn how to use them effectively and they need to improve. More on that later.

Cost

I chose to buy this phone with a 1 year contract, making the sticker price for the handset $299. By only committing to 1 year though, I may save myself almost $700 by not paying for data and voice through a second year. I split that $299 into three payments, too, since I just paid my quarterly taxes and because T-Mobile made it easy to do. I selected unlimited data and the minimum voice plan (300 minutes per month) because I mostly want this phone to use and test apps. After tax and a small monthly insurance payment I'm paying $65 per month for the service.

I canceled my $60/month Verizon EVDO service, intend on tethering my other phone, and thus am out just the price of the handset plus an extra $5 every month. More than worth it to me.

For now I'm having enough fun getting to know Android that I don't even want to pick up my iPhone to use it. The first day using any software is very different from what it's like day-in and day-out after extended use, but first impressions are important to make note of. My first impressions of this Android phone are good and so far I'm glad I bought it.

Music subscription service Rhapsody has very publicly submitted an iPhone app to Apple and there's widespread speculation about whether Apple will approve an app that could be seen as competition to its own iTunes store. Like the Google Voice for iPhone fiasco, this is a story about freedom and platforms, about competition for filling consumer demand and about the long-term viability of the iPhone vs. open platforms like Android. Let's assume for a moment that Apple allowed apps that competed with iTunes on the phone. What kind of music app would you like to see? Here's our wish list.

What I want is an MP3 blog music player. Maybe a Hype Machine iPhone app.

• It would pull in MP3 blogs.
You can subscribe to MP3 blog RSS feeds as podcasts now, but the functionality is very limited and best suited to longer talk shows than collections of music.
• It would display the blog posts about the songs.
Just like Pandora or Last.fm apps allow you to learn about the artist you're listening too, I want to be able to read at least part of the blog posts that accompany the MP3s I'm listening to.
• Allow bookmarking of songs.
The most frustrating part of listening to songs in iTunes that came in from an MP3 blog's RSS feed is the inability to do much with the songs you like later.


• Search for text and MP3 archives.
When I discover a new artist I think I like, I want to be able to easily find other blog posts and songs from them from around the web.
• Play related songs or artists.
Integration with other apps would be all the better to power this.

• Pull in my Blip.fm social network.
Blip.fm is my new favorite music service. It's user-driven, easy to make playlists for, and a great place to discover more diverse music that I've found anywhere else. I want to be able to pull in my playlists and favorite DJs and push new discoveries back to my account on Blip from inside this magic music app. I had big hopes for the Blip-powered Boom Box Pro app, but it's only half-functioning for me so far.
• Buying songs.
I give Apple and AT&T so much money every month already. I'd like to be able to purchase music on my phone from other people, thank you.

That's what I want to see on my iPhone. If there's no good reason to believe that apps from Rhapsody, Spotify and Google Voice are going to be allowed, though, then there's little incentive for developers to build my fantasy app or yours. It's enough to make a person look at different phones.

What media apps would you like to have on your iPhone, if your iPhone could have any media apps you wanted?

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.'

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

1. Jolicloud

The netbook OS getting the most buzz today is one that doesn't scream "I'm a Linux distro!" Instead, Jolicloud's internet OS provides easy access to all your favorite applications whether those are online apps like Gmail and Facebook or desktop apps like Skype and Boxee. A bar at the top tracks all the applications you're currently running for easy switching between them. However, the most unique element to this netbook OS is the social component which lets you "subscribe" to other Jolicloud users so you can see what applications they've installed and vice versa. Jolicloud is still in private alpha, but those who signed up to try it are starting to receive their invites now. You can request one too from the Jolicloud home page.

2. gOS's Cloud 1.0

Most people remember gOS as the distro that tried and failed to make it big by way of a deal with Walmart. The company was the pre-installed OS for the low-end Everex machines sold at the American superstore. But that failure shouldn't count gOS out of the running just yet. For one thing, the Everex machines were boring, cheap desktop computers sold without monitors. Plus, the Walmart shoppers...well...let's just say they probably didn't know what they were getting into. While the original gOS is still available for download today, we're more intrigued by the company's upcoming Cloud 1.0, an OS optimized for notebooks. This new version boots straight to a web browser (one that looks just like Google Chrome, in fact). Cloud is supposed to go into private beta this year. You can sign up here to be one of the first to try it.

3. Moblin 2.0

Moblin 2.0 is a netbook OS which is publicly available right now. Designed for Intel Atom-based netbooks, this Linux distro focuses on aggregating your social networking activity and media content. A dynamic start page called the "Myzone" is the centralized area where you can get instant access to files, tasks, your calendar, updates from your social networks, and more. Unfortunately though, when it comes to social networks, only Twitter and Last.fm are supported at this time. If you're not sure if Moblin is right for you, there's a "test drive" available as a downloadable live image. Once you're ready to install it for good, you can grab the full download.

4. Ubuntu Netbook Remix

The Ubuntu Netbook Remix is a netbook-friendly version of one of the most popular Linux distros, Ubuntu. This OS features a customizable Ubuntu Mobile Edition (UME) Launcher which basically serves to replace the desktop for easy access to applications and system settings. Categories on the left display related icons when clicked and a "Favorites" category lets you store your most frequently used applications for quick launching. Remix also offers a unique window switcher which lets you move between programs similar to how you switch between tabs in your web browser. This version of Linux is available for download now from here.

5. Google Chrome OS?

We can't help but put Google Chrome OS on this list. Although the OS isn't actually a product yet, only an announcement, we're incredibly excited to see what Google comes up with for their first real launch into the OS market (Android notwithstanding). All we really know about this Linux distro is that Google aims to build a real "cloud OS" where web applications run in the company's Chrome web browser. We also know that their goals include a fast boot time to get you on the web quickly and an OS which is safe from malware and viruses. But what we don't know about Chrome OS could fill a room. According to Google, this OS will make its debut in the second half of 2010. We're not sure if we can stand the wait.

Having said that, there's no doubt that Facebook is a powerful social networking tool. So how can you best utilize it and find the good apps? In this post we aim to find out. We'll be focusing specifically on social activities, rather than the many other potential uses of Facebook (work, brand management, etc).

This is a simple thing to do to keep your Facebook profile active. Right at the top of the page there is a place where you can "write something." Usually a comment about what you're doing or thinking. Once a day, or even once every few days, is enough. But update it enough to keep your page interesting.

Tip 2. Use Groups (a.k.a. Lists in Facebook Terminology)

Groups are a core feature of social networking on the Web. To effectively use Facebook, we recommend you set up some groups so that you can filter content. One person who does this very well is our own Marshall Kirkpatrick. Marshall says that he generally scans his Facebook homepage first, then clicks to his groups for family and old friends from school. He noted that "this way most of my time spent on Facebook isn't re-reading the same things I've already read on Twitter."

There is a bit of a trick to setting this groups feature up. Facebook calls this feature "lists," probably to differentiate them from its other Groups feature (which have been usurped by 'Pages' now). Confused? Get used to it, Facebook navigation is awful.

To set lists up for your Facebook account, go to your Facebook homepage and click the "more" link on the left-hand sidebar. You will see a link entitled "Create new list" at the bottom - click on that to create a new group.

Tip 3: Add Your Content From Other Sources (Carefully...)

In this day and age, you are likely creating content in more than a few places on the Web. This ranges from the extreme cases (early adopters who have personal RSS feeds coming out their ears), to those who may just use YouTube and a couple of other niche social websites.

Many early adopters use FriendFeed to aggregate their 'lifestream' of content from multiple sources. Facebook just bought FriendFeed, so expect to see it integrated into Facebook over time. As of now, if you have more than a few content sources and they aren't necessarily the well-known ones like YouTube or Last.fm, then you'll need to use FriendFeed or an equivalent lifestreaming product to aggregate those feeds. But if you find FriendFeed just a bit too geeky (and many people do), then you can adequately enrich your Facebook profile with external content.

One thing we'd caution, which this author took too long to notice: don't pipe your FriendFeed content into Facebook if you aggregate a lot of content into FriendFeed! It quickly overpowers your Wall and will likely annoy the friends you have who also subscribe to your FriendFeed.

To add external content to Facebook, on your Wall page click the 'Options' link on the top right. Then click 'Settings.'

You can then choose to "import stories" to your Facebook wall from a select number of sites: Flickr, Digg, YouTube and others.

You can add content from other external sources to Facebook by clicking the 'application settings page' link further down the page.

Tip 4: Brighten Up Your Profile With Photos and Videos

This almost goes without saying, but adding multimedia makes your Facebook profile interesting and attractive.

If instead of Facebook you usually use a specialist photo site (like Flickr) or video site (like Vimeo), then you'll need to search around for ways to export your files. I use Flickr and didn't find a satisfactory way to export photos from Flickr to Facebook's Photo albums. But via my Twitter network I managed to discovered a plug-in for iPhoto, which allows Mac users to bulk export from iPhoto to Facebook.

Tip 5: Search Out the Best Facebook Apps

Ever since Facebook became a development platform back in May 2007, thousands of apps have been built to add to your Facebook page. As noted in the introduction, these range from trivial (e.g. sheep throwing) to very useful. The best tip here is to find apps that complement your interests.

Our advice is to search the directory for keywords of interest to you. The quality of apps varies greatly and often there are errors (at least I came across them several times when researching this article). When you find an app you like, you can add it to your profile. I added an Art app recently, for example.

You can browse a user's apps by clicking the oddly-named 'Boxes' tab on their profile page.

Tell Us How You Use Facebook!

We hope this post inspires you to spruce up your Facebook page a bit. For more tips, check out Facebook's own Influencers page.

Let us know in the comments what tips you have, or what you use Facebook for every day!

Big words indeed. To see if that You Tube comparison was justified, let's check back in with Imeem one year later and assess how they're doing now.

The tale of the tape is usually a good indication of growth; and according to Compete Imeem has actually declined by 10.5% in unique visitors this past year. The chart below doesn't include Facebook and MySpace, because they are much larger than Imeem. While Imeem is still larger than last.fm and Pandora, the chart below shows a definite dip - whereas last.fm and Pandora grew.

If we add in MySpace and Facebook, you can see the gulf between Imeem and the other two large social network players. We also see the massive growth of Facebook over the past year; it passed MySpace in Dec '08 - Jan '09 according to this data.

Statistics don't tell the whole story of course, however we've also seen other evidence of problems at Imeem. The company appears to be under pressure financially - in October '08, Imeem laid off 25% of its staff. The product is also under strain. In late June this year we reported that Imeem will remove photos and videos from its features, in order to simplify the service and focus on the service's core social music features. That move did not go down well with Imeem users.

We also note a relative dearth of news this year - just 2 news announcements at Imeem so far this year (into the 8th month), both about Imeem Mobile. Our review of Imeem Mobile was tepid.

We don't want to be too negative. There's much still to like about Imeem - its design has improved and the list of record labels is impressive. But it's obvious that the hype that we saw one year ago (including our own comparison to YouTube!) just hasn't panned out.

With Miley Cyrus now draped all over the Imeem homepage and Jonas Brothers in the default playlist, it seems that the site is now aiming to attract the teeny bopper audience that perhaps MySpace and other online music sites don't serve too well. That's great, but it's far from the diverse mainstream audience that Facebook and MySpace attract.

Unfortunately, Imeem is heading the wrong way in terms of its growth. And there are newer, arguably better music streaming services rising up - Spotify has gotten rave reviews so far from international markets and it's about to launch in the U.S.

Can Imeem turn it around? Let us know your thoughts on Imeem in the comments.

According to Eurogamer, Microsoft marketing executive James Halton commented on the Twitter and Facebook release saying, "It will be before Christmas. A lot of the background work's been done for a lot of applications that are coming."

In addition to this more social 360 Live community, Microsoft's most interesting entertainment efforts have been demoed, but they have not been released to the public. ReadWriteWeb recently covered a number of motion-based web interfaces and Microsoft's Project Natal is among the most anticipated motion interfaces for the gaming world.

Natal uses a sensor-based camera to recognize full body gestures, facial movements, depth perception and voice. The interface also allows players to scan real world objects like skateboards to interact with them in game play. With the integration of Facebook and Twitter, and the upcoming release of Natal, gamers will be able to record their own gestures and brag about their Xbox triumphs directly from their television screens. Alternatively, if your friends already heckle your lack of Skate abilities, they'll soon carry the heckling across networks, complete with screen captures and tweet annotation. Think of it as a modern-day America's Funniest Home Videos, only your avatar is the one getting kicked in the virtual junk over and over again. Love it or leave it, Microsoft is about to offer audiences a totally immersive entertainment experience. The Boxee community had better collect its rocks, it appears Goliath is on the move.