Shopping sites like Walmart.com, Target and BestBuy both saw a substantial monthly decline of around 35% compared to December. Amazon, however, only lost 5%, which suggests that the world's most popular online shopping destination relies less on seasonal traffic than most of its competitors.

Tax and Travel Up

With the tax season in the U.S. in full swing, it doesn't come as a surprise that services like HRBlock.com, Intuit.com and Taxactonline.com saw solid growth since December. In total, Compete notes that sites in its "Financial Services: Accountancy and Tax Service" category were up 292% compared to December 2009. Maybe even more importantly, these numbers are also up 11.5% compared to January 2009, which is a strong indicator that more and more people now prepare and file their taxes online. Last week, we talked to representatives from Intuit's Turbotax division, who also noted that the company's online services now post some of Intuit's largest growth rates.

As travelers start to plan their 2010 vacations, sites like HotWire.com (up 32% month-over-month) and TripAdvisor.com (up 24%) also posted solid gains.

Other Notable Numbers: New York Times, CNet, Twitter and Bing

Among news sites in Competes top 50, the New York Times (#50) booked a solid 10% gain since December, while CNN (#32) saw a 1.6% gain. The number of unique visitors to CNet, however, dropped by almost 13% compared to December, and is down 24% year-over-year.

Twitter, which registered a solid 294% year-over-year growth, only saw a 3.35% growth since December.

Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, is now the eleventh most-visited site. It's worth noting that the combination of Live.com and Bing.com attracted around 133 million unique visitors in January 2010, which is on par with Facebook's and Yahoo's numbers.

The deal comes on the heels of this morning's revelation that Twitter will be soon unveiling an advertising platform, which means more tweets seen in more places, and therefore more revenue.

"The information in one single tweet can travel light years farther with this Yahoo integration," Stone said in a statement. "Tweets in more places brings relevance where and when you need it most."

According to a press release by Yahoo, the deal will bring Twitter's content to Yahoo's network of nearly 600 million people worldwide. For Yahoo, this brings Twitter to the table where it had already seated next to social network giant Facebook, but we think this might be an even better deal for Twitter.

The press release breaks down the partnership into three key areas. First, Twitter feeds will be available across Yahoo, from the home page to mail and beyond. Yahoo's users will also be able to update Twitter and share content directly from Yahoo. Search results will also contain tweets as well as a number of Yahoo media properties, such as news, finance, entertainment and sports.

Of course, while we see this as a big deal for Twitter, our recent conversation with Gigya CEO David Yovanno tells us that for Yahoo to stay in the game, deals like this are necessary. Social networks are quickly becomming bigger traffic-driving forces than search engines, so integration is key.

Kara Swisher, of the All Things Digital blog, explains that Twitter's content will be woven in throughout Yahoo's content as part of Yahoo's "Project Rushmore", which looks to integrate social media into the Internet portal.

There have been a number of deals like this in recent weeks. Microsoft last week struck a similar deal with both Facebook and Myspace, as well as LinkedIn, to bring social media streams to Outlook. Just last fall, Twitter made deals with both Microsoft and Google to bring tweets to search results on those services.

Soon enough, it seems there won't be a dark or dusty corner of the Web that remains untouched by the latest 140-character slice of life your social network chooses to share. And with Twitter's recent rash of hirings, this announcement, in conjunction with their announcement of an ad platform, means the microblog can afford to pay its employees and hopefully unveil some interesting new features in the future.

Vancouver-based social media blogger, author and speaker Shane Gibson snapped the video below demonstrating the interactive AR display which is located in Yaletown, a borough within the Canadian city.

The experience, which also supports some brochure tracking features, is an entertaining way to draw the attention of the event's attendees while also providing them with useful information about the games. Facial tracking is nothing new for Total Immersion, who provided similar services for a Transformers promotion that placed a robotic helmet on users' heads. Others AR developers have used facial tracking for applications as well, including metaio's hockey mask promotion at the Xcel Energy Center in Minneapolis, and FittingBox's "virtual mirror" for Ray Ban Sunglasses.

The thing I like about this example of facial tracking AR is that - like the Ray Ban promotion - it provides a practical service along with the entertaining and interactive aspect. Users aren't simply walking up to a screen an having a 2010 Olympics hat stuck on their head, much like the Transformers or hockey mask promotions. Yes, the hats and accessories are a bit silly, but the addition of news, weather and medal count information makes the use more practical. The AR draws the attention of passers-by with its fun and gimmicks, but rewards them with actual useful information to take with them. A user walks away knowing what countries lead the medal count and what the weather will be like based on the AR hats that were placed on them.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a hat manufacturer like NewEra take note of this promotion and provide an interactive way for potential customers to model their various hat styles with either an in-store kiosk or with an at-home web-based solution. Facial and body tracking is an excellent use of augmented reality for fashion retailers, as we have already seen applications for users to try on sun glasses, shoes, clothing, jewelry, make-up and hairstyles. Imagine the private dressing rooms at department stores being replaced by AR "virtual mirrors" for a faster, more social way to try on new outfits. The possibilities are endless, but what or who will be next?

First of all, it's important to note that while Yahoo will incorporate Bing's search results, the company has no plans to scrap any of the auxiliary search products that currently surround Yahoo's search results. This means that Yahoo will continue to show results from it's own news product on its search results pages, for example. Yahoo's Search Pad and Search Scan apps that allow users to filter searches will also remain on the search results pages.

According to Yahoo's own announcement, this deal also means that the company can now focus on providing even more additional services around search, without having to focus on maintaining its own search engine.

Nothing New for Yahoo

For Yahoo, using somebody else's search technology isn't really anything new. Before launching its own search product, Yahoo had a partnership with Google that lasted from 2002 to 2004.

Overall, Bing offers better search results than Yahoo's own search engine. Besides better search results, Yahoo's users probably won't notice any major differences once Yahoo begins to use Bing. According to Yahoo's statement, this implementation will begin in the next few days, though the exact date for the transition isn't clear yet.

More Competition for Google

Bing, which is already growing at a steady clip will not become and even more important rival for Google's search engine. While anybody would be hard-pressed to argue that Google isn't innovating fast enough, this renewed competition from Bing will surely put some pressure on Google to innovate even faster.

In addition, this deal also makes Microsoft and bigger player in the search engine advertising business, a field that Google can currently dominate because of the sheer size of its market share.

And What About Developers?

Yahoo also just posted some information about what it plans to do with its developer tools now that this deal has been cleared. The overall message in Yahoo's announcement to developers, though, is that the company doesn't really know what it will do yet.

For BOSS, Yahoo and Microsoft are considering a fee-based structure, the future of SearchMonkey is unclear ("we're working hard to determine which path provides the best value for site owners and end users") and with regards to Yahoo's Site Explorer, Yahoo is also still considering its options.

Click here to read the full text of the joint Microsoft/Yahoo press release.

Press Release

SUNNYVALE, Calif. & REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - News) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO - News) announced today that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to beginning the process of implementing the deal.

Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!'s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers globally. Once the transition is completed, the companies' unified search marketplace will deliver improved innovation for consumers, better volume and efficiency for advertisers and better monetization opportunities for web publishers through a platform that contains a larger pool of search queries.

"This breakthrough search alliance means Yahoo! can focus even more on our own innovative search experience," said Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz. "Yahoo! gets to do what we do best: combine our science and technology with compelling content to build personally relevant online experiences for our users and customers."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer concurred with Bartz's assessment. "Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone," Ballmer said. "I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo! will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers."

Consumer Search Experience

Under terms of the agreement, which was announced in late July 2009, Microsoft will provide Yahoo! with the same search result listings available through Bing, and Yahoo! will innovate around those listings by integrating rich Yahoo! content, enhanced listings with conveniently organized information about key topics, and tools to tailor the experience for Yahoo! users.

Yahoo! will focus on providing a compelling and innovative search experience that allows people to find and explore the things, people and sites that matter most to them. While Microsoft will provide the underlying platform, both companies will continue to create different, compelling and evolving experiences, competing for audience, engagement and clicks.

Transition Timeline

Yahoo! and Microsoft will work with advertisers, publishers and developers on a customized plan designed to make the transition as efficient and seamless as possible. Both companies will begin working closely with most partners well in advance of their planned transition to the Microsoft platform and will communicate important information to partners about the transition periodically via phone, email, webinars and a newly created website at www.searchalliance.com.

The companies will begin the transition of algorithmic search and have set a goal of completing that effort in at least the United States by the end of 2010. The companies also hope to make significant progress transitioning U.S. advertisers and publishers prior to the 2010 holiday season, but may wait until 2011 if they determine that the transition will be more effective after the holiday season. All global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.

Customer Relationships

Once the transition is in place, Yahoo! and Microsoft will each represent and provide customer support to different advertiser segments. Yahoo!'s sales team will exclusively represent and support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will represent and support self-service advertisers.

Regulatory Summary

Although the transaction previously was cleared by regulators in Australia, Brazil and Canada, the terms of the agreement required clearance by U.S. and European regulators before it could commence. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Yahoo! continue to work with regulators in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan to ensure that they have all relevant information necessary to evaluate the transaction before the deal commences in those specific jurisdictions.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - News) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft's corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft's Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

According to the interview, Bing is looking at becoming a "credible No. 2" as soon as Microsoft closes a deal with Yahoo, making Bing the backbone for Yahoo search. We do see a few areas where Bing has been gaining ground and wonder if Microsoft may be able to come back out of the red.

"The nice thing is we can say (to advertisers) you can be close to 30 percent share in one easy buy," Mehdi told Reuters. "Clearly there's a huge return in the search marketplace that can more than make up the investments we've put in to this point."

In addition to the Yahoo partnership, Microsoft has been in talks recently with Apple about becoming the default search engine on the iPhone. We looked at this scenario last week and found that Bing looks to potentially gain up to 50% of iPhone traffic were it to take over Google's default spot. At the same time, we also noted data from Hitwise, which showed that Bing had actually lost market share recently.

Image courtesy of Business Insider's "Chart of the Day".

18 months ago Yahoo! filed a sophisticated patent on VIRTUAL NOTES IN A REALITY OVERLAY and that patent was published last week. Check out the patent sketches below.

Update: This report at first mistakenly claimed that the patent in question had been granted. In fact it has merely been filed and published. The US Patent Office customarily publishes patents 18 months after they have been filed, then evaluates them as soon as it is able to afterwords. (Usually not very soon.) Given the pace of web technology these days, that process sounds absurd, but I apologize for reporting on it incorrectly anyway.

The technology described in this latest patent isn't just location-based social networking, or Augmented Reality "air tagging" - it includes social graph analysis, permissioning, expiration dates, contextual advertising and more. It's not just text notes, it includes methods of augmented reality with photos, videos and more. While the most popular mobile augmented reality apps on the market today focus on text on top of locations - there's no reason why reality can't be augmented in other ways as well.

There's no indication that the technology exists yet outside of the patent application and sketches below, but if Yahoo! could put together such an integrated vision of location-based features then it would have a very interesting service on its hands.

This vision puts emphasis on limited visibility of public notes based on the social connections of people doing the reading and writing, on the use of the tool for communication between people more than for public graffiti, on notes tied to entities and not just to places and on advertising based on a reader's past expressed interests. That sounds like the kind of thing Facebook might do with its inevitably forthcoming location services.

Will anything come of this patent? It's hard to say, since it's Yahoo, where genius flowers but then too often gets left out in the cold to die. Just two months before this innovative patent was filed, were were heralding Yahoo's brand new Location Database API as a would-be fountain of location-aware apps. Almost two years later, though geo is hotter than ever, it seems that nothing much has come of that effort. (Please, correct me if I'm wrong about that.) Six months ago we ran an article titled Yahoo! Launches Major Challenge to Facebook Connect. That doesn't seem like such a hot topic anymore, either. We asked Yahoo! for comment this morning about this latest patent and haven't been put in touch with anyone yet.

None the less, these are some very interesting ideas. Someone is sure to build something like this very soon. Maybe it will be Yahoo.

Watch this space for ReadWriteWeb's next public event and future research reports on Augmented Reality and geolocation.

Until the middle of December, Google hosted AP news stories on its own servers. As the relationship between the AP and Google continued to deteriorate, however, the AP apparently wanted to get a better deal from Google and Google decided to stop adding new content from the AP. According to the old agreement with the AP, Google only has the right to host articles for 30 days after they were published.

Now, however, it looks like the two companies are close to reaching a new agreement that will allow Google to continue to host AP content on Google properties like Google News. For now, however, Google will not add new hosted content from the AP to its properties.

Regarding Google and the AP, Danny Sullivan reports that he just received the following statement from Google:

We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. Right now we are not adding new hosted content from the AP. The licensing agreement is the subject of ongoing discussion so we won't be commenting further at this time.

The question, of course, is why Google would say that it has reached a deal with the AP but still isn't adding any new content to the site.

We have contacted Google for comment and will update this post once we hear back.

Widget provider Gigya sent us some numbers from their social network login tool and in a three company competition, Facebook came away with 65% of the traffic, Myspace with 18% and Twitter with 17%.

Gigya also shared with us the numbers when two major email and search providers, Yahoo and Google, are thrown into the login mix. Facebook still comes out with a majority, 53%, of the logins, while Twitter takes second place with 14%. Google and Yahoo! sneak in with 12% each and Myspace stumbles in with only 9% of the take.

In their note to us, they made sure to mention that when a site offers more options for logging in, more people do, providing a greater variety of data on its customer base.

We'd like to see if and how these numbers might change as more companies come out with competition to Facebook Connect and become more noticeable.

When we looked at the rebirth of the Web TV last year, we had one major reservation - would people really buy a new TV just for the widgets? "Probably not," we said. This year, Yahoo! is bringing the Internet into our other devices, so we don't have to.

According to the press release, new deals with MIPS, Sigma Designs and ViewSonic will enable Yahoo! Widgets to be embedded not only in Internet-connected TVs, but in a number of other devices, such as media players, "Blu-ray players, network players, AV receivers, and cable/IPTV set-top boxes." This is a big move because, while we may not want to replace our widescreen TV, we might be in the market for a Blu-ray player.

Today's announcement also highlighted deals with a number of new content providers, including Showtime, CNBC, Napster, The Weather Channel and more. But do we really need The Weather Channel widget when we can have just The Weather Channel, itself? Maybe. Maybe not. But the company's release of its widget development kit to the general public might open the doors to some interesting new widgets.

Cory Pforzheimer, a spokesperson for Yahoo!, told us earlier today that keeping the WDK private was an issue of working together with TV manufacturers and software developers.

"TV manufacturers weren't really used to updating after they sent out their units. There's no such thing as a beta on a TV," he said. "The last thing Samsung wants is calls when someone's Facebook widget doesn't work."

The combination of affordability and potential for innovation here could be just enough to bring the Web back to the TV through the side door.

Yahoo! has let the service atrophy for years and will now put it to rest. To think that this service offered publishers and developers access to personal, demographic, taste and activity data of a website's readers - and yet that offering has in the end gone no where - that's downright crazy.

Here at ReadWriteWeb we scraped a feed from our MyBlogLog page of the new users just added to our community, then reached out to thank them for their support and welcome them personally. That was just the beginning of what could have been a very valuable source of data. Imagine getting a feed of the LinkedIn job titles of all your recent readers and presenting that to a blog's advertisers. Both analytically and financially, there was so much potential in MyBlogLog. See our 2008 post The Significance of the MyBlogLog API if you're a social web geek and want to have your heart broken.

Looking at the ecosystems beginning to form around Twitter, Facebook and other user data - MyBlogLog may just have been ahead of its time. The service isn't alone among potentially world-changing technologies acquired and then starved of support at Yahoo! We've asked Yahoo! for comment and will update this post if we receive any.

Image via CrunchBase

"For any startup that has earn outs, and this didn't affect us, you've got to keep in mind that in 3 months you could be reorganized and the new guy could shut you down. The picture that gets painted early on when you have your product champions can change in a heartbeat and it's important for entreprenuers to consider that when looking at the deal terms."

R.I.P. MyBlogLog.

Update: Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo! Developer Network, has responded over at the YDN blog: "Frankly, it's no secret within Yahoo! that we're actively discussing the future of MyBlogLog. However, it's also true that we have not made any final decisions at this point. Is a shutdown on the table? Sure, that's an option. But there are other options as well."

In 2008 the Best BigCo went to Apple, due largely to the iPhone and App Store. Facebook won in 2007, Google in 2006 and 2004, and Yahoo! in 2005. Who will be Best BigCo of 2009? Will Apple be the first company to win it two years running? Will Google win the honor for a 3rd year? How about Facebook, which grew significantly this year. Let's find out...

The ReadWriteWeb team has chosen Google as our Best BigCo of 2009! Google last won it in 2006 and this is the third time we've honored the Mountain View company.

Google is without question the predominant Internet company of our time; in large part because it continues to innovate and stay one step ahead of its competition.

In our top 100 products list for 2009, seven Google products made the cut:

• Android platform
• Google App Engine
• Google Apps
• Google Chrome
• Google Maps
• Google Search Options and Rich Snippets
• Google Voice

And we didn't even include Google Wave, its biggest launch of the year. We think Wave has a lot of potential, but it's clearly at the experimental stage still.

The web browser Chrome was probably the Google product that had the biggest impact this year. Launched in late 2008, Chrome still only holds a small share of the browser market and doesn't offer a stable version for OSX or Linux yet. However it has already changed the browser market. As we wrote in our Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2009 review, Chrome's relentless focus on speed helped to reignite the browser wars, and is changing the way developers and Google's competitors think about browsers.

Chrome is also the basis for Google's upcoming Chrome OS, designed for netbooks - a growing fad in computers. So expect to see a lot more of Chrome in 2010.

Runners-Up: Apple, Facebook

It's been another good year for Apple and its iPhone platform. The iPhone is the leading smartphone in the market and the App Store now features over 100,000 applications. This year, as we mentioned in our Top 10 Web Platforms of 2009 review, Apple extended the SDK with version 3.0 of the iPhone OS. The updates included better support for 3D gaming, augmented reality apps, easier access to maps, in-app purchases and support for push notifications.

With these kinds of improvements, we expect Apple to continue its success on the mobile Web in 2010 - despite increasing competition from Google's Android platform.

Facebook had a stellar year too, passing the 300 million active user mark in September. It also continued to add features to the site, ranging from vanity URLs to a new sharing widget and a focus on real-time updates of its users' news streams.

Facebook's user base is increasingly diverse, and it is now clearly the number one social network in the world, leaving MySpace in its dust. What's more, Facebook's user base is now bigger than the population of all but three countries in the world.

Next Page: Honorable Mentions & Also Rans

Honorable Mentions: Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe

While Microsoft continued to struggle with its Windows Live brand, it did come out with at least one compelling new product in 2009.

Until earlier this year, Google didn't have any serious competition in the search market. But with the launch of Microsoft's Bing in July, users suddenly had a new choice of search engine. Bing bills itself as a "decision engine" and its market share has climbed steadily over the last few months. Microsoft keeps adding interesting new features like visual search, hover previews, integrated Twitter search and a smart integration of some of Wolfram Alpha's most compelling features.

We also recognized Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform, among our Top Products of 2009.

Amazon had another good year in 2009. Its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) was one of our top 100 products this year. However Amazon had the most impact this year with a piece of hardware: its e-book reader, the Kindle. In May, Amazon unveiled the Kindle DX, featuring a 9.7-inch display that is about two-and-a-half-times larger than the Kindle 2. November was Amazon's best month ever for Kindle sales, and, according to the company, the Kindle is the "most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon."

Very few Web platforms have the cross-platform reach of Adobe AIR. It allows developers to create one application and run it on all of the major operating systems. This year Adobe launched AIR 2, which now allows developers to access mass storage devices, drag-and-drop support for remote files and rudimentary support for P2P networking. In addition, AIR 2 enables developers to use the multi-touch capabilities of modern screens.

Also Rans

Unfortunately, the less said about Yahoo!, AOL, Mozilla, eBay - the better. It hasn't been a great year for any of them.

Yahoo! struggled gamely and impressed us with its YQL (Yahoo Query Language) and SearchMonkey. But it is far from the Internet force it was in 2005, when we named it our Best BigCo. Yahoo still has a wide reach and is very popular amongst mainstream audiences, but it just isn't the force it once was.

AOL has resorted to becoming a content farm in order to compete, eBay has squandered a valuable asset in Skype, and Mozilla - while continuing to innovate - has been hurt by Google's Chrome browser entering the market.

Now let us know your thoughts. Do you think that Google deserves the Best BigCo of 2009?

Ed: Thanks Frederic Lardinois, one of our writers whose year-end posts I liberally quoted from to create this article!

The new type of results are well-integrated, unobtrusive, diverse in contents and formatted simply. It appears to be a job very well done. It's hard to believe that neither Yahoo nor Bing have created an experience anywhere near as compelling.

Search results on Bing come only from Twitter and links share on Twitter. There are a lot of low-value retweets displayed. Twitter is of course just a small part of the real-time web.

Yahoo is MIA

Yahoo! on the other hand, displays Twitter as a tab in a select few news search results pages. That tab offers links being shared on Twitter, not tweets themselves. It's very hard to find a search result that uses Twitter results, though, on Yahoo!

Google Is The Winner So Far

Google's implementation, at least in this demonstration, brings real-time search front and center, displays commentary from Tweets, links being shared through a variety of channels and will soon display messages from MySpace and Facebook. It's broader, the User Experience is better and it's more prominent.

Are There Still Alternatives?

There are countless real-time search engines that have to be disappointed to see Google going its own way instead of acquiring a real-time search startup, and its unclear how many of those services still offer something unique that Google hasn't now captured in this announcement. Aardvark is one and its now reported that Google is looking to buy that company.

We'll still await the full public roll-out of Google's real-time search, its integration with the company's new Social Search, with localization and personalization. So far it looks like Google has done what neither Yahoo! nor Bing have, though - create a compelling, serious real-time search experience.

People have always said that Google does what's good for the web, because what's good for the web is good for Google. In this case I'm worried that the Royalty of the web's last generation has crowned these two leading social networks as the Royalty of the current generation in a deal that offers traffic and money but that could suffocate the most creative developments of the open, distributed web. That could be called the web's next generation.

Identity is a very important matter online, particularly as everything becomes more social. Online identity is your address book, it's your wallet, it's your reputation and it could become a lot more. Increasingly, you take that Identity from site to site, leveraging on the next site what you did on the last one. If a particular company provides that Identity for you, it sets the rules, regulations, "interest rates" (eg. use of your info for advertising) and determines things like what parts of your identity you can use on different sites and what parts you can't.

Facebook and Twitter are becoming big Identity providers. Google and Yahoo! have wanted to be leading Identity providers themselves but today cried Uncle with a big nod to the supremacy of the two leading social networks. At this point they have an interest in doing so, because they want you to share what you do on Yahoo and Google sites with your big link-clicking network of friends on Facebook and Twitter. Google didn't add Facebook Connect, just Twitter, because Facebook is now Google's leading challenger.

The Rest of the Identity World

But there are far more parties in the world of Identity than Twitter and Facebook. The Internet works because it is decentralized and there are scores of small companies, services and developers building out Identity infrastructures that are decentralized as well. Infrastructures that leverage the network-effect of the decentralized internet to provide the benefits of a large group, but are independent and interoperable in order to provide the benefits of personal freedom and control that can come from owning your own Identity.

Those small players, people working on things like OpenID, ActivityStreams, the distributed social graph and other components of distributed, independent and interoperable social networking - those players may have been sold down the river by today's deals between Yahoo and Google and Facebook and Twitter.

How could that be? After all, the OpenID logo appears on the login screen for Google Friend Connect and Yahoo! has been a big supporter of OpenID. I would argue that by putting the best known brands, with the easiest log-in experiences, at the very front of the parade - Google and Yahoo have further marginalized the distributed web. The PR email to journalists about the announcement was even titled "Google Friend Connect and Twitter Get Cozy Together."

The Consequences of Today's Deals

By choosing to favor branded log-ins and making standards-based systems an afterthought, websites using these systems are disincentivized to leverage the innovations that come from the open standards community and big Identity brands stay in control. Those websites might be Google and Yahoo! or they might be other big sites with all the more reason to favor incumbent leaders in Identity because of the support Google and Yahoo! have given them.

People have talked about combining OpenID and Friend of a Friend data for spam control on blogs. "We'll just require Facebook log-in, thanks," I can imagine big websites saying. People are working on implementing cross-network standards for user activity data so sites can understand the activity feeds of other social networks and users of small, innovative sites can still communicate with their friends on other, larger sites. That means people will use small innovative sites and give them the support to grow. "Most people just use Facebook or Twitter," I can imagine big websites saying. People have talked about using things like content category tags and bookmarks to build cross-site user Attention Profiles. "We'll just look at their Facebook profiles," I can imagine big websites saying.

A distributed social web, communicating through interoperable, standards-based language, offers as much opportunity for innovation as a common tongue does for poetry, universally visible pigments do for art or cash money and free time do for a self-determined afternoon. Your clicks, your contacts, your measurable behavior and content online are like fuel to burn, cash to spend. You'll either be able to spend that resource on things like recommendations, privileges, trust, recognition, greater efficiency and unforeseeable innovation - or those resources will be handed directly and exclusively to advertisers for the benefit of those who broker your Identity.

The identity and activity payloads that come with most systems of identity don't seem to be of much interest to sites leveraging Facebook and Twitter as primary identity providers today, though. It's hard to think about anything else when all that potential traffic from enabling broadcast of your content is dangling in front of you.

"All you little sites are interested in making it easy to do cross-site photo identification/ comment re-aggregation / book recommendation based on charecteristics of multiple social networking profiles (etc.)?" Big Website might say, "Well, Facebook and Twitter don't do that and they are good enough for us. We're excited about people broadcasting links to our site out to their Twitter and Facebook friends. That's enough for us. Isn't that innovative?"

This may be more cynicism than is warranted, but I don't think so. When dealing with hundreds of millions of peoples' identities, the future of human communication and trillions of dollars - it's probably good to lean a little toward cynicism when considering collaboration with incumbent industry leaders.

I appreciate the ease of Facebook and Twitter login around the web as much as anyone, but every big Identity login action I take feels like an economic transaction where the change and the interest slip through my fingers and land in the pockets of Facebook and Twitter.

Wouldn't it have been better for the web to say "no, we will not simply take the easy solutions when it comes to Identity, in exchange for traffic and money. We will instead look for ways to make it easier for users of any Identity provider to engage with our websites."

The short-term trade of giving more control to two big social networks, in exchange for traffic and ad money, may not serve anyone well in the long run.

Here are Google's and Bing's lists of top search queries of 2009:

Some of these are pretty straightforward (Twitter, Michael Jackson, Facebook), while others, like 'torpedo gratis' (which refers to a free SMS service) and 'tuenti' left us slightly puzzled at first. It is also interesting to note that a lot of these search terms in Google's list are basically just URLs (Twitter, Facebook, Hulu, dantri.com.vn).

Sanitized Lists

It's important to note that Bing's list was mostly scrubbed of obvious URL searches, so a direct comparison between Bing and Google is sadly impossible. Neither Google, Bing or Yahoo made lists of their actual top queries available this year. All we got so far are highly sanitized lists of "trending topics." While these reflect the current mood, they don't really give us a good idea of what people search for on a day-to-day basis.

Your Personal Top 10 in Google's Web History

If you have Google Web History feature turned on, you can find a list of your personal top queries of 2009 here.

Ask.com

Ask.com also just published its top questions of 2009 - though questions like "What is Miley Cyrus' phone number?" make us wonder about the validity of this list.

1. How much should I weigh?
2. How do I get out of debt fast?
3. How do I get pregnant?
4. What is Twitter?
5. What is Miley Cyrus' phone number?
6. What is the meaning of life?
7. When will the world end?
8. How long does marijuana stay in your system?
9. What are the symptoms of Swine Flu?
10. What time is it?

In the latter parts of the study, the company looked specifically at social network membership data for users of the AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo webmail services. Not surprisingly, the study found that Facebook was the most popular network across the board. What's more interesting is how well MySpace fared in some cases. On both the Hotmail and Yahoo webmail services, Facebook only had a small lead. Here, around 20% of all Hotmail and Yahoo webmail users were found to be on Facebook and MySpace. What does this reveal about the Hotmail and Yahoo user base? That they're a little more behind the times? Or that they've been around on the net longer and at one time had created (and possibly now abandoned) their MySpace pages? Unfortunately, the study can't provide us with these sorts of answers.

The study also showed that Twitter is far more popular among Gmail users than anyone else. In fact, on the other services, it's 4-5 times less popular than Facebook. We would like to think that's because Gmail users are just more web-savvy and cool, but it's possible that it's because they're just younger than everyone else.

Not surprisingly, LinkedIn is the least popular social network, but as Rapleaf points out, many LinkedIn users may have registered with their business email instead.

Participation Levels - Hotmail Users have Most Profiles, Gmail Users Better-Connected

When it comes to how the webmail users participate on social networks, Rapleaf found that the majority of the users have only one social media profile. But the service where the average number of profiles is the highest might surprise you - it's Hotmail. There the average is 2.5 profiles per user. Hotmail is followed by Yahoo, then AOL, and it's Gmail users who have the least number of social media profiles. That finding seems odd considering that Gmail users are younger and more likely to use Twitter in addition to Facebook. In fact, it almost seems like this data doesn't even fit with the rest of the study.

However, the discovery that Gmail users are better-connected than the other users makes more sense. On average, Gmail users have the most friends on social networks with 46.2 friends while Yahoo users have the least with 40.0.

Since again, Gmail users tend to be younger than the rest, it goes to reason that they would be in a demographic where their peers are more likely to have social membership profiles. Older webmail users, meanwhile, are still signing up for these sites. Although baby boomers and other middle-aged folks are joining sites like Facebook in droves these days, social networks are still dominated by the young.

Methodology

For the Rapleaf study, the company sampled 120,000 webmail accounts from users with @aol.com, @gmail.com, @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses. They then looked into the users' age, gender and social networking data by collecting information from public social media profiles. Obviously, in doing so, they've skewed their findings a bit, as the company notes in their original blog post. However, the sample size is large enough to form some conclusions about the members of these services, even if it relied on a particular subset of users.