ReadWriteWeb

Observing April Fools Day has become a time-honored tradition for many web companies. Much like changing your logo to celebrate holidays, pulling a fast one on your users on April 1st is something that many web services and applications have really taken to heart. But keeping creative year-after-year is tough, and some companies have learned how to consistently deliver. Below, based on past performance, is a list of the top 10 places you can go to get fooled tomorrow.

A lot of people scratched their heads when Etsy raised $27 million. What on earth? Handmade goods, that's about as low tech as you can get!

Then Umair Haque, a well respected blogger and strategist - albeit one who is known for being a bit “out there” - asked Is Etsy the next Google? Maybe Umair was just saying that this is big. One of his commenters pointed out: “not Google, but maybe the next eBay”.

Last week we wrote about a boycott of online auction site eBay that was organized by sellers angry over recent fee and policy changes. We noted that the full effect of the boycott wouldn't be evident until today, when the consumer action was scheduled to come to an end. "If [eBay's listings total] falls below 12 million we've made a pretty good impact," eBay PowerSeller Nancy Baughman told Fortune Small Business last week. Listings didn't fall quite that much, but almost.

The problem with running a site that relies heavily on users to generate content, is that it puts a disproportionate amount of power in the hands of those users (in relation to the site owners). If users are unhappy with something about the way a site that relies on user generated content is run, they can theoretically hold the site hostage until they get what they want. This week, eBay sellers unhappy with the auction giant's recent change in listing prices and policy, launched a week-long boycott of the site. So far, the impact appears negligible, but the action highlights a risk that any business that relies on a UGC-centric model takes.

In August, a month after eBay launch their Craigslist competitor Kijiji in the US, we weren't impressed. "Kijiji has a hard to pronounce/spell name, an uninviting splash page, and a month later major metros like New York and San Francisco (confusingly labeled as "Bay Area") have just a handful of listings," we wrote at then. Rather, we thought Gumtree, a more straight Craigslist clone that was at the time the most popular classifieds site in Britain, would be more successful when eBay brought it stateside. At year's end, it looks like we backed the wrong horse.

We've already revealed our picks for the "Best Web BigCo" and "Best Web LittleCo" of the past 12 months. But not everything was so rosy for some companies on the web this year. Below we've gathered our list of the top flubs in the web technology sector in 2007. In fact, one of the companies we named as our year's best is on the list. Feel free to add your picks in the comments.