We are chilled and saddened by the ghosts of the past year - the apps that should have been, the startups that failed to launch, the brilliant ideas that were throttled, the great minds that were fired, the tech heroes that committed tragic gaffes. But some failures were so monumental that they require specific enumeration and commentary. Here are the 10 worst tech failures of 2009.

This is one case where the hype was as noisy as the app - and both were deafening. We have to hand it to Google's publicity team; we don't know one geek who wasn't positively salivating for a Wave invite. The ReadWriteWeb back channel was a complete melee when the first invites were rolled out to team members. But once we got there and saw the new tech tricks, like watching one another type, we started thinking about use cases. And the more we struggled to understand and use this product, the more frustrated and bored we became. Blame it on the steep learning curve. Blame it on our misunderstanding the product. Mount whatever feeble defense you like, but techies know Wave was a flop.

The TabletPads Went to the Deadpool

All we wanted was a $200-500 flat piece of glass and plastic with some fancy gizmodgery inside so we could look at the Internet from the comfort of our couches. And what did we get? Rumors, Photoshopped gadget porn, promises - lies, all lies. We'd have been better off if we'd spent those months drawing the Yahoo! home page on an Etch-A-Sketch. Although the Crunchpad has resurfaced as the JooJoo, the price has been marked up considerably, and the whole project just seems wrong to us now. Moreover, five will get you ten that Michael Arrington, father of the Crunchpad and a former attorney, is fixing to get litigious right about now, which might significantly delay the product's appearance on the market.

Powerset Resurfaced as Bing

In 2008, Powerset was one of the stealthiest, sexiest startups on the Silicon Valley block. About five minutes after launching, Powerset got snatched up by Microsoft to the tune of $100 million. When everyone had retrieved their dentures from the ground and changed their pants, they noticed that Powerset's ever-so-sexy tech had been folded quietly into the Borg for assimilation. And about a year later, Bing was born, reportedly from the tech that Microsoft scraped off the infant carcass of Powerset. And Bing sucked. We had such high hopes.

Twitter Failed to Innovate

While some of us had our money on a Twitter sale in 2009, others were simply waiting for the company to debut a radical, interesting, mutually beneficial revenue model. At the very least, most users were hoping that the scalability issues and downtime that made Twitter the tragic heroine of 2008 would be put to rest.

Twitter's failures this year were less about the headlines they made than the ones they didn't make. Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, Twitter didn't capitalize on their massive adoption increase (a.k.a., their Oprahtization) and sell. Worse yet, they didn't buy. When one recalls the purchase of Summize and then contrasts it with this year's explosion of excellent Twitter apps, one wonders why none of these small startups or one-off side projects were acquired. Perhaps this was a case of "Hey, we can do that!" as Twitter certainly seemed intent on pilfering features (such as lists and retweets) from third-party developers. Too bad the "official" Twitter features suck a lot more than the original third-party designs.

But worst of all, we are still consistently experiencing downtime at a level that is unacceptable for any major web app. Google couldn't get away with this kind of failure; why should Twitter be allowed to do so?

The Great Firewall of China Drama Continued and Worsened

To date, China's "Golden Shield Project" restrictions on Internet use are throttling traffic from that country to websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Bing, and many, many more. Banned sites include news organizations that cover controversial events, pro-democracy sites and blogs, any site acknowledging the existence of Taiwan, YouTube, most blogging websites (Wordpress, Blogger, etc.) and anything the government deems to be obscene or profane. In countries where creative self expression and the ability to browse, learn and make decisions independently are freedoms too often taken for granted, these restrictions are indeed unthinkable. The project began in 1998 and still made plenty of headlines this year for its renewed affronts to freedom on the Internet. For example, in June, the Chinese government announced it would be rolling out censorship software on every new computer sold in the country.

Microsoft Dumped Don Dodge

Not too long ago, we at ReadWriteWeb were shocked to learn from startup guru and longtime Microsoft ambassador Don Dodge that the Big M had given him the kiss-off. Dodge was seen by many as an intelligent, approachable personality in front of a huge, out-of-touch, unpopular brand. It was the tech industry equivalent of FOX cancelling the Simpsons. It's been noted that Microsoft makes its paper from the enterprise, not startups, which would make Dodge a natural candidate for the chopping block. Still, the move was hugely criticized by bloggers, VCs and others. Microsoft's PR plot thickened a few days later when Google snatched up the briefly unemployed Dodge.

Spotify Didn't Launch in the US... Yet

It tops our list of Most Highly Anticipated Products Yankees Can't Get Their Mitts On. Streaming music service Spotify is changing the world - with the exception of the United States. We've already got a crowded market of players here, including Pandora, Last.fm and Imeem. Call us greedy, but we want the new hotness that is Spotify, too.

The Web 1.0 Comeback Campaigns Were Embarrassing to Watch

Now, we at ReadWriteWeb have no desire to kick a company when it's down, but a couple of the mastodons of the mid-nineties dotcom boom have been valiantly attempting to stage comebacks, some more successfully than others. Yahoo! did some good things for developers this year, but AOL/Aol's rebranding was pitiful. And don't get Dana Oshiro started on the affront to end-user dignity that is Friendster.

Oracle Acquired MySQL

Open-source geeks have been sporting metaphorical black armbands for the loss of MySQL, the world's largest open-source database, to Oracle, the largest pay-to-play database, following that company's acquisition of Sun Microsystems. We reported last week that MySQL usage is expected to drop by around 10 percent over the next 5 years. Here's another handy stat: Oracle also this year raised their own prices by 40 percent. Will MySQL remain free-as-in-beer and open source? Or will it succumb to corporate lameness?

And the Worst Fail of 2009... LeapFish Made a God-Awful Promotional Video

Tonight, we dine in hell! LeapFish's bombastic promo clip (which you have to watch in 10-second segments to avoid waves of misplaced inspiration alternating with waves of nausea) is as horrifying as the company itself is sketchy. The startup says it made $10 million before it even launched, and the CEO Ben Behrouzi is an infamous contrepreneur with a background in lead generation and threatening employees.

So, there you have it: our list of the worst tech-related disasters of 2009. What did we omit? Let us know in the comments below, and don't hold back. Clearly, we didn't.

And to the companies mentioned in this report: 2009 isn't over yet. You've still got three weeks to make it right with end users.

Do crashing computers and busted Blackberries completely freak you out? Does a cryptic error message on your screen leave you feeling defeated or discouraged? According to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, your age might have something to do with your attitudes and emotions surrounding technology.

Researcher John B. Horrigan points out: electricity was once new too. But now we flip on light switches without a second thought. And when the telephone was taking off in the early 1900's, people were given specific instructions on how to make a phone call - something we now do every day. Over the passage of time, each new generation of users becomes more savvy and more adept at using the new technology until it no longer exists as some odd new-fangled invention, but simply part of the world as we know it.

The same holds true for our computers, our internet connections, our gadgets and our cell phones. When these things fail, it's the younger users that are generally much more optimistic about the situation. Although young adults age 18-29 years old are no more likely to be able fix devices on their own, they were significantly more likely to be confident that they were on the right path to fixing it, and they were significantly less likely than older adults to feel discouraged or confused about fixing devices, says the study.

In fact, 85% of 18-29 year olds reported being confident about solving their device problem, while only about a third of them said they were discouraged or confused. Meanwhile, over half (52%) of adults age 30 and older reported being discouraged, 44% said they were confused, and about two out of three (67%) said they were confident. Adults age 30-49 were somewhat less likely than older adults to be confused, as just 39% said they were.

There was some variation among gender lines, too, with men being more likely than women to be confident about problem solving (76% vs. 68%), but they were just as confused, discouraged or impatient during the course of trying to solve the problem.

What this means is that, given time, our idea of a "mainstream user" will have to change. No longer will they be the slightly fearful, easily frustrated, computer novices. Instead, they will be much more at ease with technology. They may never be as tech-obsessed as we are, but they will have no problem adopting a new technology if it delivers value.

Clearly, some of the recent hires and acquisitions have worked out very well for Twitter. As Jack Dorsey notes in the latest update on the Twitter blog, Twitter has finally achieved a point where the team is not just constantly fighting brush fires. Instead, the team is now finally able to, as Dorsey puts it, 'craft' solutions features.

Looking at the latest stats from Compete, it seems Twitter is still growing at a nice clip, which makes the fact that the team has been able to stabilize the system an even greater achievement.

Apple once again had to accept defeat and has announced that it will extend all subscriptions to its bug-ridden MobileMe service for yet another 60 days. This move comes after the company already gave every subscriber an extra 30 days after the botched launch of the product in July. MobileMe is quickly becoming Apple's most public failure in recent years - when the service first opened, it was basically rendered non-functional for the first couple of days, after that, a good number of users stopped receiving email, calendars disappeared or didn't sync, and the service often simply didn't work.

MobileMe was supposed to be Apple's answer to Web 2.0 mail clients like Gmail or Yahoo Mail, but instead, it has turned out to be a relatively clunky and slow paid alternative to a lot of free services. While the MobileMe email client has some neat features like QuickReply, it often doesn't stack up against its free competitors.

Besides handling mail, MobileMe also manages contacts and calendars, as well as online storage and photo-management (both of which are pretty much useless for Windows users, by the way). MobileMe users have complained about problems with pretty much every single aspect of the service, so giving everybody a total of three free months of subscription (which is pretty much three times the lifetime of the service so far) is a small consolation for the agony a lot of paying users have had with MobileMe. Thanks to the constant service interruptions, MobileMe even became the target for phishers.

Given that nobody is paying for MobileMe right now anyway, maybe Apple should just have had an open, three-month beta period.

It may be all the rage, but are company-built social networks for customers to socialize in really smart?

Former RWW staff member Josh Catone found the WSJ story first over at his new gig and offers some good advice for companies seeking to avoid this terrible fate.

According to the study's author, the biggest problems are the following:

• Overpriced, shiny features.


• Insufficient and inexperienced community management. (See our massive post on community management earlier this week.)


• Bad metrics and criteria. Though Moran says most companies can talk the talk, saying they are looking for engagement and word of mouth, they end up measuring in page views. He says that's bad. It probably wouldn't be so bad if they were getting any page views.

Other Perspectives

The study was performed in conjunction with Beeline Labs and titled The Tribalization of Business. How bad do things really look? That depends on who you ask. Beeline's summary of findings don't sound so bad at all. A press release that appears to have originated from Deloitte looks a little more somber. The Wall St. Journal coverage focuses on absolute gloom and doom. The report itself? You'll have to request a copy and get in line, apparently. Look out, here comes the future!

Let's face it, though. Social networks where a brand name product is what everyone rallies around are a dumb idea. They are stupid. No one should submit themselves to the indignity of creating a user profile and friend connections based on cola or cat litter. We have written before about the never ending market for niche social networks and we're down with that. Hell, we like to read about countless niche social networks on the Ning Blog just for fun. If brand-centered social networks are failing, though, it's probably because they are brand heavy and stupid.

The matter could probably warrant more thoughtful discussion, but instead we'll leave you with this image, from Purina's Breeze for Cats. It's a "community" focused on cat litter. Ask yourself, is there hope for humanity?

Fake Smile photo by Lauren Photography