ReadWriteWeb

When I called Twitter out in my post of the top 10 failures of 2009 for "failing to innovate," what I probably should have said was this: Twitter has done a decent job of implementing features that we first saw being used by third-party apps.

The concept of user lists? Sawhorse Media introduced those. Retweet functions? That was a user idea that had already been implemented formally by many mobile and desktop applications. And the hot Contributor API is something that CoTweet has been doing for a while. The geotagging API is hardly new, either. But instead of saying that Twitter failed to innovate, let's instead name a few features we love from third-party apps that we think they should integrate themselves - maybe with a key acquisition or two.

Twitter client developers will be pleased to note that popular light blogging platform Tumblr now supports a Tweetie and Twitterific compatible API. In a recent blog post, the company explains how the API will help Twitter clients support Tumblr. While the release allows for similar posting and reading capabilities to last week's WordPress API announcement, it's a coup for those looking to Twitter to become the open messaging standard.

We're down to the final day of voting for ReadWriteWeb's reader-selected Top 10 Web Products of 2009. You can vote for up to 10 products, from a list of 100 selected by the ReadWriteWeb authors over December.

Make your picks in the poll embedded below. You can cast up to 10 votes. If you don't see one of your favorites in the list, note it in the comments and we'll count that as a vote too.

The year's top 10 products, as selected by the RWW community, will be announced tomorrow. Here is the current top 10, in alphabetical order:

UPDATE: The poll is now closed, CLICK HERE TO SEE RESULTS.

The Twitterati have spoken!

Throughout 2009, a few tech topics got so much attention that they managed to make Twitter's trends. Google Wave was one of the most notable of these, obviously, but what were the other subjects of such interest to Twitter-using geeks? Twitter has just released a list of the top 10 technology-related trending topics of the year; here's what tweeps have been talking about.

Excuse the pun, but while climate change isn't usually a hot topic during the winter months, a number of companies have released environmental resources in conjunction with this week's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. World leaders are currently convening in Copenhagen to tackle our toughest environmental issues and provide positive solutions to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Below are just some of the resources netizens can consult to learn about the issues.

Favrd, the now-retired (creator-destroyed) aggregation site for Twitter "favorites," began as the irreverent offshoot of a community of influential designers and developers -- people like Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies), John Gruber (@gruber), Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman), and Dean Cameron Allen (@textism), the site's creator.

You don't need to know the lofty origins of Favrd, though; if anything, they're antithetical to the point. Favrd ran on a "no-webcock algorithm." ("Webcock" was Dean's term for shamelessly self-promoting "new media gurus.")

Microsoft researcher danah boyd took a decidedly different approach when considering social networking at today's LeWeb conference. In speaking to a room packed with more than a thousand entrepreneurs, investors and journalists, boyd explained how we tend to focus on the positive aspects of social networking services. Technologists tend to praise web publishing for its ability to encourage artistic expression and public dialogue. In contrast, boyd makes the point that negative and disturbing web content can also serve as a vehicle for change.

The real-time web was hot this year and it's likely to become a standard expectation on sites all around the world next year. We've tracked this trend extensively with a face-to-face summit of industry leaders and an 84-page research report on The Real-Time Web and Its Future.

Who were the big movers and shakers in real time this year? Check out our list of the top 10 below and let us know if there are any important ones we missed.

My6sense just announced a new version of its iPhone application that can automatically highlight the most relevant tweets from the users you follow. The mytweetsense feature learns from the user's implicit and explicit actions and builds a model of what is interesting to the individual user. Mytweetsense works best for tweets that include links. The app's features are clearly geared towards these kind of tweets and include previews for links, videos and images.

At LeWeb today, Ryan Sarver, Twitter's Director of Platform, took the state during the morning session. He stressed that Twitter needs the developer ecosystem if it wants to continue to grow. Sarver also announced that Twitter will give all developers access to the full firehose feed in early 2010. In addition, Twitter will also soon launch a new developer site, increase the rate limit for services that use OAuth and launch a new API for browser-less apps.

Dell Computers announced today that it has now sold more than $6.5 million in product through links broadcast out to its Twitter followers. The company has more than 1 million followers on Twitter, a handy gift from Twitter Inc. via prominent placement of Dell on the Suggested Users List shown to all new Twitter users.

The news will no doubt be celebrated by social media marketers all the world over but I believe there's reason to be very skeptical of this tidbit of information.

In our yearly wrap-ups of the best products of 2009, we cannot but notice the shadow that falls over the editorial desk.

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.

According to our sources at Citysearch, Twitter is opening a new Sign-Up API.

Citysearch wrote us to say that the API will "allow local businesses to integrate their existing Twitter presence or create a new account directly from the Citysearch business profile and tweet from their Citysearch profile page." How does this new API relate to Twitter's OAuth feature? What can a Sign-Up API do that OAuth doesn't? Also, how did Citysearch get wind of this development before a general announcement was made?

Favrd, a site which aggregated the most popular starred tweets, has closed down. The site was a favorite of Twitter humorists, people who use Twitter mainly to express their wit. Favrd was the first of its kind to repurpose Twitter favorites (stars) into an aggregation site, where users could see who had "faved" their tweets, view tweets with 3 or more faves as a real-time feed, and check the most faved tweets in a 24-hour period on the Leaderboard. It was kind of like the Techmeme of funny tweets.

The web isn't about pages any more. Now it's about streams, feeds and syndication. As part of our annual Best of Series, below are our picks for the most important RSS and Syndication Technologies of 2009.

You can see last year's list here and most of those remain important services. Only one service makes a repeat appearance this year. It was a very big year for this class of technologies, after a long, sleepy period the Real-Time Web began to cause substantial disruptions over the last 12 months. Check out our list below and let us know if we've missed anything important or who your picks might be for next year.

There's a new iPhone application from Favstar.fm which launched late last night in the iTunes App Store. Like the Favstar website, the new Favit app (iTunes link) aggregates the "best" Twitter posts based on the number of stars they receive from other Twitter users. However, while starred tweets should in theory point to interesting and useful content that people want to save for later viewing, the Favstar service tends to favor humorous tweets instead. The new iPhone app does the same, which makes it the perfect addition to your collection of time-wasting apps for curing boredom.

Twitter is testing out a new mobile interface at http://mobile.twitter.com the company announced just minutes ago and it really is a must-see. Beautiful design and some unique functionality are built on top of the company's own API.

It's a relatively simple way to interact with Twitter but below are three key features that weren't available on Twitter's mobile interface before. Two features, lists and saved searches, are missing so far - and that's enough to be a deal-breaker for this reviewer.

Yahoo! announced this morning that it is adding Facebook Connect across many of its properties. This afternoon Google Friend Connect announced the inclusion of Twitter as a top-level log-in option. These moves will be convenient for users, but may not be good for the future of the web.

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.

Augmented reality browser Layar recently launched it's v3 publishing site chock full of developer tools. The launch signifies more than 1000 active developers being given the chance to showcase their 3rd party applications. By exposing this immersive platform to outsiders, the company is solidifying its title as a pioneer in the "future of augmented reality". In a recent blog post Layar outlined 5 cases to demonstrate the power of the platform. In addition to some of the company's earlier 3rd party releases, below are some of our favorite layars.

Some six months ago, we had a small conniption over an augmented reality application for Twitter on the iPhone.

With the release of Twitter's geotagging API, however, users were bound to see more and better AR apps for the popular microblogging service. Twitter 360 has just come up on our radar, and it looks like a dream from the outset. But will its features live up to user expectations?