The Web 2.0 Blog » 2007 – The Web 2.0 Year

2007 – The Web 2.0 Year

Rather predictably, 2007 was a big year for the second generation of the web. Many saw it coming, and no doubt it will continue to grow with startups popping up all over the place. But what stands out from the past year? What made us stand up and take notice?

To help answer that question, we’ve come up with a set of awards. These aren’t your usual “Best in class” awards, because we get enough of those around this time of year. No, these awards recognise real achievements. I know you can’t wait any longer, so let’s get on with it.

The “Where Did That Come From” Award

Yes, it had to be really. Twitter really sprang out of no where right at the beginning of the year to become one of the most used, and most talked about Web 2.0 services out there. It’s such a simple concept, I don’t think anyone really predicted such success when it first launched. Fortunately for Twitter, they had some noteable names sign up early on. Like they say, it’s who you know, not what you know.

The “Oh My, It’s So … Big” Award

Looking around these internets, there are few sites that command the audience FaceBook does. While it is (debatable) still behind MySpace, 2007 has certainly been FaceBook’s year. From a fairly niche site, really not that long ago, to the all encompassing community we have today, it’s been a dramatic rise. It’s not all been plain sailing though, FaceBook has seen it’s problems increase along with it’s popularity. Mid-way through the year there were numerous stories reporting that many companies, schools, colleges and filtering companies were blocking FaceBook and later in the year there was a raucous surrounding the perceived invasion of privacy the new FaceBook ads brought.

The “Oh, Shiny” Award

Design in the Web 2.0 world is a bot of a touchy subject. People are still slightly fearfull when talking about it due to the early suggestions that the Web 2.0 was style over substance. So when looking at services that I deemed eligible for this award, I was really looking at not just the design but the ease of use. And as someone who deals with interface design on a daily basis, I have to appreciate interface design that simplifies complicated processes. And for me, the clear winner was Picnik. Their tagline is “Photo Editing Made Fun”, and while it may not be fun, it’s certainly easy and frustration free.

For those of you wondering, I also considered Google in this category for their Google Docs application. The reason it didn’t win is down to the fact that they did a great job of converting a desktop application into a web application, but didn’t really bring anything new to the table. It’s also lacking the intrinsic Web 2.0 “style” of Picnik.

The “All That And A Bag Of Potato Chips” Award

This is the category for the people that do everything. So we better fess up, there’s only one company that does blogging, documents, email, chat, search, advertising, maps, calendering, web hosting, online payments, analytics, news reading, feed reading, photo hosting, translation, video…

Yes, it’s Google. The remarkable thing, really, is that Google tend to implement all of these things really rather well. Yes, there are blips, but over all, they’ve got a group of market leaders.

I have a feeling there’s some more awards to come…

This post was written on Monday, December 31st 2007 by Simon T and has been categorised under Web 2.0. The trackback URL is here or you could add a response. If you really want to you can Digg Story or add it to del.icio.us, Technorati Cosmos, Blinklist, furl or Reddit.

8 Responses to “2007 – The Web 2.0 Year”

Dario de Judicibus Says:

January 2nd, 2008 at 5:31 pm
New year, new life? Time will tell… In the meantime, I invite you to read my latest post on my blog about a new definition of Web 2.0 and the proposal for an exciting Web 2.0 world-wide project: World 2.0. That article is in English language, even if the rest of blog is in Italian language.
gyuszi bacsi Says:

January 6th, 2008 at 7:07 am
I think pownce is much better than twitter and I hope it will overtake it in the long run
best home mortgages Says:

February 25th, 2008 at 10:59 am
best home mortgages…

dupe balances!dramatists renewer mien …
Web 2.0 Says:

June 2nd, 2009 at 4:15 am
I think the more to come thing with Google will be cloud computing. It looks that way anyhow!
Unsigned Radio Says:

June 13th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Awesome job on the awards.

A year and a half later Facebook is beating MySpace (and not going to look back), Twitter has exploded (though it has a 40% one month retention rate that could hurt it)and Google is dominating still (although it’s going to be curious to see if Bing has an impact on it.)

So 18 months later and you still nailed it. Great job.
Jordan Says:

July 16th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
I think that 2009’s new and shiny award will go to InCompany.com. Businesses and professionals should find it preferable to facebook and linkedin while the general public will appreciate it as the most advanced alternative to internet yellow pages
Sarah Says:

October 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 pm
This is a really interesting article. I am not surprised though about Facebook and also Google. I think it is funny that no one ever goes on Myspace. It’s like a complete mirror image of Facebook and all the application that it has. But it is very interesting and true about Twitter though. It did come out of no where and its amazing at how popular it has become.
web development china Says:

March 5th, 2010 at 3:42 am
nice to see facebook over myspace (and QQ)