January

Facebook joined the Data Portability Group along with along with Plaxo and Google. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared on 60 Minutes, he found more investors, and Facebook’s news feed would start treating apps differently.

MySpace got a little more Facebook-like with Friend updates and announced safety principles. Google was testing a new AdWords feature to target ads toward specific MySpace demographics.

Pownce left beta, Reddit was testing a personalized version of its service, and Automattic launched a way to create your own blog version of Twitter with Prologue.

February

Facebook partnered with the Wall Street Journal on "SeenThis?" and also made its account deletion process fully functional. MySpace opened the doors on its developer platform and began to talk about launching a free music service, which wouldn’t come to fruition until much later in the year.

Google and Twitter teamed up for the U.S. Presidential Primaries, while PR Newswire and CSSRWire teamed up on a social network. Pakistan ended its YouTube ban, and LinkedIn launched a new homepage and features.

March

Facebook added some new privacy tools and began courting major record labels. LinkedIn launched company profiles, and Yahoo was welcomed into OpenSocial.

AOL bought Bebo, GyPSii brought a social networking service to the iPhone, Healia entered the Healthcare community mix, and YouTube Insight was launched as a way to track video analytics.

April

Facebook and Careerbuilder collaborated on ads, and Facebook launched its chat feature and faced a trademark challenge from USPTO. YouTube rolled out some new policy changes, and Project Playlist was sued by nine different record labels while we heard more rumblings about MySpace Music.

May

MySpace launched a data portability effort, and Facebook agreed to a child safety plan. Facebook also borrowed $100 million for growth purposes.

The Twitter Blacklist emerged, and Google began previewing Friend Connect. Reddit launched video show YourWeek and StumbleUpon made some video deals of its own. YouTube became the focus of some negative attention from Viacom again, but they also rolled out some new features.

We also learned about YouTomb, the place that tracks videos that have been pulled from YouTube. Meanwhile, the MySpace Suicide Mom was indicted.

June

WebProNews launched Twellow, a yellow pages-type directory for finding Twitterers with common interests, a service that would continue to be expanded upon throughout the year.

Facebook began letting users rate ads, partnered with Visa on a Business Network, opened mini-feed comments, and started requesting gender information. LinkedIn received $53 million in funding, and Google started testing a social iGoogle.

July

Facebook launched a redesign, and hooked up Facebook Connect with some sites. They also formed a search and ad deal with Microsoft, while Oodle formed a classifieds deal with MySpace, and LinkedIn formed a deal with NYTimes.com over targeted articles and ads.

YouTube became available on TiVo and CNN took Twitter mainstream. Google launched Lively virtual rooms and Qik kicked off its public beta. Hugley popular app Scrabulous was removed from Facebook.

A bill came up that would deny kids access to social networks in libraries, while the SEC opened up to social media.

August

ConnectU was told to obey a Facebook settlement, while Facebook altered its app measurement system, and blocked a woman named Yoda from its site. Talk of a Facebook movie began to circulate with a West Wing writer rumored to be involved.

Friendster got a new CEO and $20 million in funding. Dell experimented with a press conference through Twitter. Katie Couric turned to the Digg crowd, and Disney looked to score with social media.

Yahoo closed down its social network Mash before many ever even knew what it was. Amazon started getting more social, and Twitter addressed the need to crack down on spam. Meanwhile, AMC got upset at people Tweeting under the names of characters from their show Madmen.

September

MySpace launched MySpace Music and MyDebates.org, and announced its display advertising platform MyAds. They also started allowing users to record video directly from MySpace. Facebook was found to be using Beacon again, and decided that it didn’t want people making new friends on the site.

Amazon launched its own social music site, and more Twitter services emerged. Bebo partnered with ESPN and in a separate story began altering user profiles.

Digg expanded internationally, MTV purchased a social project, and IBM got more social than ever. A Mac social network came to the iPhone, and it was found that Americans favor businesses with a social media presence.

October

Yahoo decided to try social media from a different angle and AOL launched its own social homepage. LinkedIn launched its applications platform and began a market survey business.

Facebook found an international home and got friendly with Friendster, while YouTube launched an ecommerce platform and an audio preview to fight comment idiocy. Digg dropped Digg Podcasts and Digg Spy, photobucket added a couple features, and Twitter dropped instant messaging.

Microsoft began to play with social search personalization, CBS introduced social viewing rooms, and MySpace redefined Karaoke amusement by adding video. GoDaddy got smart and social and Ning got in on OpenSocial.

November

We launched Twellow Pulse, a feature for Twellow that looks at the buzz in any given category. Shortly after that, we launched Twellow maps.

MySpace found a leader for MySpace Music, Facebook showed off its flexibility, and a Facebook phone surfaced. MySpace partnered with MTV, and YouTube made a deal with MGM. MySpace also launched a new profile editor as well as a PrimeTime application. Facebook revised its alcohol app policy.

LinkedIn improved its search engine, expanded into more languages, and integrated address books into profiles. Windows Live made a big social leap. Google of course launched SearchWIki.

December

This month saw the public launches of both Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, not to mention MySpace’s Open platform. Facebook added the ability to embed and upload high quality videos, Delicious went mobile, and FriendFeed expanded into more languages.

We launched TwellowHood in the U.S. and Canada, allowing users to find Twitterers in their own cities. We also made it easier to refine your Twellow searches.

Bebo opened Social Inbox, Six Apart launched Motion, and Facebook rolled out a navigation bar for use while viewing third-party sites. Talk of a Facebook movie has resurfaced, as well as that of a book.

That just about brings us up to speed in the world of social media. As always, please feel free to add more in the comments. If you feel like there was something I didn’t mention but should have, please indulge the rest of us.

With this concept in mind, I’d like to present you with some of the most popular WebProNews articles of 2008 in terms of discussion. I’m not going by page views, or inbound links. I’m going simply by the amount of discussion that was generated from each in the comments sections. This is the stuff WebProNews readers have felt passionately about, or felt that their own two cents were worth adding to. Feel free to continue the discussion on any of them (or the overall list in general). Discussion is always welcome and encouraged here, even if that means we have to delete some ED pill links.

Let’s do this countdown style because it’s more fun that way…

25. Spitzer Scandal Sheds Light On Web Prostitution

03/13 – New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s scandal exposed a huge industry of underground activity. 

24. EFF Sues President Bush Over Internet Surveillance

09/21 – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against President George W. Bush and others in his administration for the illegal surveillance of emails and telephone calls without a warrant.

23. Blogging Success Takes A Few Months

08/15 – The popularity contest of blogging and gaining links and traffic doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and work.

22. This Cesspool We Call the Internet

10/11 – Google CEO Eric Schmidt refers to the Internet as a Cesspool. Justified or not?

21. 10 Ways To Increase Pages Indexed

Jason Miller runs down some things to help you get Google to pay more attention to your site.

20. Google Devaluing DMOZ and Yahoo! Links?

10/08 – Google stopped suggesting that you should be listed in relevant directories in their webmaster guidelines.

19. Google Offers Inbound Link Advice

10/13 – Google’s Maile Ohye confirms what SEO experts have been saying for years: content and inbound links are most important, and in that order.

18. Retailers Panic Over Google Site Search

03/24 – Google draws both praise and criticism after making it easier for people to search within a small number of sites by adding a second search box to the top results for those retailers.

17. Craigslist: Little Ads, $81 Million In Revenue

04/03 – Craigslist is doing quite well for minimal advertising.

16. eBay attracts more complaints

12/08 – Problems for buyers stemming from a holiday contest add to the criticism over eBay, which ad previously been generated more by sellers.

15. American Express Guide Calls SEOs A "Waste"

03/15 – Comments from the Credit Card company ruffled some feathers in the search engine optimization community.

14. Rumor: Dmoz Selling To BOTW

09/19 – It was rumored that BOTW was looking to buy DMOZ, and speculation over Google juice was a hot topic of discussion.

13. What Google’s Matt Cutts Sees In 2009

12/07 – In an interview with Mike McDonald, Matt Cutts discusses some changes that lie ahead for Google in the new year.

12. eBay To Move To PayPal Only In Australia

05/13 – Talk of eBay going PayPal-only anywhere was sure to get people fired up.

11. Top 10 Ways To Raise Your Site In Google

02/15 – Jason Miller talks about some things you can do to improve your search engine rankings.

10. Congress To Make eBay A Rat

09/24 – Three bills in Congress would require online marketplaces and auction sites to secretly police affiliates suspected of selling stolen goods.

9. Cuil Crashes And Burns At Launch

07/28 – A so-called "Google-Killer" launched, but it crashed right after. Not a good start.

8. Yahoo Patent Filing Sheds Light On PageRank

01/16 – Yahoo dabbles in ranking algorithms that incorporate more user behavior data.

7. AdSense Earnings Down?

02/05 – AdSense earnings for many mysteriously dwindle.

6. New York Goes Gangsta With Tax Law

05/06 – Online retailers doing business in New York would be required to register with the state to collect taxes, or face audits for prior quarters for failing to register.

5. Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?

11/17 – SEO Bruce Clay talks to Mike McDonald about how search engines will be changing in 2009, and how SEO will be affected.

4. Searching For America’s Next President

07/04 – People just love to get into heated political debates, especially in an election year.

3. Should You Stop Blogging?

10/21 – Someone calls blogging dead, and people are always going to react.

2. Seller Boycott Fails To Impress eBay

02/25 – Sellers boycott eBay. No policy changes made. Sellers furious.

And the WPN article with the largest amount of discussion in 2008 is…

1.  Google Answers Some Tricky Questions

11/10 – During a live chat Q&A, Googlers Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye, among others, faced the burning questions of webmasters around the world. Together, they put to rest some fears and myths, and confirmed some speculations.

And There You Have It.

We’ve posted thousands of articles over the course of the year, and these 25 were the ones that people had the most to say about. It was fun to go back through the archives and put the list together, as well as go back over some old comments that WebProNews readers have left for 2008. You have left your mark on the discussion, and your voice will remain in the archives for future generations to study. Thank you WebProNews readers for your contribution.

The first pick for online marketer of the Year was Chris Hughes who ran the online side of the historic victory of president elect Barak Obama and co-founded Facebook. “The campaign relied heavily on social media outlets to reach out to potential voters, increase their knowledge of Mr. Obama and rally their votes.” Hughes is also the youngest person on the list.

Hughes ran the online campaign that got 1.5 million volunteers registered on myBarackObama.com and gathered $600 million in contributions online. He also built a database of 3 million mobile phone numbers. To do that they promised supporters that they would be notified of campaign news before the media (steal this concept!).

Guy Kawasaki is the next person who was noted. And at #23 is our own Andy Beal. Andy talks about reputation management and has an excellent reputation. Online marketer Lee Odden, also nominated, said he nominated Andy because “[he] is a digital marketing pioneer recognized by many for his SEO and online reputation management expertise. He’s a published author (Radically Transparent), blogger, public speaker and consultant.” Mike Moran said he “writes the terrific Marketing Pilgrim blog and oversaw development of Trackur this year.”

Acceptance speech Andy? When’s the ceremony?

Also, where are all the women in this industry? Greats like Adriana Huffington, Anita Campbell, Wendy Piersall, Liz Strauss, and others made the list, but they’re way outnumbered.

Comments

I thought it was for top tweets, but it’s really for the top people on Twitter in different categories. This means it serves as a great way to see who’s popular on different subjects (just in case you need to reach or follow one of them).

To me the most impactful tweet of this year came from James Karl Buck.  He used his cell phone to tweet one impactful word from an Egyptian jail: arrested. Then another message: Free. I don’t know if they found him since then though.

The tweets that stood out to me were from people I don’t follow or know but who were in some sort of crisis. But I’m sure there were funny, important, or endearing tweets too.

Nominate someone as a Twitterer of the year at www.shortyawards.com. Oh, I hope they’ll have a giant TweetUp to celebrate. They are actually having an awards ceremony and are looking for sponsors for it. Otherwise there aren’t any details about what they’re planning.

Do you have a favorite tweet? Leave it in the comments – let us know who wrote it, their Twitter username, when they wrote it, and why it’s notable.

Comments

Perhaps you are asking, "But what about the fastest-rising search terms for 2008?" Well, Google has gone ahead and provided that info (for the U.S.). "We wanted to whet your appetite for our year-end Zeitgeist with this sneak peek of the fastest-rising search terms in the U.S. for 2008," says Google. "We combed through billions of anonymous, aggregated search queries to bring you this snapshot of what’s been top-of-mind for Americans in the past 11 months."

Compared to the previous year, the following ten search terms have seen the most growth according to the search giant:

1.    obama
2.    facebook
3.    att
4.    iphone
5.    youtube
6.    fox news
7.    palin
8.    beijing 2008
9.    david cook
10.  surf the channel

That’s an interesting list. I don’t think number one is very surprising. Number five and ten compliment the growing trend in online video that I painstakingly documented here.

Google promises more top search lists when they release their 2008 Zeitgeist next week. I know that’s what you’re really waiting for. In the meantime, feel free to look at last year’s.

Through the use of real-time data firm Wise Window’s software as a service for qualitative data, Stanford constructed a tracking tool for the 2008 Presidential election.

As the Democratic primary continues to grind across the country (we get our shot at voting next Tuesday), more news items emerge about its two candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the Republican candidate,John McCain.

Stanford built its tracker to express the opinions surrounding candidates in a visually-friendly way. One may visit the Bubble Tracker and see how positive or negative recent commentary appeared about the candidate.

Green bubbles mean good comments, while purple ones reflect bad ones. Visitors to the Stanford site make click on one of the bubbles to see a link to the story driving that opinion.

Viewing past opinions and the bubbles they made may be done through the use of a slider control below the bubble window. Each change with the slider alters the bubbles for each candidate.

And when you pass the mouse pointer over the candidate’s window, the bubbles begin to circulate. So cool! Links we observed hit news stories appearing on Topix and Diggin our unscientific look at Stanford’s bubbles.

This can show us a few things: what the Internet "climate," so to speak, is for the candidates; how they stand on issues affecting the Internet; and which ones are making the best use of the Internet for their campaigns.

And I’ll try to keep my opinions out of it. (Cub)Scout’s honor.

If you were just now tuning in to the race, and your TV’s busted, you might search Google Images to find out what the candidates look like.

Aside from the first image of Senator Barack Obama, which features "gangsta" Obama allegedly pandering to the African American audience, the rest, for the most part, look nice and Presidential. If you just search for "Obama," it’s a little more casual, featuring a more JFK, Jr.-esque shirtless beach shot, and of course his would-be Kennedy-esque mistress.

Hillary (don’t click that without safe search mode ON), on the other hand, doesn’t get quite the treatment Barack does. She’s featured as the Devil in both the informal "Hillary" return and the "Hillary Clinton" return (where she’s poking Bill in the rear with a pitchfork), as well as Darth Vader, or is featured with various decidedly monstrous looks on her face. Google Images doesn’t appear to like Hillary much, but that baby pic is priceless.

John McCain, according to Google Images, is a pirate. And a GI Joe. And is most often draped in the Stars and Stripes. Sometimes Presidential, sometimes crazy guy at the bar angry because you looked at him funny. POW camp kind of does that to a guy.

Okay, so Google Images clearly favors either McCain or Obama, depending on your POV, which puts Hillary last in our forthcoming analysis (besides, "ladies first" is so sexist). We’ll start with Obama because, according to Google Suggest, nobody knows who he is.

What Google Tells Us About Obama

If you’re the type of person who listens to what President Bush says and thinks we should do the opposite, then Obama’s your man. In this Editor & Publisher report, Bush called McCain a "true conservative" (a statement Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingram and Coulter might all disagree with), and said Hillary was "well-prepared for the job." And Barack? Bush doesn’t like Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience. And if anybody knows about bad foreign policy, it’s Bush.

That’s the last time. Honestly.

Obama’s well-liked at the Googleplex, especially since he was the only candidate to answer correctly CEO Eric Schmidt’s Google employment question, which is about "the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers."

He answered "I think the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go." That’s apparently correct because the crowd applauded. Giving me a math problem is like putting a chimp at the helm of an atom-smasher. Still, I think this is the correct answer: "Give them to a Google employee."

During that interview, Obama voiced support for Network Neutrality (a topic you’re unlikely to hear about off the Internet), and unveiled his technological plan for the nation, which included the appointment of a Chief Technical Officer to help make the government more transparent online.

As far as utilizing the Internet in his campaign goes, he’s been early and aggressive online, making use of YouTube, MySpace, and Google AdWords, especially to ward off a smear campaign suggesting he was Muslim. That question, by the way,—whether he’s Muslim—is the top Google suggestion for "Obama is…."

Google also tells us that, according to Slate, Obama is the most Google-like candidate, if you were to compare him to a company. A young, exciting, inspiring, dreamy upstart…whose stock has fallen, says my boss, hardee-har-har.

But even still, after all that Silicon Valley love – Google led contributors to his campaign, choosing him over Clinton and McCain – Obama failed to carry the region. Silicon Valley went the way of Microsoft. And the Obama Girl? Well, maybe she caught a cold by not wearing enough at the Google-YouTube New Hampshire pre-primary party, because she sort of didn’t go cast her vote in the New Jersey primary. Et tu, Amber Lee?

McCain, Your General Motors Pirate Guy

Google Suggest suggests that McCain is an insane, liberal traitor, or at best an old conservative. But if you’re the type to go against anything MoveOn.org says, which has thrown it’s support via donated money and advertising to Obama, then McCain’s your man.

And he’s earned your support. For every dollar McCain’s campaign spent online he earned $4 in campaign donations. Not a bad return at all. His email campaign did better, pulling $189 average donations at a cost of $8 per donor. He’s savvy when it comes to Internet campaigning, utilizing AdWords, AdSense, and MySpace to bolster support. 

His ads don’t always hit the mark. Some of his AdSense flyovers ended up in enemy territory thanks to some faulty contextual targeting. And he had to diffuse a McCain googlebomb at some point, which seems to have been unsuccessful. His attack on Hillary worked pretty well though.
 

While visiting the Googleplex, Schmidt let McCain off the hook by not making him answer the efficient bit-sorting thing, and McCain struck a cord with Googlers with this nugget:

“If Google is going to be able to maintain its supremacy in the world, it is going to have to continue to get the best and the brightest from all over the world, and I accept with your gigantic egos, that you are the best…we need an H1B visa program that works.”

But he wasn’t pandering. Soon after, a Googler got the "McCain story" Rick Santorum was talking about as the two of them argued about the war in Iraq. And McCain wasn’t exactly gentle. And he’s still kind of mad at Google and Yahoo for their involvements with China.

He’s against Net Neutrality, believing the market will right itself without government intervention. That might be why he took in $0 from Yahoo, and just $1,550 from Google. Don’t feel bad for him though, McCain has mentioned making Cisco CEO John Chambers a cabinet member. Cisco doesn’t like Net Neutrality either, especially with all the network filtering equipment they make.

Luckily for him, the Navajo put their anti-McCain pitch on Google Base where nobody’d see it, and nobody remembers the Keating thing either. Probably. At least, nobody’s brought it up yet, anyway.

While Obama is compared to Google, that same Slate article compared McCain to General Motors, calling them both "old warhorses" and implying McCain’s brand wouldn’t keep pace with the new efficiency. But as half my family is employed in the steel industry, I have to say, never, ever count old GM out.

Clinton, Our Microsoft

Google Suggest isn’t kind to Sen. Clinton, either, suggesting she "is" a fake, a joke, even the devil. Slate compared her to General Electric, the "mega-cap blue-chip, a juggernaut of the 1990s," but I like the comparison to Microsoft better, especially if Obama is Google.

In fact, out of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, Clinton pulled in the most from Mr. Softy, the Beast of Redmond, and carried Silicon Valley, too. She also has visited the Googleplex, but unfortunately, it looks like Clinton specified "no math questions" before Schmidt was allowed to interview her.

Clinton is also pro-Net Neutrality and has backed legislation in Congress. Her larger broadband expansion plans have come under fire recently, as she has based them on Kentucky Connect, which wasn’t quite the darling it was made out to be.

Rest assured, just like Microsoft with Google, wherever Obama is, there you’ll find Clinton, too, especially online. In AdWords, on YouTube and MySpace.

Final Tally

Let’s take a few things into consideration here. From a PageRank standpoint, Obama’s website is beating McCain’s, PR 7 to PR 5 (as of last August), but McCain’s MySpace profile PR is ahead of Obama’s 7 to 6. Clinton’s website 6, her MySpace profile 5.

SEO advantage goes to Obama.

Obama has 271,000 MySpace friends, compared to Hillary’s 181,000, and McCain’s disappointing 44,000.

Therefore, the overall Internet winner for the US Presidential Election of 2008 is…

Ron Paul?
 

If there is one point of difference between Truveo and other video search sites, Truveo suggested in its election video announcement that it indexes what the competition doesn’t.

“Truveo

We haven’t broken this out in a while, but based on observations by a couple of notable techies, we’ll say it: The Fear is back.

First, some preliminaries. The NASDAQ had its worst one-day drop in years. Unemployment hit five percent.

Google dropped 4.13 percent to $657 per share. Intel received a downgrade from JPMorgan.

Not good. It gets worse. Mashable editor Adam Ostrow noted the first three days of 2008 have been the worst start for the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression. The Dow fell 256.54 today, to 12,800.18.

Feeling The Fear yet? Greg Linden might think you should. He has one prediction for 2008, and it’s not a pretty one:

We will see a dot-com crash in 2008. It will be more prolonged and deeper than the crash of 2000.

The crash will be driven by a recession and prolonged slow growth in the US.

Linden also thinks online advertising will go flat at best, or even decline. Google and Yahoo will suffer, and ads driven by spyware and malware will return in a big way, all over the Internet.

We’re going to hope Linden’s off the mark with his prediction. But the start of 2008 looks as joyless as an emo kid’s Live Journal at the moment.

We imagine the various political bloggers and webmasters must be in ecstasy today, now that the state of Iowa has its primary underway. To complement those fevered bloggers, we took a look at some of the resources available at the major search sites about the primary.

At Ask.com, a search for the Iowa primary brings up a Smart Answer block atop the search results. They link to the state of Iowa’s list of sites about the primary; the left sidebar of the Ask results features options for narrowing the search.

Google occupies the other end of the spectrum. They have been a fixture thanks to their presence in the YouTube debates held in 2007. Tonight, a Google Maps mashup will show live results of today’s voting in Iowa.

Yahoo goes farther with its election coverage than Google and its News section for the election. At Yahoo, features like their Election ’08 Political Dashboard offer a unique look at the various campaigns.

AOL Elections ’08, like many other AOL services, mimics the style and look of Yahoo. AOL’s site isn’t as gee-whizzy as Yahoo’s, as they have more of a focus on stories and headlines about the election. They will track primary results, and show them on the main elections page.

At Microsoft, their MSN Election page covers what they have to offer voters. MSNBC News figures prominently, with a lead story on how various outcomes would affect eleven of the candidates (Ron Paul didn’t merit a mention in MSNBC political director Chuck Todd’s piece, though.)

MSN’s continued connection with Slate.com, once a Microsoft property, brings in several stories from that publication. Latino MSN Elecciones 2008 serves the Spanish-language community seeking online election information.