From the election of the first American social media president... to a nod to social media from the mainstreamiest of mainstream media (Oxford Dictionary, for god's sake!)... it's been a big, tumultuous sprawling toddler of a year, prone to tantrums and potty accidents but adorable nonetheless.
Here, then, is 2009 the way it was meant to be remembered... in doodles.
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We've now compiled the main points into a single presentation, available on Slideshare and embedded below. You can view the presentation in full screen by clicking the "full" button at the bottom of the presentation. You can also download the presentation as a Powerpoint file. All of the links in the presentation are clickable, should you wish to explore a certain topic more.
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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!
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Back in April, the service became one of the top three Internet video providers, alongside Google - which includes YouTube and Google Video - and Fox, according to comScore.
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Kilar includes a number of statistics in his note to show that the site has continued its climb in popularity during the rest of 2009.
"Monthly users of Hulu, as measured by comScore, grew to over 43 million, a 95 percent increase over this time last year.Monthly streams, as measured by comScore, grew to 924 million, a 307 percent increase from this time last year.
Hulu's content library doubled over the past year. We now offer over 14,000 hours of premium content, up from 5,600 hours at this time last year."
The addition of Disney as a content partner last April surely provided a traffic boost, as the ABC owner brought television sensations like "Lost", "Grey's Anatomy" and other prime-time hits to the site.
A live video of Obama's inauguration topped the list of embedded videos for 2009, while "Saturday Night Live", "Family Guy", "The Office", "The Simpsons" and "Naruto Shippuden" were the most popular shows of the year.
But what was the overall winner for 2009 on Hulu, you might be wondering? A decidedly NSFW SNL short called "Motherlover".
For those of you who still haven't made the digital television switch but still want to watch, Hulu will be streaming the ball drop in Times Square tonight starting at 10 pm EST.
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WhatTheTrend has compiled a great overview of Twitter hashtags and trending topics. Their Twitter Zeitgeist 2009 gives us food for thought as we move into a new, hopefully less gaming-prone era of examining and measuring what real users are really talking about on the social web. Now, let's talk about Twilight and Michael Jackson. Or, in the choose-your-own-adventure model of blog posts, you can skip to the part where we talk about tech-related trending topics instead.
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One of the most notable uses of any social network to date was the role of Twitter in the Iranian election/debacle/bloodbath. The U.S. State Department even made a call when Twitter was scheduled for maintenance downtime during the pursuant protests because the messaging service had proven so vital to the democratic process in that country. The worldwide buzz - and the sudden surge of green-tinted user icons and locations changed to "Tehran" - make iranelection the number one Twitter trend of 2009.
In an interesting convergence between mainstream Internet use and high-tech geekery that only Google could engineer, Wave appears in the number four spot for top Twitter trends. And we have a pretty good idea that Twitter users' out-and-out begging for an invite provided the bulk of that talk. As our loyal readers know, the ReadWriteWeb team is divided on whether Wave is a win or a fail so far, but there's no doubt that this tech launch was one of the hottest this year.
In a stunning and welcome upset, musicmonday pulled ahead of followfriday, besting the well-known but spam-heavy hashtag by four places (Monday landed in the second position, Friday in the sixth). Is Follow Friday, a charming concept created with the most harmless intentions by our dear friend Micah Baldwin, simply a trend that has seen its day? Or is there something about taste-making and multimedia content curation that draws users to simply participate more?
Also, there are the films. New Moon, the second in the Twilight franchise, earned a number five spot in the rankings. We are grateful that our sole experience of these tweets are a brilliant collection of snarks from professional lampooner, newly minted TV pretty boy and TheOnion.com web editor Baratunde Thurston. Also-rans are Paranormal Activity, a horror flick that turned a $15,000 budget into around $80 million in box office receipts, and the latest Harry Potter movie. Finally, as a longtime Trekkie, I am happy to report that the new Star Trek film beat out Bruno by around 20 places in these rankings.
Both the Palm Pre and BlackBerry were mentioned in the top 100 trends, and one of our top ten international apps, Spotify, earned a number 63 spot on the list for consistent chatter and news throughout the year. Bing and Google Voice each earned a spot lower on the list, coming in at 81 and 100 respectively.
Finally, to nod graciously in the direction of our good-natured rivals at Mashable, their Open Web Awards were the 27th most talked-about thing on Twitter this year. For a topic that didn't appear until mid-October (and for a topic generated by a tech blog, no less), this is a great measure of success for which Pete Cashmore and his team are to be congratulated.
To get the full list, send an email to the folks at WhatTheTrend.
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