Web Top 25

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New Web 2.0 Top 25

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It's been a long time -- all the way back to the dawn of desktop computing in the early 1980s -- since software coders have had as much fun as they're having right now. But today, browser-based applications are where the action is. A killer app no longer requires hundreds of drones slaving away on millions of lines of code. Three or four engineers and a steady supply of Red Bull is all it takes to rapidly turn a midnight brainstorm into a website so hot it melts the servers. What has changed is the way today's Web-based apps can run almost as seamlessly as programs used on the desktop, with embedded audio, video, and drag-and-drop ease of use.

Below is a list of the New Web 2.0 Top 25 (Courtesy CNNMoney.com) that are leading the way along the Internet Superhighway. A few are well established DOTCOMS and market leaders in their respective spaces. Others are relative newcomers that have created new market segments that allow us to collaborate, communicate, network, exchange, find and filter digital information that were not possible before. How many of these companies will be the next Microsoft or Google is anybody's guess. How many of these newcomers are actually making money? Is another DOTCOM bubble waiting around the corner? Several Internet forecasters are already predicting a mini-bubble. Anyway, I hope you find them of interest.

Website	Company/Location	What it is	Description

	Digg (San Francisco, CA)	News Aggregator	Members submit news and information links; Other members vote to see whose links make it to the homepage; Readership has been doubling every three months

	Last.fm (London)	Social Radio	Its software creates a personalized streaming radio station based on the digital music you already listen to, shares your playlist on the Web, and suggests music from other closely related playlists.

	Newsvine (Seattle, WA)	Collaborative Publisher	Readers vote and comment on stories but can also organize their own pages and write their own stories, for which they collect 90 percent of associated ad revenues.

	TagWorld (Santa Monica, CA)	Social Networking	With cutting-edge Web software enabling blogs, photo and music sharing, online dating, and more, members confront a rich smorgasbord of ways to interact, and everything can be tagged for easy searching.

	YouTube (San Mateo, CA)	Video Sharing	This site lets people upload, watch, and share millions of video clips. All videos are converted to Flash (a Web-tailored format for graphics and video), making them easy to import into blogs or webpages.

	Yahoo.com (Sunnyvale, CA)	Web Search Engine/Social Media	Hoping to dominate social media, it's gobbling up promising startups (Del.icio.us, Flickr, Webjay) and experimenting with social search that ranks results based on shared bookmarks and tags. Ranked No 2 search engine.

	Bloglines (Los Gatos, CA)	Online Feed Reader	The site collects blogs and news from all over the Web and presents it in one consistent, updated, multifeed mashup.

	Eurekster (San Francisco, CA)	Web Mashup	This do-it-yourself search engine, or swicki, allows you to define sites you want to search, post the results on your blog or website, and get a cut of any search ads your audience clicks on.

	Simply Hired (Mt View, CA)	Job Search Engine	It searches nearly 4.5 million listings on other job and corporate sites; subscribers receive an RSS feed or e-mail alert when a job that meets their parameters pops up.

	Technorati (San Francisco, CA)	Blog Search Engine	The site filters the almost 30 million existing blogs, shows how many other blogs link to a particular post, and can rank blogs by topic.

	Trulia (San Francisco, CA)	Real Estate Search Engine	Combining home listings from agents' websites with Google Maps, the site is becoming a hit in California and is expanding into other regions.

	Wink (Mountain View, CA)	Tag Search Engine	By searching user-generated tags on Next Net sites like Del.icio.us and Digg, Wink filters the Web so users can sort links into different collections and add their own tags and bookmarks.

	Google (Mountain View, CA)	Web Search Engine/Social Media	Already the ultimate Web filter through general search as well as blog, news, shopping, and now video search, it's encouraging mashups of Google Maps and search results, and offers a free RSS reader. No 1 search engine on the Web.

	Fonality (Culver City, CA)	Open-Source Telephony Software	It sells a $1,000 box that allows a PC to use open-source software to mimic a PBX system that costs five times as much.

	SIPphone (San Diego, CA)	Internet Phone Software	Its Gizmo Project application allows free PC-to-PC calls, cheap PC-to-phone calls, and sound effects.

	Iotum (Ottowa, Ontario, Can)	Presence Management Software	With its app, users will be able to control where and when they receive voice or text data, routing calls to their phones, e-mail, or RSS feed-and blocking calls from, say, creditors.

	Vivox (Framingham, MA)	Internet Phone Software	Peer-to-peer voice technology. Its service integrates voice, video, messaging, and social-networking capabilities into existing data networks.

	Skype (Luxembourg, CA)	Internet Phone Software	The pioneer in the peer-to-peer voice technology field and still the front-runner, Skype brings together free calling, IM, and video calling over the Web; eBay acquired Skype and will use it to create deeper connections between buyers and sellers.

	JotSpot (Palo Alto, CA)	Wikis and Online Spreadsheet	A pioneer of Web collaboration apps, a.k.a. wikis, it has unveiled its new Tracker application, which provides a powerful, highly collaborative online spreadsheet.

	30Boxes (San Francisco, CA)	Online Calendar	This Web-based software allows families and groups to create private social networks, organize events, track schedules, and share photos; it may soon allow you to save phone numbers as hyperlinks and make calls by simply clicking on a link.

	37Signals (Chicago, IL)	Online Project Management	Its Basecamp app, elegant and inexpensive, enables the creation, sharing, and tracking of to-do lists, files, performance milestones, and other key project metrics; related app Backpack, recently released, is a powerful online organizer for individuals.

	Writely (Portola Valley, CA)	Online Word Processing	It enables online creation of documents, opens them to collaboration by anyone anywhere, and simplifies publishing the end result on a website as a blog entry.

	Zimbra (San Mateo, CA)	Online E-Mail	Taking aim at Microsoft Outlook, its Ajax-based application can, among other things, bring up your calendar for any date your mouse encounters, launch Skype for any phone number, or retrieve a Google map for any address.

	Microsoft	Diversified Software Applications (Desktop, web, network)	By rolling out Windows Live, Office Live, and other Next Net-centric software, it hopes to grab a dominant -- if not monopolistic -- share of the webtop, which Bill Gates regards as a crucial strategic priority.

	Brightcove (Cambridge, MA)	Internet TV Distributor	It's creating a video-distribution platform over the Web for producers large and small.

	Jigsaw (San Mateo, CA)	Business Contact Database	Online marketplace for buying and selling business contacts. In exchange for their own contact lists, salespeople use this site to access a virtual Rolodex of managers at nearly 150,000 companies.

	SimpleFeed (Palo Alto, CA)	Opt-in RSS Marketing	By allowing RSS feeds to be customized to the desires of each recipient and tracked individually, the site makes such feeds a powerful marketing tool.

	Salesforce.com (San Francisco, CA)	Web-Based Sales & Marketing Management (CRM)	It pioneered Web-based CRM software and is trying to become a marketplace and host for other online apps through its AppExchange.

	Six Apart (San Francisco, CA)	Blogging Tools	The company helped kick off and sustain the Next Net with its Moveable Type blogging software and TypePad blogging service.

	Amazon.com (Seattle, WA)	Online E-tailer	World's largest online inclusive book, music, electronics e-tailer. It is becoming a major Web platform by opening up its software protocols and encouraging anyone to use its catalog and other data.