Doubledown's Web 2.0 - 2008 Round-up

Web 2.0... whadda we gonna do with ya (shakes fist)...

2007 was the year of finding your old friends and discovering new ones.

2008 is finding your same friends on 100 other different websites. If you havn't connected to all of your friends several different ways by now, don't worry, I'm sure your friends (as well as many people you don't know) will be trying to connect with you a thousand ways from Sunday. 2008 was an ego-centric time. Each individual had something to share, something to comment on, something to advertise.... but did anyone ever view it? Does anyone else ever view "your page"? Anyhoo, 2008, each person spent their time building up their web 2.0 presence. Hopefully 2009 will be dropping the 2.0 services that are simply ineffective and pointless, so we all can congrigate on just 100 web 2.0 social networking websites, instead of 1000s.

I've spent the last year dabbling with this so-called Web 2.0. Here is my 2008 roundup.

Best:
http://www.secondlife.com/ - For over a half a decade, it is still the leading virtual metaverse in our real world. There are many other fascinating virtual worlds out there, however, Second Life still leads the way because of the freedoms, IP advantages, and working economy and money system. Still, Second Life is the only virtual world where you can do just about anything.
http://www.reverbnation.com/ - Reverb Nation, a music and social site is the best for artists and for fans. There are countless out there. Reverb Nation has become my favorite.
http://www.weblin.com/ - The best little add-on I've found to quickly share any webpage. Plus, the ability to chat with anyone else viewing that page is the 2009 way to go. A weblin type feature mixed with cooliris looks to be the future.
http://www.ning.com/ - Tired of other social networks? Just create your own!
http://www.friendfeed.com/ - Simply put, the best web 2.0 service would be a service that lists every other service and combines them all onto one big schmutz of a feed. This beats out mybloglog in my opinion.
http://www.facebook.com/ - All around best status, sharing, connecting, and fun center around. Facebook kicks myspace in the nards.
http://www.addthis.com/ & http://www.sharethis.com - Quick way to share. Combined with weblin, this is excellent.
http://www.buzz.yahoo.com/ - Unfortunately, this is my favorite "story bumping" site. I say unfortunately, because it's run by yahoo. I find Yahoo Buzz beats out Digg, Delicious, and any other website ranking & rating share site. I encourage anyone that enjoys sharing the most current news with your 2.0 network, check out Yahoo Buzz. It's impressive and easy.
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.cooliris.com/ - although this isn't quite web 2.0, this is a sleek modern internet browsing add-on to firefox. Combining the look and feel of cooliris with social networking sites will be the next stage for the internet.
http://www.blip.fm/ - Twitter with music. Even with some site glitches, I thuroughly enjoy tweeting music.... moreso than just tweeting on twitter.
http://www.hulu.com/ - Watch tons of TV and movies over the net. Leading the way so far.
http://www.youtube.com/ -
http://www.blogger.com/ -
http://www.wordpress.com/ -
http://www.intensedebate.com/ - Usually the most intelligent of Q & A type sites
http://www.mogulus.com/ - Want your own TV station broadcast over the web? Stream video live, or produce your own station by lining up videos.

So so:
http://www.last.fm/ - music social network site
http://www.thesixtyone.com/ - music "bumping" site. The only reason I didn't put it in the worst section is because this is a good site to listen to cover versions and remixes.
http://www.bebo.com/ -
http://www.mybloglog.com/ - Yahoo run mybloglog is interesting, however it's a bit too confusing, and you'll end up getting bogged down with feeds if you friend the wrong person. Friendfeed beats out mybloglog.
http://www.meetsee.com/ - Nice convenient virtual office and chat space. On the verge of pointless, but if you need an immediate chatroom, this is the way to go.
http://www.twitter.com/ -
http://www.digg.com/ - I prefer Yahoo Buzz, however, most people use digg. Hopefully they'll get off the digg, because I've never really liked it. Digg is specificaly good in relation to blogger.
www.google.com/calendar - Although it seems to be the easiest calendar to impliment into everything, there's still some schedule editing flaws which piss me off. I read other people's calendars, but never use one for myself.
http://www.flickr.com/ - There hasn't been much competition for photosharing social network sites. Picasa Web Albums is out there. Personally I love http://www.koinup.com/ which is geared specifically to Virtual World art (photos, videos, music).
http://www.avatarsunited.com/ - currently leading the way connecting virtual world users by means of a social networking site.
http://www.typepad.com/
http://www.weblo.com/
http://www.ilike.com/

The Worst
http://www.stumbleupon.com/ - A waste of time and adding the browser toolbar may screw up your views.
http://del.icio.us/ - Lame. People use it, I don't. Yahoo Buzz and Digg beat delicious.
http://www.myspace.com/ - A pointless spam haven. Everyone on myspace is spamming, and no one is viewing.
http://www.friendster.com/ - One of the first... however, the privacy is set too high, therefore it inhibits your network from ever taking off.
http://www.okrut.com/ - A very cheesy version of other social networking sites. Why use okrut if you can use facebook?
http://www.linkedin.com/ -
http://www.technorati.com/ -
http://www.exitreality.com/ - A brilliant idea, but shitty performance. The future of exitreality may have a lot in store though, but since it's release, i've seen no improvements.
http://www.livejournal.com/ -
http://www.diingo.com/ -
http://www.furl.com/ -
http://www.google.com/reader -
http://www.reddit.com/ -
http://www.jaiku.com/ -
http://www.plurk.com/ -
http://answers.yahoo.com/ -
http://www.netflix.com/ -
http://www.tipjoy.com/ -

UPDATES and more of my personal views n stuff to come soon. This is TAKE 4: Dec 17, 2008