Webware100

Site: Google Voice
Category: Editors' Choice, Oncoming Train award

The giant telecom industry is about to meet another giant force: Google. Its new telephony service is a real threat to traditional phone systems. Google Voice gets the "Oncoming Train" award since it's the product most likely to disturb existing services and companies.

While at the moment Google Voice needs existing phone networks to function, there's reason to believe the company will at some point begin offering phone service of its own, or at the very least work with mobile carriers (as it is with its Android mobile phone operating system) to create a Google-branded telecom experience. But unlike other Internet-based telephone solutions that require users to transfer their numbers and contacts to the new system, Google Voice will also work for people who don't move over all at once to the new system.

People who start giving out their Google Voice number instead of their existing landline or mobile numbers get value from the service even if they're not in front of their computers, since Google Voice works very well with existing users' phones. In many ways, Google Voice is a superior front-end to existing phone services, due to the ways it does visual voicemail (with voice recognition, spotty though it may be), SMS, and rule-based call routing. Google Voice is a very strong "gate" to other phone products, just as the Google search engine gates the Web for a lot of people.

This "last foot" position, the interface people use to access their other network services, is arguably the most valuable place a service can live. Google could well end up owning it for telephone services just as it does for the Web.

Site: Search.twitter.com
Category: Editors' Choice; Look out, Google

Twitter itself is fun. Twitter Search, though, is another thing entirely. Twitter Search provides real-time search results on timely issues and news that even Google can't touch. It's this feature, not the Twitter social network, that could end up being Twitter's true path to revenue, as well as the feature that knocks Google off its peg as the master of all search.

Even Google execs have acknowledged that dealing with real-time search is one of the company's most important challenges. Twitter has stuck a pin in Google, and it's hurting. Twitter could, of course, simply choose to monetize its search engine using Google's own advertising technologies. But Twitter is getting big enough that it might not need Google for that. So what will Google do?

Site: Twitter.com
Category: Social & Publishing

Twitter is an online service that lets you broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers." It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place.

Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as on a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert. You can't say much in 140 characters. That is part of Twitter's charm.

Since launching in 2007, Twitter has seen tremendous growth. In early 2009, Ashton Kutcher became the first user to gain more than a million followers. Oprah Winfrey then gave the microblog a plug and caught up to the million follower mark within a month's time. In late May, the tool also received its first use from space, courtesy of U.S. astronaut Mike Massimino. The tool was also an instrumental PR tool for presidential candidates in the 2008 U.S. election.

(Credit: CNET)

Site: hi5.com
Category: Social & Publishing

Hi5 is a popular social network, and one of the most trafficked sites on the Web. Like other popular social networks, users have profiles where they can post photos and tidbits of information, as well as keep track of what friends are up to. The service also has an application platform that lets third-party developers build Web apps that users can add to their Hi5 dashboard and profile pages.

Hi5 was one of the first social networks to have its own virtual currency. Users can purchase these "Hi5 coins" with real money, then use them inside of the service for various premium items. Other social networks began to offer this later on, including Facebook.

Hi5 continues to be one of the most popular social networks with more than 60 million active users, with a reported 80 percent of those coming from outside of the U.S.

Site: Bebo.com
Category: Social & Publishing

Bebo is a popular social network based out of San Francisco. Users can create their own profiles, and in typical social networking style, list favorite bands, pictures, and activities to share with friends on the service. Like competitor MySpace, Bebo is music-centric, and provides bands with ways to share their music using band profile pages.

What may be more interesting than the service itself is its history. Bebo was the top Google search query for all of 2006, according to the search engine's yearly zeitgeist. It's also the top-visited Web site in all of Ireland. In early 2008, it was snatched up by AOL for a staggering $850 million.

(Credit: CNET)

Site: Topix.com
Category: Location-based services

On news site Topix.com, users apply for the job of editor for a topic or a community and once approved, they can add stories, move stories around on the page, and remove the stories that the Topix "roboblogger" has added. Designated editors also can write their own stories for a topic, and even submit them from a mobile phone.

Noneditors can comment on stories and submit them to a topic's editors for later inclusion. In this way it's more like USA Today than Digg. In either case, it's an ever-swirling page of news that's updated at all hours, and on all topics.

One of Topix's newer features is aggregating news photos from around the Web. These are pulled from stories that are already on the service, and provide a very entertaining way to browse the news without actually doing any reading.

(Credit: CNET)

Site: ZipRealty.com
Category: Commerce

ZipRealty is an online real estate agency. A survivor of the late 1990s dot-com bust, ZipRealty gives users home listings and values across more than a million homes. Home owners can also list their home right on the site, and have ZipRealty help sell it. When sellers do that there's usually a lower commission charge than they'd get from local real estate agencies.

The site also features a price tracking tool to search homes with reduced prices, and a tool that tells you what your home should be worth based on its size, amenities, and the recent values of other homes in your area.

(Credit: CNET)

Site: Woot.com
Category: Commerce

Woot is an online retailer of goods. Most of the items sold are electronics, although you never know what will be next. The site sells a new product every night at midnight Central time and will keep it available until the next night or until it sells out.

Unsold goods are then later sold (usually at a discount) in what's called a Woot-off, where the retailer continues to sell new or previously listed goods until it runs out of stock, replacing it with other items. Woot-offs are well known for ending with the notorious "bag of crap," which contains a random grouping of items that are undisclosed to the buyer until it arrives in the mail. Bags of crap have been known to randomly contain high value items such as big-screen TVs and popular electronics.

Besides its standard store, Woot has three other variants that use the same, or a similar sales model. Wine.woot.com sells a new selection of wine or alcoholic items each week, while Shirt.woot.com sells a new user-created T-shirt every day. Woot's other site, Sellout.woot.com, is a partnership with Yahoo's Shopping site, and usually sells the second string items from Woot.com.

(Credit: CNET)

Site: PayPal.com
Category: Commerce

PayPal was one of the first services to let people exchange money online. It was popularized--and later purchased--by eBay, and is one of the most widely recognized payment systems on the Internet. It's used in online auctions and stores as a way to control and manage payments.

PayPal has survived throughout the years by charging fees to its sellers. Buyers in online auctions and those making donations via the service aren't charged these fees.

One of the reasons people choose to use PayPal over other services is its buyer protection and anonymization services, which offer some protection against online fraud. More recently, alternate services such as Google's Checkout have garnered some of the attention in this space for similar efforts with lower fees.

(Credit: CNET)