UPDATED 16:29 EDT / JANUARY 01 2010

SiliconANGLE’s Highlights of 2009 [Popularity Contest]

image 2009 was an interesting year.  A lot of folks have made mention that 2009 wasn’t the greatest year for many of us, but in my mind, it was an interesting year of recovery.  Personally, I started the year off strong by a move away from a small town into a city of respectable size (Dallas), ended my tenure at my previous job (Disclosure: Mashable’s lawyers contributed heavily to that post).

From there, it was a brief period of freelancing until John Furrier, Rex Dixon and I decided to launch SiliconANGLE (Rex is no longer with us, but he was invaluable in the first few months).  We’ve had a few moments of uncertainty over the year dealing with the struggling economy, but looking back over the last 10 months, we’ve consistently been in a better position month over month (due in no small part to the dedication of every last contributor who’s joined us in our debut year).

As such, I figured I’d take a look at what the year looked like through the lens of SiliconANGLE. There’s a lot of important and quality posts I’ve left out, but here are the ones that were the most popular in terms of traffic or comments.

February 2009

Editorial: New Venture Creation – A New Generation of Entrepreneurs and A New Generation of Investors – John Furrier

John laid the groundwork for SiliconANGLE’s purpose and focus, one that continues to be a guiding principal today:

Thomas Friedman writes (regarding the auto bailout): "…Bailing out the losers is not how we got rich as a country, and it is not how we’ll get out of this crisis."

siliconANGLE is focused on helping entrepreneurs and companies by providing information and collaboration (including research) to help those entrepreneurs and companies be successful in their new ventures.

siliconANGLE hopes to be a Silicon Valley beacon for global cutting-edge ideas and cutting-edge talent. siliconANGLE is designed so that we win only if entrepreneurs win – ideas, opportunities, innovation and invention is our focus.

The post drew a lot of attention when Fred Wilson disagreed with a point John didn’t make, but overall, a great deal of constructive conversation took place around the topic.

News: DEMO 09 Class of Demonstrators! – John Furrier

Our first scoop was a leak of the DEMO09 class of demonstrators. We caught a fair amount of flack for it, but it got us our first Techmeme headline.

March 2009

Editorial: Is Facebook Really on the Rise? – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

This was when I first noticed the tipping point on Facebook – all the early adopters who previously had hated Facebook were starting to like it. My Friendfeed evangelism was still evident in my opinion:

What we did notice, however, is that our social graphs have been portable due to our decision to integrate directly with FriendFeed, via including the feed in our profiles as well as using Disqus for our comments. As it turns out, the most common way for folks to come to the site is through FriendFeed, followed closely by Twitter.

Facebook doesn’t even register as a significant traffic source, and Facebook has been integrated on our site’s comments from day one.

Essentially, what I’m saying, is that Facebook is less engaged than other social networks.  People log in and are baffled as to what they’re supposed to be doing once they’ve finished their super-pokes.

Incidentally, very little of our traffic comes from Friendfeed any longer, and the number three referrer is now Facebook.

News: Breaking News: Google to Release GrandCentral Out of Beta as Google Voice – Hello Google Voice – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

One of my first personal scoops since joining SiliconANGLE, we got a tip there that Google was releasing Grandcentral out of beta a little early. This is where we first established the trend of really long headlines on our posts.

April 2009

Editorial: Could Microsoft Be the First to Conquer the Living Room? – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

I first noticed a trend here in April that I see continuing into 2010 – Microsoft’s quiet conquest of the living room.

If you’ll allow me to theorize what the move might be, I do think it is a pretty brilliant move to create a settop box out of an affordable and perfectly capable bit of portable hardware.

Zune is one of the few devices to combine the following essential bits of tech to make podcast listening seamless and a genuine pleasure: integrated podcast directory, and the ability to define a continuous playlist out of subscribed podcasts.

As applied to the living room, this means two things:

First, it means that the ability to browse and discover new programming is built into the device.  It doesn’t need to be re-engineered or added on via a secondary computing device (like Apple’s AppleTV).

Secondly, and most importantly, it brings the ability to view TV the way it’s been ingrained with decades: with the ability to engage the Veg-Factor.

Microsoft is doing this pretty successfully with the xBox360, I’ve since learned. This will be a big deal going into 2010.

News: Skype Founders Making a Run To Take Back Skype? – John Furrier

Thanks to a great deal of inside information and anonymous sources, we were able to closely follow in the month of April a lot of Skype-related news, which garnered us quite a bit of traffic.

May 2009

Editorial: Social Media Rules of Engagement – Glenn Manishin

Glenn’s been a great contributor this year.  His posts are infrequent (he’s busy doing stuff, unlike me who just pontificates for a living), but whenever he posts, it’s generally gold. This post continues to garner traffic to this day.

News: Social Media is Hot – $25 Billion in Social Media M&A in Past 2 Years – John Furrier

Popular undoubtedly because of it’s positivity, a sign that things were indeed returning to normal,

June 2009

Editorial: Welcome to the Stream – Nova Spivack

Nova Spivack, noted thinker and founder of Twine, made his first contribution to the website here with his treatise on the rise of streams as an overlay protocol on the ‘Net. It could easily serve as reference material for historians as they try to figure out how we got to the world of the “real time web” from the world of “NCSA Mosaic’s Cool Site of the Day!”

News: How Iran is Blocking the Internet Suggests They Weren’t Prepared for an Election Backlash [#iranElection] – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

I did a lot of work with folks in our SALabs group trying to get some original research on what was going on with the blockage of Internet in Iran.  A lot of names were being bandied about as to who was responsible, who sold the technology, and how it was being used.  We looked at the way the bits moved around at the bordercores and all the trackers to determine what exactly happened.

Bonus: The Themes of Structure ‘09 – James Watters

One of his first runaway hits, James’ coverage of GigaOm’s structure event was quite popular in June.

July 2009

Editorial: Augmented Reality is Cool! But What’s the ROI? – Rick Gardinier

Rick Gardinier’s post continues to be a jumping off point for conversation around Augmented reality. 

If the concept is new to you, here are a few things to consider: What happens when the internet is no longer confined by a physical device? What happens when we’re all walking around viewing the physical world that is enhanced by data, information and 3D objects as we look through our AR glasses? It’s as if Minority Report-like user experiences are just around the corner.

Rick was really ahead of the curve, talking about the new and emergent technology before any of the major blogs started paying it any mind.

News: One Last Look at Twitter’s User Growth – Ho John Lee

Ho John, just after his move from SALabs to Microsoft, posted one last round up of his original research from scraping Twitter from 2006 to 2009.

Video: Cali Lewis Offers Secrets on Her Success [#wcdfw09] – socialnerdia / Esteban Contreras

Esteban’s first contribution to SiliconANGLE was amongst the most popular in August, an interview with Cali Lewis on what the secret to her popularity is.

“Cali also told me about having friends not “fans” (with one exception), the exciting future of AR and 4G networks, and the threat that bloggers pose to journalists. Cali is aware that “the internet is not going to wipe out TV, just like TV didn’t wipe out the radio, and the radio didn’t wipe out the newspaper“, but it’s clear that online productions of high quality like GeekBrief.TV are  transforming the way we watch and think of content on the web.”

August 2009

It’s at this point in our history where we have so much absolutely top notch content that it’s hard to narrow it down to just two or three selections per month.  No slight meant to our many quality contributors!

News: Friendfeed-Facebook Acquisition: The Positive Side – Michael Sean Wright

Podcast: Robert Scoble, Paul Buchheit and Mike Schroepfer Talk About the Friendfeed and Facebook Deal – Robert Scoble

Editorial: Could WordPress Be the Natural Successor to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook? – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

Editorial: The Cultural Implications of the Friendfeed-Facebook Acquisition – Michelle Greer

There were more posts on this cluster around the Friendfeed / Facebook acquisition, but these three were by far the most popular, driving traffic and discussion throughout the month.

September 2009

There were two editorials that created such a one month traffic surge, the record hasn’t yet been beat.

Editorial / Humor: The Stupidest Article About Social Media Ever – Kevin Nalty

YouTube funnyman and social media expert set out to create the definitive piece on social media.  Most of us who read it think he succeeded.

A few other people have written about social media, but it’s like Robert Scoble says, “That’s the first lesson: even though you probably are getting sick and tired of hearing about something… the reality is that most of your friends haven’t even heard the news yet.”

I quoted Robert Scoble because it gives this article credibility, and, quite frankly, I don’t read his blogosphere so I just grabbed that quote from his most‐recent post about his new baby. Scoble’s worldwide website is available if you click that underlined thing one sentence back. He works for Microsoft or something.

It’s time for a gratuitous and recent statistic to substantiate what I’m saying…

Incidentally, this post probably marked the shark jumping point on the term “social media.”

Editorial: The Case Against the Cluetrain: Your Customers Don’t Care About Your Social Media Strategy – Chris Selland

Chris Selland debuted on SiliconANGLE with an uberpopular post about why he believed the Cluetrain Manifesto may not always apply.

I had a fun (for me, at least) Twitter debate this Monday with CRM consultant Brian Vellmure. Brian made the mistake of touting one of my least-favorite books of all time – The Cluetrain Manifesto – as a ‘must read’, to which I objected.

Why?

Because while the fundamental premise of Cluetrain – that increasingly-networked customers will communicate with each other – is a no-brainer; the conclusion and prescription – that ‘everything has changed’ and that companies need to invest heavily in ‘dialogue’ (or ‘community’ or ‘Social Media’) to ‘engage’ in those dialogues, is simply not correct – and leads companies down the path of investing and focusing on the wrong things.

October 2009

News: What Comes After Hard Drives? – Jeff Nolan

Jeff Nolan pontificates on what comes after Hard Drives on the news most current forms of physical storage won’t scale past 2020 based on current usage patterns.  This post was short but generated a rousing game of “guess the media” on Friendfeed.

Editorial: Why I Continue to Use Google Reader – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

A simple rebuttal I did to Robert Scoble’s explanation as to why Google Reader is a dead app took me to the top of several news aggregators and garnered a great deal of comments and attention. It continues to be the second most commented story on the site with 70 responses (after Nalt’s post on the stupidity of social media).

November 2009

Editorial: In-Stream Twitter Ads: You’re Already Doing Them [Yes, You] – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

In November, once again, the debate about ads in your Twitter stream heated up again.  Attention was drawn to this post because Matt Cutts couldn’t accept that he participated in advertising on Twitter while at the same time condemning the practice of advertising on Twitter.

Editorial: Compensation: The real divide in social media – Angela Connor

Yet another quality post from Angela Connor, this time talking about the digital divide in compensation between the genders:

On a recent conference call for community managers, one of my peers from the Online Community Research Network who is looking for work gave interesting details about the conversations she’s had with potential employers. After gleaning a great deal of insight from her about community management during the initial interview, many have revised their job descriptions to incorporate some of what they learned from her, yet never called her back for a second interview.

Review: The Only Non-Negative Review of the TwitterPeek – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

True to the title, this post was the only non-negative review of the new Twitter-only device, the

News: The Ad-Mob / Google Thing

We had a cluster of news and editorial around the news of the acquisition of AdMob by Google.

Google Acquires AdMob For $750 Million In Stock – Sean P. Aune

Another One Bites the Dust, AdMob Acquired By Google – Nate D’Amico

Rumor: Google To Purchase VoIP Solution Gizmo5 – Sean P. Aune

Is This About Mobile Ads or About Ailing Androids? [AdMob-Google] – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

Eric Schmidt Answers Our Questions as to Why They Acquired AdMob – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

December 2009

The 2010 Predictions and Reflections Series

The predictions series has been hands down the most volumnuous as well as the most popular blog post series we’ve done here at SiliconANGLE.

Read them all here.

There have been contributions from many contributors, including: Ken Camp, Hutch Carpenter, Sean Percival, Rick Gardinier, Michael Sean Wright, Andrew Smith Lewis, Shion Deysarkar, Art Lindsey, Sean P. Aune, Len Grace, Angela Connor, Rich Wong, Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang, Ray Wong, Kevin Purcer, Venkatesh Rao, Vanessa Alvarez, Erin “Mack” McKelvey, Daisy Whitney, Chris Selland, and me.


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