It’s the end of the year and we here at 10e20 have a tradition of sharing our top stories in search and social media. This year is no exception. Without further ado, here are the top 50 stories in search.
50. Twitter microblogging tool goes mainstream (November/December)
49. Alibaba goes IPO (10/29)
48. Server downtime plagues Yahoo Stores on Cyber Monday (11/26)
47. Bodog online casino domain name frozen (8/28)
46. Porn.com sells for $9 million (5/15)
45. Jason Calacanis launches Mahalo human powered search engine (5/30)
44. Google starts to publish AP news in new partnership (8/31)
43. Digg partners with Microsoft for ads (7/25)
42. MySpace and Facebook study discovers different social class divisions (6/25)
41. Microsoft comes out with Silverlight to compete with Flash (4/15) and then launches Silverlight-powered search engine, Tafiti (8/20)
40. Google acquires Zingku mobile service provider (9/27)
39. Bloglines comes out with AJAX beta (8/27)
38. Google Checkout crashes eBay party, eBay pulls Google ads (6/13)
37. Yahoo acquires MyBlogLog (1/8)
36. Google acquires Postini (7/9)
35. Social image site Flickr gets its 2 billionth upload (11/13)
34. Google founders Sergey Brin gets married (May), and Larry Page follows (December)
33. Fox serves YouTube a subpoena after unaired episodes of 24 show up on the social video network (1/26)
32. Yahoo! Mash social network launched (9/17)
31. Business.com is sold for $345 million (7/27)
30. Yahoo appoints click fraud czar (3/22)
29. Yahoo announces Pipes (2/8)
28. Conferences, conferences, and conferences
27. Wikipedia adds nofollow to all its links (1/22) prompting much controversy to “reduce Wikipedia’s PR to zero” (1/23)
26. Google announces Android and joins the Open Handset Alliance (11/25)
25. MySpace hoax leads to suicide (11/16)
24. Digg drops its top 100 users list from the site (2/2)
23. Gmail is now open to everyone (2/14) and gives out 6GB of storage (12/25)
22. Digg’s HD-DVD revolt shows that the community owns (5/5)
21. Ask Eraser launches (12/11)
20. Google announces Knol, the Wikipedia killer (12/14)
19. Vanessa Fox leaves Google for Zillow (6/17), and then gets joins Ignition Partners and Search Engine Land (11/14)
18. Google acquires Feedburner (6/1) and later gives Pro options for free (7/2)
17. Microsoft invests $240 million in Facebook (10/24)
16. Threadwatch closes down (5/25)
15. eBay acquires StumbleUpon for $75 million (4/18)
14. Microsoft comes out with Webmaster Portal (11/7)
13. Yahoo’s Terry Semel resigns as CEO (6/18)
12. Google OpenSocial launches (10/30)
11. Facebook Beacon creates serious privacy concerns (11/23)
10. Yahoo! Panama becomes a reality in the US (2/5)
9. The paid link debate continues (4/13) and sites lose PageRank for selling links (10/25).
8. Michael Gray creates a controversy in his SES San Jose presentation when he declares “Google is not the government” (8/20)
7. Yahoo introduces Search Assist (10/2)
6. Facebook rolls out applications with F8 initiative (5/24)
5. Google goes over $700 a share (11/1)
4. Ask 3D is launched by Ask.com (7/5)
3. Microsoft acquires aQuantive for $6 billion (5/18)
2. Google acquires DoubleClick for $3.1 billion (4/13), a move that is harshly criticized by Microsoft (4/16). The acquisition is reviewed (5/29) and then approved (12/20)
And the biggest story of the year? Well, think blended search, because that’s what it is:
The #1 story of the year: Google comes out with Universal Search (5/16)
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13 Responses to “Top 50 Search and Social Media Happenings for 2007”
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Google is not the government … Whoever said it was?
As to Knol being the Wikipedia killer, I think the issue goes beyond just Wikipedia. Knol is Google’s insurance policy. As more and more people start their searches with a specific destination in mind (W, About, Gooruze, Squidoo), they just navigate there directly and search those new directories.
Another reason to see it as an insurance policy is that more and more publishers are quitting Adsense. They have to make $100 before getting paid, their accounts can be arbitrarily cancelled at any time, they can be smart-priced for having the “wrong” kind of traffic, their content can be misconstrued as adult/violence/questionable content and thus automatically excluded from some campaigns and the list goes on… Not to mention Wikipedia won’t take ads!
Knol is there to protect Google from outside pressures on their business model: search and advertise.
(As an aside, I wanted to blog this but figured I’d do better leaving a good comment here at 10e20. Hope to hear your thoughts, Tamar!)
[...] was just reading the 10e20 top 50 of 2007 and picked this up check out the SERP for [I am Legend] screen shot for posterity [...]
Gab, I totally agree. It’s interesting that they started this now; to be honest, it’s going to be something that we’d have to watch in 2008. I think they may be too late in the game from both an authoritative and monetization standpoint. We’ll see, I guess. I look forward to your blog post!
Awesome retrospective Tamar. ‘07 definitely was an interesting year. What’s in store for ‘08?
Once again, awesome compilation Tamar! Could we add the launch of Sphinn as #51
hmmm, I knew I was missing something
Too much holiday festivities! 
Do you think they’ll pick up a Squidoo type monetization platform and let users make money off the pages they create to catch up their lag-time? You’re on the mark about them having to play catch-up in terms of authority and monetization. I seriously don’t see how Knol will differentiate from Squidoo. And what’s more, the same way Wikipedia is open to manipulation once an editor builds up a profile, this Google property could be the next platform for sneaky spam-moves.
I agree that Google’s Universal Search was probably the biggest search news of the year. Good call.
[...] posts did I miss? What sites can’t I live without? What book marks should I get rid of? What the hell has the SEM world done in the last year – how it is going to change in the next 12 months? What sites should I be parking for [...]
Come on Tamar how could you have left out your getting a Google Beanbag???? Had to have been in your top 50….
Swag Queen Rocks
@Gab: I don’t really see that being a huge thing that’ll gain momentum, but who knows. If it’s a Google property, it should already have the branding, right? (Of course, over the past year, I believe that Google Products, formerly known as Froogle, has had a 73% drop in users.) I’m kind of on the fence about Knol. Is it going to work? I don’t really know. Is Mahalo a success? It’s a similar thing in my opinion, but that’s just my $0.02.
@Frank: Then the folks at Ask would get mad at me for not covering the bag I scored, and the folks at Yahoo would get mad at me for not covering the shirt and cup and CD and floppy disk I got…. you know how it is.
[...] Top 50 Search and Social Media Happenings for 2007The year in search 2007 as presented by 10e20 (Dec 31 2007) [...]
One of ur link was on top 10 that's good…you people were and are doing great job here….I amazed to see that people are reading long articles bcz I had a perception that people do not like long articles in net they just like small article with lots of information..but this proved my perception wrong….thank you for the list…