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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Social: Lyndon illustrates the Tao of Linkbait Method – the art of hitting your target audience by aiming at a completely different audience. This post is inspired by a great movie and a really good idea.

Links: Joe Whyte shows you how to get hundreds of free links from .edu’s ethically and for free (you will rarely ever see .edu links | ethically | free together in the same sentence).

SEO: Eric Enge gives us 17 poor quality signals that your site might be sending. Some might be obvious (too large a percentage of your links are reciprocal) but others not so obvious (web server downtime too high).

Productivity: Something that always plagues me in my over-crowded inbox, luckily there were two great posts recently to help me out. First we had Stoney DeGyter’s post showing me how to manage my “inbox tasks” and then this quick video interview with Robert Scoble showing how he absorbs 10,000+ emails.

Creativity: Before he left for his Disney World vacation, Graywolf showed a quick example of why its important to experiment with new things. In the brave new Google world – this is extremely important.

Competition: Basically anytime Todd has time to write a complete post, it’s a must read. The Competitive Webmaster’s Guide to Understanding the Dynamics of Top Rankings is no exception.

Usability: Even though I couldn’t submit this to Digg because of the increased scrutiny lately, Kim’s post on 10 reminders for usability web design was still a must read.

Simplicity: Sometimes it’s the shortest posts that smack you in the face….

Don’t forget to subscribe to the 10e20 RSS Feed!

Todd (Stuntdubl) made a post that has become required reading for anyone that works with me. Check out his “advanced beginner’s guide” to SEO.

10e20 contributor and friend Maki is running an experiment to see if he can become the most favorited blog on Technorati and then to see if this will actually bring him traffic. Do me a favor and add him to your Technorati favorites…

Stephen Juhl’s stupid easy approach to competitive link buying.

When Google bought DoubleClick they also bought an SEO company. Discuss…