2009:The digital year in review

What digital trends will 2009 be remembered for? Below is my list of the five most influential.
1) Facebook and social networks
Firstly, 2008 was the year Facebook overtook MySpace as the world’s most popular social network, with 181 million global users compared to MySpace’s 121 million, according to October 2008 data from comScore.
Facebook’s total global users increased 85% between December 2007 and October 2008, with significant expansion outside the English-speaking markets that have been the traditional drivers of Facebook’s growth.
In her book about social media, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, American journalist Sarah Lacy explains this explosion by arguing that Facebook remains a development-driven company, retaining a very strong focus on continually adding new features for users.
One of the less well-known aspects of Facebook’s expansion is its hold on mobile users. In November Facebook revealed on its blog, found here, that 15 million users were regularly accessing its service using mobiles, up from 5 million at the start of the year.
But Facebook is of course not the only social media story, and social networks have brought a great deal of diversity to the internet. While Facebook is the most popular in the genre, almost every country has one or more strong local players, including Studivz in Germany, Hyves in the Netherlands, and Fotolog in Spain.
2) The rise of the mobile internet
In 2008 mobile internet usage finally took off, thanks in part to the continued success of both Apple’s iPhone, and social networking sites.
Regular reports from Opera, makers of Opera Mini, the most popular mobile internet browser (think Firefox or Internet Explorer for your phone), tracked the rise of mobile internet. These reports only examined people using Opera’s browser, but the figures showed that by October 2008 the browser had 21 million monthly users, a 311% rise since October 2007.
In the Opera sample, data use (that is, how much data was downloaded, or a measure of the amount of content viewed on a mobile device) was up nearly 490% over the same period, showing that not only were more people going online on their phones, but mobile internet users were doing more when they were online.
The launch of the 3G version of the iPhone has been one of the drivers of this growth but I would argue that the other main catalyst has been - once again - social networking. Two years ago people might have said of mobile internet use ‘Why would I want that?’ However, many people now want to access their social networking profiles when they are away from their desks.
Data, again from Opera, shows that, of the markets studied, networking sites were the most popular category of mobile internet sets in more countries than was the case with search sites. When PCs are used to access the internet, search websites are still the most popular destinations.
3) The iPhone and mobile apps
The biggest technology story, and one of the accelerators of mobile internet use, was the launch of the 3G iPhone in July. In less than six months the device has reportedly become the biggest selling phone in the US, and the most purchased smartphone worldwide.
Crucial to the success of the iPhone has been the easy way it offers to install applications, namely small programmes that allow the handset to do useful and fun tasks. By opening up the software architecture for the iPhone, Apple allowed independent developers to produce and sell these apps, letting the free market and people’s imaginations drive the choice of products, and set prices.
Currently there are over 10,000 apps available from the iTunes store, ranging from Google Spoken Search (talk into the phone instead of keying a search query), to Snaptell (identifies books, DVDs and CDs from photos, displays prices at online stores) to iNap (wakes you up when you get near your public transport destination.
With competition provided by rival mobile operating systems from Google (called Android) and from Symbian, 2009 will see further change in the way mobile phones are used.
4) Twitter
Twitter is the less formal version of blogging. Established in 2006, Twitter allows users to write their opinions, what they are doing, or how they feel in 140 characters or fewer. This message then appears on their page, and to their Twitter “friends” (this is a similar status to that on Facebook).
Users build up lists of people they follow and whose updates they want to read, with some power users now having more than 20,000 followers. (Barack Obama is officially the most ‘followed’ Twitter user, with over 150,000 following his updates, although he stopped updating on November 5th). Because it is so quick and so informal, news can spread quickly across Twitter, as one person passes it on to his network of friends and so on, until many thousands can see news in a matter of minutes.
Twitter’s most striking moment to date was scooping the mainstream media with news of the Mumbai terror attacks. Twitter users on the ground were able to tell contacts about the outrage, who then told their contacts and so on. Twitter is not perfect, and 140 characters is a very limited space in which to transmit a complex message, but Twitter gained real traction in 2008 as a way of connecting people in informal and useful ways.
5) Social recommendations and local
Finally, 2008 saw a big rise in the area of social recommendations. Sites like CitySearch, Qype and Tipped rely on users to write reviews of local businesses, and make recommendations. These sites work on the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ principle, and the assumption that users will police themselves, with any obviously fake reviews exposed by other members.
This trend exemplifies a shift in how the internet is being used with people now appearing to put their trust in strangers as much as, if not more than, professional reviewers or friends. The fact that there are many small players in this market niche, rather than a few dominant ones, suggests that no one has yet come up with the ideal solution to social recommendation.
This trend is also connected to the first two. Social networks are working to integrate into these recommendation sites via initiatives such as Facebook Connect and MySpace ID so that users can see what their social circle recommended. In addition, mobile will make these services far more relevant.
We can expect further convergence between all of the above trends in 2009.