On the internet, a glimmer of success can go along way either through popularity or money. The Internets power has brought people to fame, and has brought businesses to the ground. Some people have learned to deal with the internet and it’s strength, while others have crumbled beneath it’s force. This leads us to today, where I’m going to point out the Top 5 most successful websites in 2008 in my opinion. This doesn’t include 2007, 2006, or any time before that. It’s just my opinion on what websites have influenced the internet community whether it be video streaming, news making, or blogging. So let’s get started with the top 5 most successful websites in 2008 from my point of view. By the way, these are in no particular order.

1- Ustream.tv- I remember about a year ago, Ustream.tv was lucky to get just about 100 channels going, which at the time seemed like a great amount. I’ve been with Ustream for about a year now, and have just adored the service that they have provided me. They bring a professional user interface to the table unlike Stickam etc. Stickam has brought a more teenage population to online streaming, which i find to be very boring and unprofessional. Ustream has brought enthusiasm, trust, and incredible attitude to their profession, so much that they have over 700 video channels at any one time. They have also attracted influential people to the internet including Presidential hopeful John Mccain, and Barack Obama. Musicians, and Actor wannabe’s are bringing their talents to Ustream and advertising their product. Nasa has involved their NASA Television with Ustream bringing the Space Missions right to peoples screens. People Like Chris Pirillo, Cali Lewis, Leo Laporte, and much more have used Ustreams services. All of this and much more is why Ustream.tv is one of the top 5 most successful websites on the internet today.

2-Twitter- Earlier in it’s time Twitter was known as an unreliable service that allowed you to post what you were doing in 140 characters or less. From server crashes, to IM failures which unfortunately is still down today, Twitter has become one of the most influential websites in the world. With politicians such as Barack Obama using it’s services to CNN and their up-to date news feeds. Twitter has spread news throughout the world in just 1 line. It was Twitter that brought information on Barack Obama’s running mate, it was Twitter that has potentially saved hostages in the middle east, it was Twitter that has brought other websites to fame. The road for Twitter hasn’t been easy though. As I’ve mentioned earlier, it had plenty of server crashes coming out of nowhere, so much that now Twitter has added limitations to how many “Tweets” you may send, and how many people you may follow. As I’ve expressed earlier, these limitations have disappointed me due to my needs of reaching you (the community). The New York Times have called Twitter one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet. Twitter has also influenced other companies to make products that create an ease of access to your Twitter account. Examples of this would be Twhirl, Ping.Fm, Twitter Feed. Iphone Applications have also be developed to access Twitter. Although it still has a few bugs to work out, Twitter is definately one of the top 5 most successful websites of 2008.


3-TechCrunch-

TechCrunch, founded on June 11, 2005, is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.

That is just a little information from their website. Techcrunch has influenced the technology community with no end since it’s first post in 2005. But 2008 is when Techcrunch really came out and brought opinion, information, and authority to profiling new, and interesting companies. Techcrunch has been featured in hundreds of online news articles, magazines, and much more. Tech Crunch has also brought more interest to the popular blogging Software Wordpress as this is the software that they use in providing their service to the online community. Now Wordpress is used by major news organizations like the CBC and Cnn. These are all just a few reasons why Tech Crunch is 1 of the top 5 most successful websites of 2008.

4-Google- I know i said that this post was going to be the top 5 most successful websites of 2008, but i couldn’t resist. Google even today is “taking the over the internet” From their Search engine first being created over 10 years ago, to the reality today where they have become an internet powerhouse. With present projects like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and much more. Google has accomplished more than anyone else in plenty of different adversities. Google has also brought money to other people using their Google Adwords and Adsense Programs where people put relative ad units to their content and make money every time someone clicks on an add. This is otherwise known as PPC. Adsense has become so popular that Googles rival Yahoo has wanted in. Yahoo is now embedding Googles Adsense into their search results. This is bringing millions if not billions of dollars to both companies. Below i’ve taken a little history from their Wikipedia Page to give you guys a little more information on what Google has done throughout the years.

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page, a Ph.D. student at Stanford.[1] In search for a dissertation theme, Page considered—among other things—exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph.[2] His supervisor Terry Winograd encouraged him to pick this idea (which Page later recalled as “the best advice I ever got”[3]) and Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page (with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind).[2] In his research project, nicknamed “BackRub”, he was soon joined by Sergey Brin, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student and close friend, whom he had first met in the summer of 1995 in a group of potential new students which Brin had volunteered to show around the campus.[2] Page’s web crawler began exploring the web in March 1996, setting out from Page’s own Stanford home page as its only starting point.[2] To convert the backlink data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm.[2] Analyzing BackRub’s output—which, for a given URL, consisted of a list of backlinks ranked by importance—it occurred to them that a search engine based on PageRank would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).[2][4] A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.[5]

Google In 1998

Google In 1998

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California.

The name “Google” originated from a misspelling of “googol,”[6][7] which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, “google,” was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, “to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.”[8][9]

By the end of 1998, Google had an index of about 60 million pages.[10] The home page was still marked “BETA“, but an article in Salon.com already argued that Google’s search results were better than those of competitors like Hotbot or Excite.com, and praised it for being more technologically innovative than the overloaded portal sites (like Yahoo!, Excite.com, Lycos, Netscape’s Netcenter, AOL.com, Go.com and MSN.com) which at that time, during the growing dot-com bubble, were seen as “the future of the Web”, especially by stock market investors.[10]

In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[11] After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999.[12] The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.[13]

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[14] In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[1] The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed.[1] Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and click-throughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click.[1] This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing).[15][16][17] While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.[1]

Google’s declared code of conduct is “Don’t be evil“, a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka “red herring” or “S-1″) for their IPO, noting, “We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.”

The Google site often includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and anniversaries.[18] Known as “Google Doodles”, most have been drawn by Google’s international webmaster, Dennis Hwang.[19] Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but the font design may also mimic a fictional or humorous language such as Star Trek Klingon and Leet.[20] The logo is also notorious among web users for April Fool’s Day tie-ins and jokes about the company.

5-Apple- Although it in itself is not a company, Apple has influenced the website through it’s products such as the Iphone, Macbook Pro, Macbook, Ipod Touch, Ipod Nano, and much more. It has also influenced the internet with it’s unique web design, and simplicity it brings to the internet. The Apple website is one of the most vibrantly designs website I’ve seen, and the speed, and support is just remarkable. Apple has also been the cause for new websites such as Mac Rumors which is a website that brings information all related to Apple. Apple has also brought competition into their hemisphere. With Google now releasing their Android Phone, Apple now has competition with their Iphone, further forcing them to create revolutionary products. Apple has also brought controversy about the health of their CEO Steve Jobs. Although this isn’t directly related to their website it has brought attention to the company. Apple has also been a supporter of product Red. Product Red is a charity dedicated to saving lives in unfortunate companies such as Africa and Madagascar. All of this is why Apple has become one of the major powerhouse within the Internet community.

Well I hope i’ve made my point about all these companies. There are plenty more influential websites throughout the internet, but these 5 just seemed to stick out in my mind. All of these companies have generated millions of dollars not just to themselves but to others as well. They have brought the world together through communication, news, search, and their products.

If you have any more influential websites that you think have influenced the internet whether in a positive way, or a negative way please feel free to email me by clicking here. Or leave a comment below. I love hearing what you guys think the latest and greatest is within the technology community whether it’s hardware, software, or even the internet. I also have a Twitter account, and i follow all people that follow me.

Thanks.