The Year in Digital

It's that time of the year when we're forced to face the fact that the year's whizzed by and we can't actually remember what on earth happened. So at Teamspirit we thought we'd take you back through the year's biggest digital events. It's undoubtedly been the year that social media/communications/ideas/interactions or whatever you prefer to call them have been on the tip of everyone's tongue. Facebook passed 350 million users, there are now 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, and of course Twitter has been this year's biggest story, a fact verified when it was officially confirmed as 'Top word of the Year'.

However there were plenty of other stories breaking. There have been huge moves in the search arena with Microsoft launching Bing, Yahoo! seemingly giving up and jumping in with Bing and Google trying to take over the world and all the while real-time search partnerships being announced by pretty much everyone along the way. It still wasn't quite the year of mobile despite the fact that HTC's, iPhone's, N97's and Palm Pre's all faced off against each other.

It wasn’t all good news either. Geocities finally closed down, Microsoft lost a ton of staff, Myspace had to completely reinvent itself and E-bay's profits fell hugely as the recession bit. And all of this against a backdrop of the Digital Britain report in which the government attempted to encapsulate Britain's approach to Digital over the coming years.

So all in all a real rollercoaster and here it all is, in links

January 2009







One billion unique users on the Internet

February 2009






Facebook changes terms of service creating big frustration with user community
Speculation about Twitter charging brands for commercial use

March 2009







Many e-mail campaigns alienate customers
Facebook beats Google in steering niche traffic
Google Releases Behavioural Advertising
Social Networks Pass Email in Usage

April 2009








Over 60 percent of people who sign up for Twitter do not return to using it the following month
Brand Mentions Preferred over Ads
Google releases Google Me
Internet surveys combined with traditional research methods are becoming the norm

May 2009







Microsoft announces Bing.com
Google reannounces Google Wave
Online Video Usage Up 53 Percent in ’09
Forrester Predicts Huge Growth for Social Media Marketing


June 2009








Facebook beats Myspace traffic in the US
Time spent on social networks doubles in a year
Facebook user names for user profiles and Facebook pages
The government releases the Digital Britain Report
iPhone release the 3GS against the Nokia N97

July 2009








Social media use soars among b-to-b marketers
Microsoft now powers Yahoo! search
Google announces their own operating system: Google Chrome OS
Facebook gives users more control over their status updates

August 2009








Google Caffeine: Google’s New Search Engine Index is unveiled
Facebook announces real-time search
Twitter announces an API to help control, standardise and mainstream retweeting
Facebook up their challenge to Google with the purchase of Friendfeed

September 2009







Twitter gets an (unofficial) app store
Brands become mainstream on Twitter- mentioned in 1 in 5 Tweets
Companies increasing spend in web 2.0 technologies
Google releases Sidewiki

October 2009








Geocities goes out of business
Bing announces Tweets to appear in search results
Technorati release their State of the blogosphere
YouTube is routinely serving more than a billion video views per day
Yahoo stops using meta keywords for search

November 2009








Linkedin and Twitter integrate
Twitter creates Twitter Lists
Salesforce.com announces Chatter, social computing for enterprise companies

December 2009








Twitter Starts Testing Features for Businesses
MySpace and Facebook sign real-time search deals with Google
Facebook Pushes People to Go Public
Time spent on Facebook by 18-24 year olds declines
Google Announces New Offerings in Real-Time, Mobile and Social Search
Morgan Stanley state 'Mobile Internet Market Will Be Twice The Size of Desktop Internet'