Looking back at the Web in 2009

Add newsletters@cnet.online.com to your address book to ensure CNET newsletters reach your inbox.

	View online  | Share on Facebook	January 9, 2010

	2009: The year of the social network Welcome to 2010. We're already a week into what's turning out to be an exciting new year for the Web. But it's worth taking a look at all the things that happened last year to get a sense of where we're going in the months to come. 2009 was, in many ways, a big year for social networks. Facebook and Twitter continued to change how information on the Web is shared, and where it's shared from. The two also ballooned with users, Facebook especially, which started out the year with 150 million users, and finished up with 350 million. Read more  Our five favorite redesigns of 2009  Web sites that shuttered in 2009  The 10 best new Firefox add-ons of 2009 Josh Lowensohn Associate Editor, Webware.com New on Webware.com Google launches local search for mobile Posted by Caroline McCarthy The geo craze has come to Google search: Open up a Google.com window in the browser of an iPhone or Android cell phone and you'll now have the option to click a "Near me now" option to bring up search results close to your immediate location. The new feature could have Yelp shaking in its boots...  Read more  Firefox 3.5.7 fix could 'goose' browser upgrades Posted by Stephen Shankland This week Mozilla released Firefox 3.5.7 and 3.0.17 to fix a common crash problem and the lack of a prominent suggestion to upgrade. Firefox is supposed to prominently tell people when a major upgrade is available, but Mozilla was puzzled by recent data suggesting that fewer-than-expected people actually installed the new version.  Read more  Vimeo: 1080p video coming by end of the month Posted by Josh Lowensohn New York-based video service Vimeo announced this week that it will roll out 1080p video (also known as "full HD") to its members by the end of this month. In order to upload 1080p clips, users will have to be members of Vimeo's paid Plus service, which costs $10 a month, or $60 a year. Though anyone can view a 1080p video regardless of whether they're a free or paid Plus user.  Read more  Facebook cuts off Suicide Machine access Posted by Rafe Needleman If one of your resolutions for this year was to prune your online activity back to a reasonable level, you might have been excited to learn of the new service called the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. The site, which launched in late December, lets you "sign out forever" from the social-networking services Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace.  Read more  Now you can play Foursquare anywhere Posted by Caroline McCarthy Attention, suburbanites: You, too, can be the mayor of your local Home Depot. That's because New York-based mobile location-sharing service Foursquare has made a subtle but big improvement. It's no longer restricted to a list of a few dozen cities in North America and Europe, which means that people anywhere in the world can use their mobile phones to "check in" through the service.  Read more  Webware: Mergers and acquisitions Zimbra buy to raise VMware's cloud ante Posted by Matt Asay Most entrepreneurs are lucky to sell one start-up. A chosen few manage to repeat the feat, building and selling two or more businesses. The folks at Zimbra have outdone them all, selling the same company...twice. As Kara Swisher of All Things Digital reports, VMware is expected to soon announce the acquisition of open-source messaging company Zimbra from Yahoo. My own sources at VMware confirm the deal.  Read more  Seesmic buying Ping.fm social update service Posted by Rafe Needleman Seesmic, which makes Twitter and Facebook access apps, is buying Ping.fm, a service for updating multiple social services at the same time. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Ping co-founders Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough are joining Seesmic and will begin work on integrating their service into the Seesmic clients, said Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur.  Read more  More Webware  Webware RSS feed  The Webware 100  About Webware.com
	Copyright 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. CBS Interactive, 235 Second Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, U.S.A.