Time Magazine has released their “50 Best Websites of 2009” list. After reading through the list, it’s clear that these sites exemplify the primary activities performed in today’s online world – sharing, learning and organizing. I’ve segmented the top 20 sites into these categories below.  However, I realized that a fourth segment is starting to emerge - sites that are replacing “old” forms of media. These sites represent a shift in behavior and provide online versions of activities that have been around for years (tv entertainment, shopping, phone calls, etc).

These online behaviors don’t really seem to be a huge surprise. We’ve all read about online holiday shopping being through the roof,  heard the news media talk on-and-on about Twitter, and watched real-time election coverage on Youtube and Facebook.  So what I find most interesting is that ....65% of these sites were NOT AROUND 5 YEARS AGO (I added some years below if you are interested). 

The rapid growth of technology coupled with the adoption by the consumers….that’s the amazing part.  Broadband has certainly played a huge part in this growth. Without a high-speed connection, sharing a video would be pretty much out of the question. To put things in perspective, take a look at this collection of screenshots from September 11, 2001. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but sites like CNN and MSNBC look archaic. The average American is just adopting a more digital lifestyle in general. It’s become mainstream which is feeding the technology growth and vice versa (a nice happy circle of life). Nytimes did a good job covering this topic a few weeks ago when they summarized Forrester’s annual update on consumers and technology.

Time's Top 20 of 2009 (full list in chronological order can be found on Time.com)

SHARING – Consumer generated content (photos, video, thoughts/text) broadcasted out or consumed by the masses as the ultimate reality entertainment.

• Flickr – Feb 2004
• YouTube – Feb 2005
• Vimeo – Nov 2004
• Twitter – April 2007

LEARNING - Information portals. Tools that make information available and searchable online.

• Google – Sept 1997
• Wolfram|Alpha – May 2009
• Academic Earth – March 2009
• California Coastline – Oct 2002

ORGANIZING - Bookmarks, Group blogs, aggregators – Sites that help consumers organize and filter the information on the web as they please. Customizable crowd sourcing per se.

• Delicious – March 2005
• Metafilter – Nov 2004
• popurls – March 2006
• Boing Boing – Jan 2000

REPLACING OLD MEDIA/BEHAVIORS -  Tv online, reservations online, phone calls online, classifieds online, shopping online, travel agents online, etc.

• Hulu – March 2008
• Fora TV - 2005
• OpenTable - 1999
• Skype – Aug 2003
• Shop Goodwill - 2009
• Amazon - 1995
• Kayak – Jan 2005
• Craiglook – March 2009 **Really smart…Mashes Yahoo Pipes and Google Maps into an RSS browser for Craigslist.
   

#40 on the list gets my honorable mention - Mint.com.  It’s the ultimate financial planning tool. It is linked in with online resources to keep your assets (and debts) up to date and generates pretty charts for you to analyze. Did I mention it’s free? Definitely worth checking out. Since they have  access to everyone’s financial details, they’ve been publishing some  interesting stats lately too. Such as this little widget - Mint Map: America’s Most Frugal Cities

Segmentation (email and mobile marketing segmentation) is the practice of organizing and tweaking both the delivery and message of your communications based upon your various audiences' likeliness to respond favorably to it. Accordingly, the opposite of segmentation is blasting all of your leads, clients, major clients, friends, family, and any stray animals that may have stumbled into your sign-up forms with the fire hose of potentially irrelevant calls to action. Studies have shown that segmented campaigns yield better open and click rates and, generally, a correctly segmented campaign will feed your subscribers info they want to receive and are therefore more likely to act upon (favorably). So, yes, if you can segment you definitely should!

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