And the webware goes to…
Cnet’s webware was running the best 100 web 2.0 site contest and had listed many web based applications under various categories and asked the people to vote for the best ones. Finally, the list is out and the Top web 2.0 applications, which were chosen by you are as follows :
1. Browsing : And the winner is Firefox! There was never a doubt that it will be a winner, in this section.
2. Communications : And the winner is GMail! Again, no wonder that GMail was the winner. Skype was placed on 4th number, I would have loved to see it in the top three. It actually deserves that no. 1 spot too.
3. Community : And the winner is Gaia! Believe me never heard of it. I though Myspace, Bebo would have swept the no. 1 place but I think Myspace or Bebo still don’t have the community which can vote for them. Congratulations to Gaia for proving that having a strong community is more important in winning contests :D
4. Data : And the Winner is Google! No comments!
5. Entertainment : And the winner is Stardoll! Again, I’ve heard of it for the first time. But all the kids will actually love the concept and will be able to make new friends using this impressive service.
6. Media : And the winner is YouTube! I think you know it better, so you comment!
7. Mobile : And the winner is GMail Mobile Application! No wonder, after all GMail seems to be the most liked application in communications section.
8. Productivity and commerce : And the winner is Ebay! Again, there was never a doubt that people love to do the business on Ebay and it will be the winner for sure.
9. Publishing : And the winner is Wordpress! After all, I use it, you use it and millions of others use it! It had to be the winner. I firmly believe that, it is the best blog platform available till this date.
10. Reference : And the winner is WikiPedia! This was always on the cards. WikiPedia is one of the greatest source of knowledge and people love it and it truly deserves this award!
With this competition, there are various things which gets clear and lots of them which are still unclear and lets look at both the things :
Things which get clear : Building community is really important because they can get you awards like these. Well, Gaia is one such example as it is not at all near in popularity as compared to MySpace or Bebo but it still won the award because, it is a community of online gamers and were able to build a good community, which must have voted for them to bring them ahead of Myspace and Bebo, in spite of the fact that they’ve got massive user base!
Branding is another factor which has shown its influence in this contest. For e.g. Google which is world’s no. 1 brand was able to place 13 applications in the list of 100 applications and thats really impressive!
Things which remain unclear : Now, in this contest around 489,467 votes were casted and the results were based on those votes but can we actually trust only on these votes when we know that this figure is nothing in terms of actual internet users ? What do you think, can we take this list as the decision of the complete internet users ?
