The American Dialect Society (ADS) has named google – the verb – as its Word of the Decade. According to the ADS, the verb google (meaning to “search the Internet”) won out over blog, which, according to Grant Barrett, the chair of the ADS’s New Word Committee, “just sounds ugly.” Tweet was named the top word of the year for 2009. Fail – “a noun or interjection used when something is egregiously unsuccessful” – was 2009’s most useful word. Sponsor Definitions: Tweet : noun , a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message. Google : Verb meaning “to search the Internet.” Generic form of the trademarked “Google,” the world’s dominant Internet search engine. Fail : A noun or interjection used when something is egregiously unsuccessful. Usually written as “FAIL!” The ADS’s members include linguists, grammarians, etymologists, writers, editors and university students. The ADS was founded in 1889. Twitter and other social networks have clearly captured the imagination of many language societies. Twitter was the top word of in the Global Language Monitor ’s survey, and unfriend was the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2009 Word of the year. To represent the 1990s, the ADS picked Web as the top word of the decade. Do You Agree? What do you think? Do you think google deserves to be the one word that represents the last decade? Or is this just another example of how Google is succeeding in its slow takeover of our culture? Discuss

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Google: The Word of the Decade

Yahoo! announced plans today at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to spread its tentacles deeper into the Internet-connected TV market, inking new deals with TV, media player and processor manufacturers, as well as releasing its widget development kit and signing on with new content partners. When we looked at the rebirth of the Web TV last year, we had one major reservation – would people really buy a new TV just for the widgets? “Probably not,” we said. This year, Yahoo! is bringing the Internet into our other devices, so we don’t have to. Sponsor Yahoo! is stepping it up in the Internet-connected TV game, which is an area we saw boom at last year’s CES. This year we’re seeing much of the same . Skype announced its entrance into the Internet-connected TV market on Tuesday, while Samsung announced today that it will offer the Napster widget on its TVs. According to the press release, new deals with MIPS, Sigma Designs and ViewSonic will enable Yahoo! Widgets to be embedded not only in Internet-connected TVs, but in a number of other devices, such as media players, “Blu-ray players, network players, AV receivers, and cable/IPTV set-top boxes.” This is a big move because, while we may not want to replace our widescreen TV, we might be in the market for a Blu-ray player. Today’s announcement also highlighted deals with a number of new content providers, including Showtime, CNBC, Napster, The Weather Channel and more. But do we really need The Weather Channel widget when we can have just The Weather Channel, itself? Maybe. Maybe not. But the company’s release of its widget development kit to the general public might open the doors to some interesting new widgets. Cory Pforzheimer, a spokesperson for Yahoo!, told us earlier today that keeping the WDK private was an issue of working together with TV manufacturers and software developers. “TV manufacturers weren’t really used to updating after they sent out their units. There’s no such thing as a beta on a TV,” he said. “The last thing Samsung wants is calls when someone’s Facebook widget doesn’t work.” The combination of affordability and potential for innovation here could be just enough to bring the Web back to the TV through the side door. Discuss

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Yahoo! Brings the Web to Blu-Ray

“2009 was the year of Social Media” according to Buzz Study , the blog that keeps tabs on Infegy’s Social Radar . They’re not speaking from experience, they’re speaking from what they’ve seen in the billions of “blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts” the service has collected over the past two years. While the service normally provides more complex information around a certain brand, as in its tracking of the Domino’s Pizza PR disaster this past September , the top 50 list takes an easier approach: how many unique sources mentioned a brand over the past year. So what brand was the talk of the town in 2009? Sponsor Why, Twitter , of course. Google , which had previously held the number one spot, took second prize and Facebook jumped up six spots to round out the top three. While you can take a look at the full list of 50 top brands yourself, Buzz Study had this to say about the results: The list certainly shows that 2009 was the year of Social Media. Twitter moved ahead of Google to take the number 1 spot, while Facebook and MySpace made significant leaps over big brands as well. Most video game related brands were down this year as well, including Sony, Wii, Xbox, and Nintendo. It also appears TV brands all jumped this year including Disney, MTV, Fox, BBC, CNN, ESPN, and ABC. Blackberry, MTV and Starbucks were among the top movers in this years list, with each rising 17, 13 and 12 spots respectively. Canon, Samsung and Intel were the hardest hid on the list, dropping 17, 16 and 13 spots from last year. Discuss

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Top 50 Social Brands of 2009. Spoiler: You Know All of Them

Socialtext is saying it posted record quarter-over-quarter bookings growth in 2009, bolstered by social computing’s growing presence in the enterprise. It’s important to note that Socialext is reporting record bookings, not record revenues. The company does not disclose its actual revenues. It’s hard to to give Socilatext a lot of credit without knowing how its revenues fared. Further, the year ahead may be one of the most challenging for the company as competition is only getting more fierce. Sponsor Socialtext is one of the most established companies in the Enterprise 2.0 space, dating back to 2002 when it got its start as a wiki provider. In recent years, the company has diversified, adding a microblogging platform and collaborative tools such as SocialCalc , its collaborative spreadsheet application. Socialtext said it now has 6,500 customers, compared to 4,000 in 2008. The company also said it set a record for the number of companies that renewed contracts. Jive Software may be one of the biggest competitors for Socialtext. Microsoft will be pushing hard into the enterprise market this year with Sharepoint 2010. Google, Cisco, IBM and a host of new players are also fighting for the same piece of the pie. But, overall, the Soclaltext news is more real proof that social computing did get the attention of the enterprise in 2009, and that the year ahead should be another record year for the overall market. Discuss

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Socialtext Gets The Bookings But The Year Ahead Will Be Tough

Socialtext is saying it posted record quarter-over-quarter bookings growth in 2009, bolstered by social computing’s growing presence in the enterprise. It’s important to note that Socialext is reporting record bookings, not record revenues. The company does not disclose its actual revenues. It’s hard to to give Socilatext a lot of credit without knowing how its revenues fared. Further, the year ahead may be one of the most challenging for the company as competition is only getting more fierce. Sponsor Socialtext is one of the most established companies in the Enterprise 2.0 space, dating back to 2002 when it got its start as a wiki provider. In recent years, the company has diversified, adding a microblogging platform and collaborative tools such as SocialCalc , its collaborative spreadsheet application. Socialtext said it now has 6,500 customers, compared to 4,000 in 2008. The company also said it set a record for the number of companies that renewed contracts. Jive Software may be one of the biggest competitors for Socialtext. Microsoft will be pushing hard into the enterprise market this year with Sharepoint 2010. Google, Cisco, IBM and a host of new players are also fighting for the same piece of the pie. But, overall, the Soclaltext news is more real proof that social computing did get the attention of the enterprise in 2009, and that the year ahead should be another record year for the overall market. Discuss

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Socialtext Gets The Bookings But The Year Ahead Will Be Tough

Hype Machine , the smart, long-running MP3 blog aggregator, has posted its annual collection of the most-blogged-about albums, songs and musical artists of the year . Once again, the project is a pleasure to consume and will unfold throughout the month of January. Top albums 50 through 41 , Mumford and Sons through Monsters of Folk, are available now in full for streaming. The album collection combines weighted rankings – based on submitted top 10 lists from 550 MP3 blogs – with a widget from Grooveshark to listen to the album, and a Creative Commons photo of each band. It’s quite nice. The newest addition to the project is unusually low-tech; it’s artist renditions of the top 50 musical artists of the year . Sponsor Last year’s Zeitgeist combined different technology to present the top albums and is still available as a list . It’s not as easy to listen to, though, perhaps because it was powered by Imeem, which MySpace bought and made a tragic mess of last month . This year’s Hype Machine Zeitgeist is another example of the awesome potential of free online music combined with smart technology and excellent design. Check it out and be inspired. Is this era the end of the music industry? It sure doesn’t need to be. Discuss

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The 50 Most-Blogged Albums of 2009, Streaming Free: HypeMachine Zeitgeist Out Now

Hype Machine , the smart, long-running MP3 blog aggregator, has posted its annual collection of the most-blogged-about albums, songs and musical artists of the year . Once again, the project is a pleasure to consume and will unfold throughout the month of January. Top albums 50 through 41 , Mumford and Sons through Monsters of Folk, are available now in full for streaming. The album collection combines weighted rankings – based on submitted top 10 lists from 550 MP3 blogs – with a widget from Grooveshark to listen to the album, and a Creative Commons photo of each band. It’s quite nice. The newest addition to the project is unusually low-tech; it’s artist renditions of the top 50 musical artists of the year . Sponsor Last year’s Zeitgeist combined different technology to present the top albums and is still available as a list . It’s not as easy to listen to, though, perhaps because it was powered by Imeem, which MySpace bought and made a tragic mess of last month . This year’s Hype Machine Zeitgeist is another example of the awesome potential of free online music combined with smart technology and excellent design. Check it out and be inspired. Is this era the end of the music industry? It sure doesn’t need to be. Discuss

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The 50 Most-Blogged Albums of 2009, Streaming Free: HypeMachine Zeitgeist Out Now