Cool posts for 2007.

I'm on holiday. Don't have the time (har har) or inclination to sum up 2007. When everyone else is doing it so nicely. :)

Here are some cool posts I've read. 2007 in summary.

Best of ProBlogger

As 2007 draws to an end I took a few hours earlier in the week to look back over the archives of this blog and to do an annual review. I do this every year, mostly for my own purposes, but last year also shared some highlights with readers so thought I’d do so again.

The year was a big one. On a personal front we moved house (bought/built and sold houses) and traveled in the US for a month as a family (as well as survived becoming parents of a toddler). In a business sense it’s also been massive with considerable growth in this blog and DPS (which has grown considerably faster than ProBlogger), b5 growing incredibly, redesigning ProBlogger and some wonderful opportunities to travel, write, speak etc coming my way.

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Not Just Kid Stuff: Social Nets Struggle and Thrive in 2007

High drama enveloped social networking companies during 2007 as they pursued significant opportunities and stumbled over mighty obstacles.

As the year draws to a close, many crucial questions about the good and the bad of social networks remain unanswered, with the market in a fascinating state of flux.

Will social networking sites fulfill their potential to become major and vibrant advertising vehicles? Or will they fall short if privacy concerns about intrusive and stealthy ad tracking drive users away, and if illegal and vulgar content scares off advertisers?

Another cliffhanger that 2007 leaves us with: Will social networking sites displace portals and search engines as users' preferred Web hubs? Or will users sour on the social network experience if they feel vulnerable to criminals and stalkers at these sites?

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Read/Write/Web - The Year in RSS

This past year was a big one for RSS. RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, was the backbone of all early developments in the new era of the internet. It made blogs readable, podcasts subscribable, wikis trackable and search persistent. While explicit, knowing adoption of RSS is often said to be dismal ("it's too complicated, it's just more info overload" etc.) - I think we may be underestimating the extent of adoption. Here's my list of highlights from 2007, what's yours?

Three years after a 2004 Pew study found that 1 out of 20 people online said they used an RSS aggregator to read content online (in 2004!) - RSS was in 2007 the 3rd most searched for "what is" term on Google all year. Only "love" and "autism" were looked up more and RSS beat out both "emo" and "HPV."

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