Google Buzz is a new social networking service launched by Google at the beginning of February. Google Buzz links directly with Gmail, allowing users to share updates, photos, videos and more. This allows users to start conversations about the things they find interesting.

The main issue users initially had with Google Buzz was the lack of opportunity to opt in or out of this new service. In fact, Google Buzz was automatically rolled out to 170 million Gmail users, without anyone being given the option to ‘opt in’. Many users saw this as an invasion of privacy, as there wasn’t a notification to inform users of the introduction of Buzz, giving them the option to refrain from sharing personal information.

With the original release of Buzz, some users found the people they emailed the most through Gmail had been published online. It has since been reported by TechCrunch that private email addresses can be exposed via the service as well.

Google have been faced with the difficult conundrum of having to apologise to users and back-track, reorganising the site so that users have the option to disable Buzz and block the users who they don’t want to be followed by. With all these changes now in place, the question is: will they be enough to restore users' faith in Gmail?

Google isn't the only one with privacy problems...

Facebook has been dealing with privacy issues since it began. The site has been continuously updating its privacy options to try and reduce the concern users have, while still trying to have strong relationships with Google and Bing. But, through changes in their privacy settings, Facebook has encouraged users to display all information with everyone.

Details published while settings are set to ‘everyone’ are removed from the user’s profile when the settings have been set back to 'reduced disclosure'. However, that data will have been sent out for the entire world to see, and what has been done with that data is unknown to the user.

Is Facebook really giving more control to the user?

Although users are led to believe that the new privacy settings are to improve personal privacy, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) took a closer look at the changes, to figure out if this really was the case, with the conclusion that the new privacy settings were clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before. Even worse - the changes actually reduced the amount of control that users had over their personal data.

With the new Facebook privacy settings comes the ability to control who sees which post. The settings can be controlled so that only business colleagues see a status update, or only friends can see a personal photo. But do these changes actually rebuild users’ confidence that their personal information is safe on Facebook?

Controversies over Facebook’s privacy settings have caused many users to pay attention to their settings and ensure that only the information they want to share is publicly available. The main reason Facebook wants to publicise personal information and status updates is so that they can compete with Twitter with live streaming of updates. However, the nature of Facebook is more private, so this could lead to the types of membership losses previously experienced by Myspace and Friendster.

Gmail and 'email processing'

Google's Gmail is the only email provider that processes emails. This is done to allow targeted adverts. Google ensure that the email is never read by another human being other than the receiver. However, some users believe that the practice of ‘processing’ emails goes beyond what is acceptable.

Further to Gmail issues and Buzz problems, Google has come under criticism for its Street View, with its ability for people to be seen in places they were not expected. This led to many issues of privacy, with the original photos being displayed with people’s faces being shown while being arrested or publicly urinating. Most of these issues have been dealt with now by faces being blurred.

This begs the question - do online providers release new initiatives before really thinking the privacy issues that they will face, or do they consider the potential of a new medium over an individual’s privacy?

How will content providers ever align their goals with those of Google? First Click Free is an attempt to do so through a compromise between the two sides.

For all those not yet acquainted with the process, here is a quick run-down of Google’s ‘First Click Free’ strategy, designed to protect subscription-only content while simultaneously making it accessible via Google’s search results.

The problem

Online news sites have often complained that users can circumvent their subscription pages and gain free access to their premium content by finding the page in Google’s search results. Every time Google indexes a page it becomes available to searchers, so users can often click directly from the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) to the article and get to read it for free.

The solution

Google’s idea is to limit how much of that premium content a user can view. A user would search for a news story, click on the link to the site and then would be restricted to viewing up to 5 pages within that site before being redirected to a subscription page. That way, Google can maintain its index, show relevant results to its users and still allow online publishers a degree of control over their content... In theory.

News sites can already protect their content

Online publishers can already prevent Google from indexing pages that they do not want to appear in the Google index, or the index of any search engine for that matter. Entering two lines of code into a page makes it impossible for users to gain access to these pages without subscribing.

So why do news sites not want to do this? The answer lies in Google’s webmaster guidelines, which states that a site cannot ‘cloak’ its pages.

The Best of Both Worlds

Ideally, online publishers would like all their pages to appear in Google’s SERPS, but have users redirected straight away to a subscription page. However, in order to do this they would have to submit one version of the page to the Google index and then serve up another page (the subscription page) when a user clicks through. This is known as ‘cloaking’ and Google doesn’t like it.

Google does not want pages to be cloaked, as users would find their search results to be of less use unless they were prepared to subscribe to every site that they were interested in. Google wants users to be able to click through from the search results and find the page they expected to see.

Google’s ‘First Click Free’ appears to be an attempt to find a middle ground between these two opposing goals. The sites can allow users to click through unimpeded, satisfying Google, and then click around that site’s premium content 5 times before eventually being redirected to a payment page, satisfying the publisher.

Will This Save Online Publishers?

Whether this will work in practice remains to be seen. It may be that the average user will not need to view more than a couple of pages before having their thirst for information quenched.  Furthermore, as long as similar content can be found on free sites, such as the BBC, it may not be enough to generate the income that publishers desperately need.

This isn’t the end of the ‘Should Users Pay for Online News’ debate, so watch this space!

With Twitter seemingly taking over the world (I believe it started by taking control of Stephen Fry’s mind), Facebook now accounting for a quarter of all worldwide page views; and a fifth of all Internet users now sharing status updates, it was only a matter of time before the search engines realised they needed to take notice of social media.

Indeed, it would be crazy to ignore the vast amount of regularly updated user information available through social interactions. Looking for a takeaway? Your mate’s review of the Chinese around the corner is always going to hold more weight than a stranger’s review from 2002.

Bing's deals with Facebook and Twitter

It’s this up-to-date nature of Facebook and Twitter that has got Bing’s attention. They’ve just independently struck deals with Facebook and Twitter to incorporate real-time status updates into their SERPs. Unlike Twitter (where status updates are public for anyone to see), not all Facebook updates will be available in the results, due to users’ privacy settings. However, this strategic manoeuvre will still deliver an unfamiliar feeling to rival Google, who have been outplayed for once.

How Google are integrating social media results

Google, having struck a deal with Twitter hours after Microsoft, are trying to integrate social in a slightly different way. Rather than taking Microsoft’s worldwide approach, Google Labs are to offer an opt-in service, where one you have supplied your social network information, your friends’ views are incorporated into search results. Because you’re supplying log-ins, in comparison to Bing, you’re likely to get more information.

What’s that you say? Doesn’t this pose an issue of privacy? Of course – Google will now know even more about you! But before you get all agitated, remember it’s an opt-in service.

What does this mean for businesses?

Integrating social into search engines will mean companies will now have to adopt new and different strategies to market themselves. It will also mean that Twitter will be ignored by less and less people.

With Google and Bing now bringing in real-time information on searches, it will be very interesting to see how everyone is affected. An interesting view on the travel industry has been talked about by tnooz.com.

Yahoo, on the other hand, are taking no steps towards social integration, perhaps due to the impending deal with Bing…

The pending Microsoft / Yahoo deal is big news for search. It will make Microsoft the 2^nd largest company in the world, and a much stronger contender against Google.

What’s the deal?

In the 10-year deal, Microsoft’s Bing, which was launched just two months ago and is already gaining market share, will power search queries on Yahoo’s sites. Yahoo’s sales force will be responsible for selling premium search ads to big buyers for both companies.

Microsoft will initially pay Yahoo 88% of the search revenue generated through Yahoo’s sites – at least for the first 5 years. However, it will be another 2 and a half years before we see it go into effect – the companies still have to go through antitrust and privacy inspections.

The deal may involve redundancies on Yahoo’s side, despite Microsoft being required to hire at least 400 Yahoo engineers and pay them market-competitive compensation packages.

Yahoo says...

According to Yahoo’s website, they estimate the deal will ‘boost its annual operating income by about $500 million and yield capital expenditure savings of $200 million’. Yahoo also expects the deal to boost annual operating cash flow by about $275 million.

However, due to a lack of an anticipated upfront payment from Microsoft, initial share prices fell for Yahoo – despite analysts speculating that the partnership is a good deal, and perhaps the only way that the two companies, struggling to battle Google, can finally start gaining ground on the search giant.

There are, of course, limits to the deal. Yahoo has termination clauses involved if certain revenues fall below specific percentages; and the deal doesn’t include any other of the companies web properties such as instant messaging, email or display advertising.

Is this good news for search?

Here at atom42, we agree with Matt Cutts, who said that competition within the search landscape can only be a good thing. It is likely to help push both Microhoo and Google to provide better results and more helpful search features in the future.

A few years ago, Google kidnapped all their best engineers and smuggled them into a little room filled with squillions of emails, tweets, live updates, events, virtual friends, requests, forums, searches, blogs, groups, irritating quizzes, fans, pages and rss feeds, along with some giant vats of Red Bull.

Google then instructed those engineers to think in terms of 'what would email look like if we invented it today?', and build a tool so mind-bogglingly new and gadgety that it would throw all other social mediums out of the water in one fail swoop.

Now those engineers have re-emerged - exhausted, relieved and with a massive sugar-hangover - to reveal their all-encompassing communication solution: Google Wave.

What is ‘Google Wave’?

Google Wave is the name of their creation. The ‘wave’ itself is also an aspect of that creation. As one commentator put it, Google Wave is 'like email on crack'. The best way to describe it is to explain how you use it. You create a wave and add people to it. All the people you’ve added are then able to share text, pictures, gadgets and feeds from other places on the internet on the same wave page you created.

The moment you change something, all the other people on the wave can see that it has been changed. You can also see how your particular wave evolved from start to finish with Google Wave’s ‘playback’ option. The same goes for Google Wave’s integrated games.

When you create a message for your wave, for instance an invite to an event, all the people on your wave can go in and edit or add to that same message in real-time, rather than having to create their own, separate responses as you would do in an email or on Facebook. Talking about Facebook, you can receive updates (or ‘waves’ of updates) from Facebook and Twitter in your Google Wave inbox, making it a more integrated social system.

An email revolution could be afoot...

Essentially, this is an exciting new kind of email which allows people to communicate and work together simultaneously on a live email/conversation document with richly formatted text, videos, maps, photos, games and more, and it might be about to revolutionise email.

Not content with their search engine, mobile phone, web browser and Android mobile operating system, Google have now turned their efforts to a new project: Chrome OS.

Google will be looking to create a ‘new windowing system’ based around their web browser Chrome. They are initially targeting netbooks but, unlike Android, Chrome OS will work on desktop computers – with the real benefits reaped by users who spend most of their time on the Internet.

What does Google say about Chrome OS?

According to the Google Blog, the aims of Chrome OS will include the key elements of speed, simplicity and security, which translate to going from computer start up to web browsing in a matter of seconds and ruling out the possibility of viruses and malware by redesigning the security architecture.

More technically, the operating system will be open source and based upon the Linux Kernel similar to other open source operating systems available at the moment, such as Ubuntu. Google have already involved the open source community – which promises to open up a whole host of creative input, and the possibility of a really unique and universal operating system.

What impact will it have?

This could have a big impact in the operating system market. Microsoft, the dominant force with Windows for many years, may now see another serious competitor. And after the flop of Vista, users could well be looking for something more reliable and a change from the usual Microsoft routine.

There’s some mixed feedback across online forums regarding Google’s new offering, with many questioning whether Google knowing more information about us is a good thing. Cloud computing also comes into the equation, and whether users will be happy to have their files stored online.

Coming soon...

Chrome OS will probably be available in the second half of 2010 - we’re excited to see what Google create - and to see the effect it has on Microsoft. One thing is for certain: Google certainly have a mountain to climb if they wish to wrestle users away from Windows.

For anyone looking for a simple method of storing and organizing internet research, there is an interesting new tool available. Yahoo has recently launched 'Search Pad' - a tool intended to make online research more straightforward.

Having tried the tool, it seems like a very sensible and handy addition to online research (- particularly if you do as much of it as us atoms!) Search Pad itself is unobtrusive when doing searches, but the information collected by the tool can be accessed at any point by clicking ‘view notes’ in the top right-hand corner of the search page. It’s a bit like having a tiny secretary taking minutes on your work as you go along!

Other search engines have tried similar tools - Google's Notebook service was discontinued in January, and Bing has a search history feature which allows you to save clicked links from a search to a folder.

How Search Pad works

The difference with Yahoo Search Pad is that it presents itself automatically as part of the searching process. Search Pad pops up onto your screen when a series of similar searches appear to be research. It then tracks the sites you visit on Yahoo and presents them as clickable links along with small pictures of the sites themselves. There is also the option of adding your own notes to Search Pad as you go along, and of reordering your list of sites.

Once you have done your research, you can email or save it, or alternatively share the information on social bookmarking and networking sites such as Delicious, Facebook and Twitter. No big deal, vassever.

Is it enough to tear us away from Google? Erm...

Getting the information you’re looking from search engines is becoming increasingly complex, as the sheer mass of content keeps growing and growing. How can you be expected to trawl through all that information, and how do you know which to trust?

Google has answer to the dilemma of acquiring more structured search results is Google Squared, which displays results to users in a spreadsheet format, and rivals the new search provider, Wolfram Alpha.

In fact, while Wolfram’s databases currently store only 10 terabytes of information, a tiny fraction of what is on the Web, Google Squared searches the whole web.

How does it work?

Google Squared allows data to be displayed in a table format by searching large amounts of unstructured data to produce a simplistic structured display. It tries to find the relevant facts concerning your search and display them all on one table of columns and rows.

The columns and rows of information can be removed or added to until all the information you require is displayed. For example, if you search for ‘small dogs’ it will bring up name, image, description, weight, height and country of origin for a range of different breeds. But you could add a column for, say, colour, or a row for a different type of dog, like Beagle, and that will be added to the table.

Although in experimental stages, and often inaccurate, the aim of Google Squared is clear; to find an easy way for users to get precise information with a minimal amount of search.

As you may have noticed, ‘Bing’ has now gone live in the UK for all your search needs. Microsoft has a lot riding on this new search engine, having abandoned its previous effort, Live Search, itself a rebranding of MSN Search.

Maybe this confusion has contributed to why Microsoft has always been far behind Google in terms of search traffic, and this massive shortfall has enabled them to completely rebrand and start afresh. Bing needed to have enough new and different features to break the habits of its users, and it was going to take something special to lure them away.

Should you switch?

Bing does have some very interesting features. Microsoft believe it provides better search results because it is able to define the category of your search query far more accurately than Google, and therefore display more relevant results. It also provides a list of related categories on the left hand side that might interest you. This is certainly a useful feature.

It is likely that this ability to categorise searches will give advertisers more confidence in the keywords they are bidding on. This should help Microsoft improve their market share of paid advertising associated with search keywords, which is what generated the majority of Google’s $22.12 Billion revenue last year.

What we think of Bing...

The atoms have been testing Bing over the last week and we were rather impressed with the progress that’s been made. Some of the things we noticed about Bing:

• Bing enables you to see a lot more before choosing where to click. If you hover to the right of the search listings you get a summary of the website, a particularly useful tool.

• Image results seem to be good, and if you are searching for videos a little thumbnail appears that allows you to preview the video before clicking.

• Bing is also integrating with more applications and sites such as CIAO, the equivalent of Google Product Search. There are limitless possibilities in this area for Bing and I’m sure it won’t be too long before you see applications such as Outlook being integrated into the search engine.

• Probably the most important qualities of a new engine are the less tangible and technical aspects such as how user friendly it is, how easy on the eye it is and how quickly it produces results; performing magnificently on all three aspects.

What does the future hold for Bing?

We have to remember that Bing is still being tested in the UK and a full launch is only expected in 6 months’ time. Although there is room for improvement, there is still time, and an 'adequate' $100 million dollar budget for it to close the gap on Google.

Despite many users saying it’s gravitating towards the Google look, can you really blame them? It may not be as long as you think until you’re saying to your friend ‘I’ll just Bing that for you’...

We recently spoke of a few up-and-coming search engines, perhaps to rival Google’s dominance of search. Since then we’ve seen the emergence of a major new player in the market, Wolfram Alpha.

Here at atom42, we’re fascinated by new search engines and how their products can make searching easier and offer an alternative approach. Although many are hailing Wolfram Alpha as the Google killer, after a little use it becomes apparent that they do quite different jobs.

For example, if you wanted to find a pizza restaurant in Covent Garden, London, Google returns a list and a map of restaurants where you can get a pizza in the area. However, with the same query, Wolfram Alpha returns a message expressing that it ‘isn’t sure what to do with your input’.

Try a search simply for ‘pizza’, and you get the full nutritional breakdown of a pizza – which is much harder to find, and likely to be subjective, in Google (and at an alleged 1280 calories for a pepperoni pizza, it’s something I won’t be eating much of in the future!).

Wolfram Alpha has been developed by the mathematician Stephen Wolfram, famous for his software Mathematica. With this in mind, it’s not surprising his long term goal is ‘to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone’.

Wolfram Alpha contains 10+ trillion pieces of data, and boasts that it has the ‘power and flexibility to support ready extension’ – as well as promoting that the website is really only the start of this ambitious project.

It’s clear that Wolfram Alpha’s strength lies in statistics, and there’s plenty of exciting prospects for the future of the search engine – but if you want to find pizza restaurants in London we suggest you stick with Google - for now.

Will there ever be a worthy competitor to challenge Google’s dominance of search?

We have seen a few attempts to rock the boat, including Cuil, who claimed the size of their index would convert Google users.

But apparently, when it comes to search engines (as with so many other things), size doesn’t matter - it’s what you do with it that counts. It seems that Cuil just couldn’t provide users with a service rivalling Google's.

It is becoming apparent that in order to challenge Google, it may be a better idea to attack it side on, by doing search differently and being unique. Here’s our pick of search engines that offer an alternative approach to searching the web…

Aardvark
Ask a question and Aardvark sends it to your relevant friends as an instant message over MSN messenger, Google Talk and others.

Carrot2
Carrot2 is different because, after making a search, it offers categories that your search falls into, allowing you to refine and to quickly find what you’re looking for.

Kosmix
Search the web by a keyword or topic and get back multitudes of information gathered from across the web, including your normal Google results, a definition, video and audio results, and much more.

Powerset
Powerset searches Wikipedia, and while it displays the most relevant article to your search, it also cross references other articles in which your search term has been mentioned.

SiloBreaker
This news-hungry site compiles news articles and related information, including search trends, for your keywords.

Web.inSuggest
Enter a website, picture, or your del.icio.us bookmarks and get suggestions back of possible sites you might enjoy.

Have you searched for your house on Google Street View yet? The service is now available for 25 cities in the UK.

Just go to Google Maps and type in your post code. If your street has been included, a box will appear saying ‘street view’. Click on this to see your own street in magnificent detail!

Google Street View picks up everything...

You might be surprised by what you come across. Atomic’s eccentric neighbour is constantly cleaning her front step. And there she is on Google Street View, quite clearly cleaning her front step!

Other quirky/amusing things spotted by Google Street Viewers: a broken-down Google Street View camera car, Where’s Wally (he’s in Putney) and a car which has driven into a tree.

Privacy concerns

However, concerns have been raised that Google Street View could be infringing on privacy laws.  Google has reacted by saying that anyone could have their images removed if they asked.

Google's geospatial technologist, Ed Parsons, said: ‘If people do not want their homes featured we will take them down, or cut them out of the image.’

Google spokesperson Laura Scott added: ‘We want this to be a useful tool and it's people's right to have their image removed.’

PPC Search marketing is a huge, and still growing, area, which grew by almost a third between 2006 and 2008, according to IAB estimates. Almost 60% of all online ad spend is spent in PPC search – with the vast majority paying for smoothies and massage chairs at Google HQ.

While PPC search remains one of the most cost-effective ways to gain conversions, the landscape is changing as the discipline begins to mature. Historically, any PPC search campaign – even one which was poorly organised – would still be likely to work well.

These days, due to increased competition, costs per click (CPC) prices are getting higher and higher, and PPC campaigns need to be a lot more competitive to succeed, particularly with non-branded keywords.

The integrated approach

Advertisers need to think more broadly to ensure that their online campaigns are up to scratch. As well as considering many more online advertising arenas, they must also leverage their interconnectedness.

While PPC marketing will aid a company’s ability to acquire new business and may generate a reasonable ROI on its own, its potential can be increased by using the best performing keywords as anchor text links when carrying out link building exercises. If search terms perform well in a paid search campaign, you would be well advised to improve your natural search listings for the same terms where possible.

Similarly, competitor and customer analysis can inform all areas of your thinking by giving an idea of where you stand in the wider market, and potentially gaining first person feedback from the very people you are targeting with your online marketing strategies.

A more connected online marketplace...

Here is a brief explanation of some of the areas businesses need to invest in to compete in today’s more connected online marketplace, and the reasons why they mustn’t be neglected. It’s important to remember that whilst each of the below is certainly a specialism unto itself – the real value is from a cohesive blend of them all seamlessly working together with common cause.

Social

In August 2008, Facebook reached the auspicious landmark of 100,000,000 users. Social spaces are booming, and anyone marketing their site needs to get on board. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit, social networking such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, social tagging such as StumbleUpon or Flickr, blogs & online discussion forums that target your audience, all of these are important portals which, used correctly, can improve your presence online.

Online Advertising

New developments in technology are creating a world where online advertising can be increasingly targeted to relevant consumers. For example, as a result of behavioural advertising, it is now possible to target users according to their actual behaviour online, not only by what page they are looking at. Tracking this customer behaviour can once again inform your thinking in other areas of your campaign.

Tracking & Analytics

The tools now available to us to enable advanced tracking and analytics are like gold dust to savvy marketers. Not only is it fascinating on a human level to try and decipher the moods and habits of your cherished visitors, it is also crucial work if you want to leverage the information available to you.

Email & CRM

Gaining new business is always great, but it’s often a lot easier to sell to those customers you have already won. Opt-in email marketing and email newsletters are two useful methods of keeping the relationship you have with your customers fresh and up-to-date. It also allows for you to communicate with users on their own terms, allowing for a two way communication – rather than simply enforcing on them your generic, default marketing messages.

Natural SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is a term incorporating a huge range of activities, including link development, improving the code and content of a site and article and press release distribution. The importance of using these tried & tested methods to gain and maintain good rankings on the major search engines cannot be underestimated, as many a business is made or broken by their positions on the search engines.

Content

The written word is the lifeblood of the internet, so content is always a major part of an online marketing strategy. Using the keywords and phrases your target audience is already searching for when they are looking for your products or services in all areas of your campaign, as well as on site, will reduce bounce rates, increase targeted traffic and ensure the right people engage with your brand.

Usability

Once you’ve done all that hard work bringing in the right people to your site, it really would be a shame to put them off with poor usability. No matter how many visitors you get to your site, you may as well not bother unless the site itself is capable of gaining conversions. Therefore making sure the design is uncluttered, the navigation easy to understand and there is a clear path to checkout is vital.

Impressions on Google’s Content Network have increased by more than 300% in the last year, according to the latest research.

The Google Content Network allows website owners to include ads on their site, using the advertising application AdSense. The ads generate revenue for the site owner on a PPC or CPM basis.

Content Network impressions surged by 308% year on year, accounting for 6.4% of UK search impressions, according to Efficient Frontier’s UK Search Performance Report Q4 2008.

Meanwhile, and in stark contrast to Google’s success with Content, Yahoo has recently closed its Content Match, its text-based version of Google Adsense.

These events provide yet more evidence of Google’s seemingly unstoppable rise against its main competitors, Yahoo and MSN.

How do we know that ‘cupcakes’ was the most searched-for recipe of 2008? Because, at the end of the year, Google is kind enough to give us a round-up of all the world’s most popular search terms.

Looking down the various ‘top 10s’ can give you a real glimpse into the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times. Here are some of the highlights from Google's round-up of 2008.

Top ten searched-for terms in the UK:

   1. facebook
   2. bbc
   3. youtube
   4. ebay
   5. games
   6. news
   7. hotmail
   8. bebo
   9. yahoo
  10. jobs

Fastest rising in the UK:

   1. iplayer
   2. facebook
   3. iphone
   4. youtube
   5. yahoo mail
   6. large hadron collider
   7. obama
   8. friv
   9. jogos
  10. wiki

Fastest rising globally:

   1. sarah palin
   2. beijing 2008
   3. facebook login
   4. tuenti
   5. heath ledger
   6. obama
   7. nasza klasa
   8. wer kennt wen
   9. euro 2008
  10. jonas brothers

While we credit the readers of this blog with being fully aware of the sites in the first list, a few of those in the second and third might need a little explaining.

large hadron collider: Remember back in September ‘08, when (if you believed the hype) we were all about to be swallowed up by an man-made black hole? Well, the LHC, the world's most powerful atom-smasher, was to blame. Now, due to an electrical fault, this mammoth project won't be ready to go ahead until spring '09.

friv: a free online games site, showing the most popular games on the homepage and removing the least popular when new ones come along.

jogos: another games site - 'jogos' is Portuguese for 'game'.

tuenti: a Madrid-based social networking site which has been referred to as 'the Spanish Facebook'.

nasza klasa: the Polish Facebook (yes, another one)

wer kennt wen: the German Facebook (zzzzzzzzz)

jonas brothers: an American boyband who became famous after starring in Disney movie 'Camp Rock'.

What might make it to the top in ’09? We’re hedging our bets on hip social arena ‘Twitter’ which has enjoyed a good dose of publicity lately, payday loan, debt, discount voucher and UK holiday sites for the strapped-for-cash, and some fun escapism while we all try to forget our troubles. Lady Gaga, anyone?