Before the final bell rings I wanted to take a look at what 2007 looked like for the web. Instead of reviewing the bells and widgets that came out, or the scandals that made weekends in the blogosphere more interesting, or even just doing a ten page expose on the “glory” that is Facebook I thought I would instead look at some ideas that made the year.

Too Cliche For Your Cliche

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It seems like Web 2.0 is finally catching up with itself. The biggest sign is that calling Web 2.0 cliche is a cliche. This year saw blogs like Uncov come out of the woodworks to take some of the wind out of the sails of the techset, and more telling still people are starting to ask the question, “What’s the point of all this stuff?”

You can only look at so many Crowdsourced Social Bookmarking Sites That Tap Into The Social Graph before you have to ask yourself who is solving the real problems in Web Technology. As sad as I would be to see it go, I hope that this trend is a sign of the culture moving away from “me too” apps towards solving some new problems.

Privacy

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Everything from the Google / Doubleclick merger to Facebook Beacon had us screaming privacy. That’s nothing new, but what is a bit of a twist this year is that most of our major privacy concerns involved the combination of psychographic data with advertising. This makes sense. Eventually, social networks had to grow up and look for a way to monetize their eyeballs. What better way to create some “added value” for advertisers than to use all that profile information that they had been hoarding.

It’s still an open question whether the public at large will become aware enough of this tech trend for it to actually “matter.” So far, cries of Big Brother seem to be limited almost exclusively to blogging circles.

DRM

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The historically slow music industry has been moving towards opening themselves up to new business models. Everything from EMI dropping DRM to Hulu shows that major content producers are become a bit more willing to see the web as a tool for business growth instead of as an enemy.

Unfortunately, these minor ovations have not been coupled with an end to litigation. Until that happens and the RIAA and MPAA start really pursuing deals in the online space, it will be an uphill battle.

Blogebrity

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Bloggers, web entrepreneurs and their assorted financial backers are making their way onto the main stage. Everything from all that stuff that Mark Cuban does with important people to Kevin Rose on the cover of a comic book to the Boing Boing team appearing in that ad that people sort of cared about for a day or two. Technologists this year are taking some small steps towards making their way into the public consciousness.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the public couldn’t name five bloggers off of the top of their collective head (unless they live in California, that is) so I imagine that bloggers are still a far cry from achieving “rock star” status.

Web 2.0 Roundup

On top of all of that were the usual assortment of acquisitions, entrants into the dead pool, cries that blogging is killing mainstream media (and visa versa) and blog battles with all the staying power of a Lindsay Lohan movie. What other trends do you think made this year what it was? What do you believe next year has in store?

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