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Web 2.0 has given us an application for almost anything that you could want to do online, but chances are good that their are fewer than a dozen that you use with any degree of frequency. With that in mind, I decided it was about time to look at some of the web services that I couldn’t live without.

The selection criteria was simple. It had to be a service that I use at least once a day and in the case of online communities I had to be an active participant. Finally, I can’t pick any site that I have professional entanglements with.

So with those rules in mind, without further ado…

Techmeme

If you care about technology you should be reading Techmeme everyday. For those who have been locked away for the last few years, Techmeme is a “conversation tracker.” It scans the web for interesting news and using an algorithm that mostly involves depth of linking, produces the blogosphere’s technology front page.

The index contains everything from Techcrunch down to smaller, niche blogs about Google and Microsoft. The reference index is a whose who of the blogosphere and can easily take the place of your RSS feed on most days.

Of all the web services that I use this is by far the most valuable. Not only does it provide a wealth of information, but it provides it in a way easy enough to consume on a daily basis.

Stumble Upon

Second to Techmeme is StumbleUpon. While this is much less practical, it makes the list because it is the only social news network that I find myself excited to use. The secret is in the interface. When I am excited about a story I am not forced to go through three screens to share it with people. Not only that, but I do not feel quite as pigeon-holed by the culture as when I use other social news services.

It’s a lot like del.icio.us biu more visually appealing. After a short learning curve you will find yourself deeply involved in the community.

For the traffic minded, StumbleUpon also provides the deepest, most consistent traffic of any of my referrers. Not only that but the StumbleUpon community tends to be much more supportive of the content that they stick around to view. Not that praise is always a great thing for a writer, but at the very least the Stumble crowd doesn’t often fall back on the unfocused vitriol that is the signature of many other social news services. Feel free to add me as your friend here.

Twitter

I have gone through several phases with Twitter and I think I have finally found equilibrium. What Twitter provides that no other service currently does is a way for the tech community to communicate with one another publicly without that territorial posturing that blog comments usual entail.

The downside is that you have to deal with their slow, finicky servers and the occasional spam profile. For the most part, this is a small price to pay for the closest thing to a “live” blogosphere that we ave available.

Google Blog Search

This is by far the most powerful professional tool that I have at my disposal. Whenever I advise a company, the first thing I do is use Google’s Blog (and News) search tools to find out what the buzz is like surrounding the company. I also use it as a good way to keep track of memes as they develop.

More casually, I use Google Blog Search to track certain basic categories of news that I am interested in on a daily basis. I find it much easier to sort through than my feed reader and much more likely to turn up an interesting post that I might have otherwise missed.

MyBlogLog

I visit MyBlogLog about ten times a day. It is a service that helps you track who is visiting your blog, visually. If you haven’t tried MyBlogLog yet, click on the link on my sidebar widget and give it a look.

On top of taking a look at some of the people who have visited my blog, MyBlogLog also gives me a really easy way to track simple statistics. Google analytics is much more complete, but for casual tracking I find MyBlogLog’s simpler interface more satisfying.

Like all community building tools you only get as much out of it as you put in, but if you are looking for a better way to look at your site stats you really can’t beat MyBlogLog.

Web 2.0 Roundup

The really surprising thing that came out of putting together this roundup was realizing how few sites I can legitimately claim to visit on a daily basis. I guess that raises a good point. Once you get past the shock and awe of a new Web 2.0 widget, the web services that we visit the most often end up being the ones that provide the most real, practical value to us.

What is your favorite web service? Sound off in the comments.

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