6 Year-End Recaps That May Change How You View Next Year (Small Business E-Commerce Link Digest – December 10, 2010)

I love this time of year. Sure, I love the holidays and catching up with family and old friends. But I also love all the countdowns and lists and stats you see all over the place. Not only are they entertaining, but you can learn a lot about where the market is going and how your customers’ behaviors have changed throughout the year. Take a look at these items for instance:

1. No year-end recap list would be complete without a look at Google’s Zeitgeist. They’ve been producing the list for years and it gives a great look at what was on the world’s mind this past year.
2. Of course, thanks to the rise of social media, Google’s not the only game in town for looking at where your customers spend their time online. TechCrunch has an awesome map of where in the social world your customers are. And, yes, Facebook is increasingly the 800-lb. gorilla in most parts of the world.
3. Want just one reason Facebook is becoming so dominant? Well, according to Inside Facebook, Facebook’s offsite interactions are growing significantly:
   

   “Moving beyond the application platform, Facebook continues to expand to the web. It now has more than 250 million users engaging with its external products, including Connect, the Like button and other “social plugins.” That’s up from 150 million in late June, and 60 million in February — the launch of plugins and the Graph API in late April has clearly helped Facebook make itself a more central part of how people use the web. Since the new products, Facebook also says that its getting 10,000 more web sites integrating with it per day; around 2 million are using the social plugins, from 1 million in June.”

4. One thing I’m particularly interested in is how customers are using social media. Mashable links to a Virtrue report showing when Facebook users are most active that’s worth a quick look.
5. Now there’s more to life than just social. For instance, on the mobile side, Android is the best-selling phone OS (understandable when you consider how many Android phones there are). And now you can see what’s happening to Blackberry relative to Android, at least on Verizon. Money quote:
   

   “No wonder Verizon doesn’t think the upcoming launch of BlackBerry 6 devices on its network will have a “material impact” on sales. Why would it?”

6. And, finally, this isn’t exactly a year-end recap list, but why not check out Mashable’s 10 Ways Business Leaders Can Turn Ideas Into Execution? That way, when you’re looking back on 2011 at the end of next year, you can feel great about all you’ve accomplished.

Of course, the year’s not over yet, so don’t be surprised if a few more of these lists crop up. As you look back at the year, what changes did you think were most eventful? Tell me about them in the comments.

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