Top 10 GigaOM Posts of 2010

In 2010, our obsession with mobile technology went into overdrive. With Android facing off against iOS, the iPad emerging as the leader in tablets and the app economy growing and maturing, we at GigaOM had a lot to write about. And you readers took note.

We also had a lot of interest in Facebook this year, and a post on 4Chan made it into the top 10. But the big story was mobile in all its glory. It speaks to how personal the technology is and how passionate many are about the subject. You can bet the theme will only intensify next year as more 4G rolls out, Microsoft, Nokia, HP and RIM try to revitalize their smartphone games, and the tablet wars begin in earnest.

Here are the top 10 staff-written posts of 2010 based on page views:

What’s the Best Android Phone for Verizon Right Now? Droid X. This was one of two reviews to break into the top 10, both of them on Android. It hit as the Android frenzy was reaching a crescendo and highlighted how a bigger screen could work on smartphones. This review and the number two post also hit the top mobile posts of the year.
Android Sales Overtake iPhone. This has been a theme that has generated a lot of traffic all year. With Android ascendant, we saw the first quarter where recent sales surged past the iPhone. While the iPhone appears to still have a larger overall installed base, the reports of Android’s rise touched off a lot of debate about where the two platforms will end up.
Nexus One: The Best Android Phone Yet. This post went up in January and foreshadowed a big year for Android. While praising the device, Om said it still didn’t match the experience of the iPhone, but it showed Google was ready to compete.
4chan Decides to Do Something Nice for a Change. This was a nice change-up and showed that 4chan, despite its reputation for sophomoric humor and sexual imagery, could be used for good. The online community banded together to wish 90-year-old WWII veteran William J. Lashua a happy birthday.
Your Mom’s Guide to Those Facebook Changes and How to Block Them. Where would we be without a Facebook post in our top 10? This post looked at the expansion of the “like” button to outside websites and instant personalization and explained how users can sidestep the features. This fit into a larger story about privacy on Facebook, which never seems to get old.
Is Apple About to Cut Out the Carriers? This post stirred a lot of conversation after we reported that Apple was looking at putting its own SIM card in iPhones to sell devices directly to consumers. The move would have allowed Apple to cut out European carriers. It looks like the plan didn’t come to pass, but it illustrated the power of Apple and its ambitions.
6 Features to Expect in iPhone 4.0. A couple of weeks before Gizmodo showed off an early look at the iPhone 4, we had this post looking at features likely to appear in Apple’s next smartphone. Most of our predictions came true, though we’re still waiting on iTunes in the cloud.
Mary Meeker: Mobile Internet Will Soon Overtake Fixed Internet. Noted Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, now a new VC at Kleiner Perkins, laid out the new era of mobile computing, saying mobile Internet use was on track to overtake fixed Internet use in five years. She also noted the rise of social networking. The subjects are familiar to our readers, but Meeker’s exhaustive research gives some good oomph to the trends.
Myspace R.I.P. Om didn’t mince words, using the departure of CEO Owen Van Natta to declare Myspace dead. He said the decline of Myspace was part of a larger disinterest by News Corp. in the Web.
Case Studies in Freemium: Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, Automattic and MailChimp. This was a great post for entrepreneurs looking at applying the freemium model, an increasingly important way for start-ups to make money. We included some great examples and advice.

After the crazy year in technology we’ve had, expect 2011 to be a doozy as well. Many of the trends we wrote about this year are only going to get bigger next year. So stay tuned and keep reading.

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