Best Web Apps of 2005 – Where are they now?
Written on 21st October 2008
9 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
As we reach what some people are calling the “end of web 2.0″ and (appropriately) the start of the next web – it seems like the perfect time to look back at some of the web apps from a few years ago and ask ‘where are they now…?’.
As a reference point, we’ll look at Dion Hinchcliffe’s Best of 2005 post.
Category: Social Bookmarking
Best Offering: del.icio.us
Status: Alive and well. Obviously acquired by Yahoo, not the dominant social bookmarking tool it once was but going strong all the same.
Runners-Up:
Status: Alive – but dying. Site is still live, not sure how many users but by the state of the homepage it doesn’t look like much care is being given.
Status: Dead.
Status: Alive. Site seems to be going strong with a decent flurry of bookmarks – but much more competition today.
Category: Start Pages
Best Offering: Netvibes
Status: Alive. Going strong although immense competition from both igoogle and yahoo. In April 2008 the company announced they planned to open source their widget platform, application programming interfaces, and iPhone version.
Runners-Up:
Status: Alive, just.
Status: Alive but Now Microsoft Live – hardly a success in the start page arena.
Category: Online To Do Lists
Best Offering: Voo2do
Status: Alive. One of many todo list app but nevertheless still alive and well.
Runners-Up:
Status: Alive. Still used by many as a basic todo list with iphone and online access – although much more now an integrated feature of other 37 signals products.
Status: Alive. Still a very popular todo list app with a premium version now available. Devoted users and ever expanding features – RTM shows how it’s done.
Category: Social News
Best Offering: digg
Status: Alive: Thriving and stories of expansion into global markets and niches seem to be true. This being so, Digg does seem to have a permanent home on the ‘for sale at the right price’ listings page.
Runners-Up:
Status: Alive – but sincerely doubt it’s used all that much any more. More of a ’see if this works’ tool.
Status: Alive but for all intensive purposes Dead. The site is up and stories are up to date (automated) however their most popular user is Lenick who has zero activity on their profile.
Status: Alive - bought by Conde Nast, recently went ‘open source’ and create your own reddits.
Category: Image Storing and Sharing
Best Offering: Flickr
Status: Alive. Sold to Yahoo and next to Facebook, the largest photo sharing site on the web.
Runners-Up:
Status: Dead. Site looks up and running, even quite new I would say but tried signing up and no luck whatsoever.
Status: Alive, although number of visitors to the site seem to have dropped dramatically of recent according to compete.com (US Only).
Status: Very much dead.
Category: Online File Storage
Status: Alive. Although it has never taken any funding the service still managed to stay alive and kicking.
Status: Alive, bought my AOL however if rumours are true, AOL recently tried to sell it to no avail.
Status: Dead, officially. A recent post by Clay Cook, one of OmniDrives main investors sheds light on some of the story: Nik Cubrilovic Omnidrive lesson .
Status: Alive: with stiff competition this service is still managing to hold it’s own.
Category: Web-Based Word Processing
Best Offering: Writely
Status: Alive - Google Docs now.
Runners-Up:
Status: Alive – Less prominent then it was back in 2005, more of a feature integrated to other 37 signals products.
Status: Alive: Flourishing with a range of other of web-office products.
Category: Online Calendars
Best Offering: CalendarHub
Status: Alive…just. Although there is very little mention of the service – it does seem to still be up and running. However their weblog seems to very much down so I doubt much work is actually been done on the app.
Runners-Up:
Status: Dead – The Massachusetts company was backed by Paul Graham’s YCombinator
, but in the end just petered out and was put up for sale on ebay.
Category: Web-Based Project Management
Best Offering: BaseCamp
Status: Alive: Have taken funding from Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame and expanded into other other small business related products.
Runners-Up:
Status: Alive: Recently took in $7 Million in Funding
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
By Jona on Oct 21, 2008
I’m actually quite surprised by the number of these that are still around. I suppose it is just the “best of” though.
Great post!
Reply
By Travis Choma on Oct 21, 2008
crazy to see how much changed in the space of only 3 years!
Reply
By Ernst-Jan Pfauth on Oct 21, 2008
the right post for these times!
Reply
By Adam(PixelHead) on Oct 21, 2008
Hmm, I’ll have to take a look at some of the sites I looked at on one of Best of the web posts from back in 2006.
Reply
By Jerry on Oct 21, 2008
interesting overview, thanks. Follow up in a year or 2? ;)
Reply
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Oct 21, 2008
Nice overview! Can’t we do a another one looking back 8 years too?
Reply
By Avatar on Oct 22, 2008
Start is hardly a success as live?. well. then you are asking too much because while it not as big as my.yahoo (1st) iGoogle (2nd). it exchanges third place with My.AOL often and it is still a lot bigger than Netvibes and Pageflakes COMBINED.
Oh. and now it is My.Live.com
Yet to receive the Wave 3 treatment. so it is a wait and see just like the new My.AOL to come.
Reply
By John on Oct 24, 2008
I wonder what this list would look like if created anew in 2008? There are a lot of new web apps on the scene that would probably knock a few of these off.
Reply
By nicole on Oct 28, 2008
Thanks, some I know, most I don’t like, flickr is the only one I use (again).
:)
Reply