It's fashionable this time of year to create some sort of year-end "best of" or "top ten" list reviewing the past year. I'm not one to buck convention, so here is a quick top ten list of trends in internet technology that are relevant to nonprofit organizations.

Disclaimer: This doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive list. It includes things what was top of mind as I sat down on this first working day of the new year. It also reflects what my colleagues and I at Forum One have been writing on Influence and its sister blogs over the past year.

In any event, here are things that were not only important in 2007 but seem to be important to track in 2008:

1. Google, Google, Everywhere: This year, Google just could not be ignored. Adwords, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, Google Analytics, Google Apps, Google Reader, iPhone integration, the Android open handset initiative, and, of course, Google Search. Nonprofits clearly need to be well-acquainted with Google's software offerings as they are going to be central to everyone's experience on the internet for the foreseeable future. This means, yes, checking your email newsletters in Gmail, but also such things as understanding how Google Calendar is popularizing sharable calendars via iCal feeds and similar mechanisms. It also means that Google Analytics is emerging as the benchmark for primary web metrics, although organizations should be sure to look beyond web traffic reports for useful intelligence about their sites.

2. Openness: This past year showed promising new opportunities in open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) via Convio Open Initiative, Kintera Connect. (I say "promising," because the broader impact is barely measurable at this writing.) And let's not forget about Google's Open Social which is touted as their answer to the Facebook API which in 2007 not only brought us "Ninjas vs. Pirates," but serious tools such as the Causes Application, which despite its limitations, needs to be watched closely as a harbinger of apps to come.

3. Rise of Social Media: Social sites and utilities such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Digg, Del.ico.us, Newsvine, are no longer novel. They connected thousands and drove enormous traffic. Flickr was used from everything from news gathering to nonprofit photo contests. Facebook became something we really need to pay attention to as shown by the recent Facebook conference we attended. It has a user growth trajectory that may eclipse MySpace by the end of the year. Meanwhile Twitter seems increasingly useful as business utility. Organizations like ASPCA launced their own communities, and others are used using sites like Razoo, Change.org, countless others, and, of course, Facebook, to create connect their supporters with each other. In the coming year, organizations need to understand these media well if they wish to understand how to get attention for their issues and ideas.

4. Pervasive and Persuasive Video: From video post cards from Defenders of Wildlife to field reports from Nothing But Nets, video was a growing influential form of web content for motivating and communicating. In 2007, online video clips have become a major part of the presidential primary campaigns led by Ron Paul and Barack Obama who respectively earned over 9 million and 6 million views on YouTube alone. We saw the launch of YouTube's Nonprofit Program while sites like fora.tv and dogooder.tv are angling to be the YouTube for policy and nonprofit videos.

5. Online Visualization of Policy Data: New sites made it extremely easy for policy organizations to share data, as downloads, interactive maps, and user-configurable graphs. These can be done through sites such as Graphwise, EditGrid, Zoho Creator, Dabble DB, and others. Organizations such as the World Bank and Center for Global Development's CARMA project showcased their work on Google Maps, and the Jane Goodall Institute is doing geo-blogging where you can track the locations of researchers when they blog about their work studying chimpanzees. The Center for Global Development is also mapping the

6. RSS is an MVP: RSS isn't quite mainstream, but it's getting there. This year, Common Craft finally made RSS less geeky, and we rarely launch a site without some sort of feed. RSS is cheap, user-centric, and propagates content in ways we can't even anticipate. Tools like Yahoo Pipes have made RSS feeds easy to customize. You could, say create for yourself a custom global health news feed or even create your own Google Map Mashup without any programming knowledge.

9. Blogging is How Sites Get Updated: Although some policy organizations such as the Center for Global Development blogged about weighty matters such as the Milliennium Challenge Account, many policy organizations still felt threatened by the persona of a conventional "blogger" -- opinionated, political, overly casual, even trivial. This year, we found that blogging can be used however you see fit, in what format or voice you choose. Often, it's simply a good model more making sure your site is updated frequently with content more engaging than a bloodless press release. Michael Edson, creator of Eye Level, the Smithsonian Institution's first blog, put it best: At its core, blogging is merely a "reverse chronological publishing idiom" (see minute 8-9 of this video.). Will 2008 be the year that "blog" and "web site" become interchangable terms?

10. Users Are Wired for Interactivity: Most organizations can usually safely assume screen width of 1,024 pixels or wider. Broadband connections are expanding -- it reached over 80% of U.S. households in 2007. It is even more prevalent in Europe and the Pacific Rim. And except in low-resource settings, JavaScript and Flash are ubiquitous. Rich applications are now fair game for most audiences.

Technology's pace continues to be dizzying, and rapid change is the one safe prediction for 2008. What internet trends are you watching? Let us know in the comments!

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