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The Top 100 Web Sites of 2010

Eric Griffith
 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

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Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks

    Buying Guide: The Top 100 Web Sites of 2010

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    Contents

    Here are our picks for the hottest Web sites and Web trends of the year, plus some old favorites to enjoy.

    Top Web Sites of 2010Watching our annual list of Top 100 Web Sites evolve over the years has been a fairly fascinating process. In a way, the Top 100—particularly the Undiscovered portion—can be viewed as a microcosm of the Web at large. The sites that tend to make the list are indicative of larger trends that have dominated the Web for the previous 12 months.

    One of the biggest trends of the past few years has been the rise of the mobile app. Thanks to devices like the iPhone and iPad, many users are doing a large portion of their Web browsing on something other than their PC. For that reason, the trend toward Web-based app development has waned. Instead of building cloud-based apps for browsers, many developers have moved toward mobile app development.

    Those sites that do still target PC users must offer their content in a mobile form to compete. While there are no mobile-only sites here, a good chunk of those on the list are also available as mobile apps or in some other phone-friendly version.

    Bing
    Box
    Dimdim
    Drop.io
    Flickr
    Google Docs and Spreadsheets
    Meebo
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    As the landscape becomes ever more crowded, the need for site aggregation and content filters becomes ever more apparent. Perhaps, somewhat ironically, we found ourselves in the position of weeding through dozens of sites that promise to filter the increasing noise. Some of the better news, search, and travel aggregating/filtering sites made it through.

    Speaking of filtering, we've got a few strict guidelines that we use as we pour through hundreds of suggestions from readers, staff, and friends. As mentioned above, none of the sites in the Top 100 are mobile only. The sites also can't be download-based—that means no browser plug-ins and no desktop apps. The sites also have to be free—they can have a premium counterpart, sure, but the free version has to be worth recommending on its own merits.

    The distinction between Classics and Undiscovered is a bit trickier. The one hard and fast rule is that if the site has been on the Top 100 before, it's out of contention for the Undiscovered list. The other guidelines are a combination of time, traffic, and exposure. Just because a site is on the Undiscovered list doesn't mean that no one has ever used it—we just assume that the majority of our readers will be unfamiliar. It's a way of distinguishing the list from other Top 100s, which are often populated only by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo products.

    Many of those products do end up on the Classics list—but again, for the sake of variety and discovery, we try to limit them even there. It would be easy to put, say, 25 Google sites on the lists, but that's not really helpful, is it?

    So read, explore, enjoy, and discuss. And while you're at it, start recommending sites in our comments area for 2011. It's never too early to start the hunt.


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    About Our Expert

    Eric Griffith

    Eric Griffith

    Senior Editor, Features

    My Experience

    I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

    I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

    In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

    I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

    The Technology I Use

    My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

    I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

    I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

    I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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