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Best Overall Websites of 2011
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The best overall websites of 2011 allow us to stay connected with friends and family, learn about things that interest us, search the web to find anything and everything, giggle like school girls and express ourselves through blogging and social media. While several websites, namely the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, stood above the rest as the most visited in 2011, everyone has favorite websites and that's why we invite you to add your own list of the best overall websites of 2011 to our rankings below.
It's really no shock that Google is one of the most-visited sites in the world as many times when someone visits the Internet they are looking for something in particular. Google provides the perfect medium to find that something through their industry-leading search engine. Google is not all about the search though with dozens of other products from their popular Gmail service to Google Maps, Google AdWords and their own social networking platform, Google Plus.
Speaking of social networking, Facebook easily comes in as another top site of 2011. The top website is used by billions around the globe who enjoy keeping in touch with family and friends, discovering news and other goodies, and of course playing the many casual games. Twitter is another leading social networking platform that is used by numerous people each day as everyone from media outlets, world leaders, celebrities and us normal folk sends our news, thoughts and other nuggets in 140-character snippets.
Of course the top websites of 2011 are too plentiful to name them all but a few others stood out from the pack based on what people were trying to do online. Those looking for information steered toward Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Penny-pinchers stalked the top coupon websites. People searching for quick entertainment often chose YouTube, the world's largest video sharing website. Jobseekers flocked to websites like LinkedIn, the fast-growing business networking site. Kids' websites were in high demand as well. The list goes on and on.
So tell us folks. Were you more of an Amazon user or an eBay shopper? Did you use Flickr more than you used Tumblr? Did you Bing or Yahoo!? CNN or BBC for news? Add your own list of the best websites of 2011 and contribute to the overall rankings as we crown the top websites of 2011.
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Google primarily provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the worlds information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of tools and platforms including its more popular products: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free because Google makes its money from highly integrated online advertising through its AdWords and AdSense platforms. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information. More - 2
Hosts user-generated videos. Includes network and professional content. MoreMost Listed - 3
On February 4th, 2004 Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook, a social network that was at the time exclusively for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term Facebook came from Zuckerbergs high school (Phillips Exeter Academy). The Exeter Face Book was passed around to every student as a way for students to get to know their classmates for the following year. It was a physical paper book until Zuckerberg brought it to the internet. MoreControversial - 4
Tumblr is a re-envisioning of tumblelogging, a subset of blogging that uses quick, mixed-media posts. The service hopes to do for the tumblelog what services like LiveJournal and Blogger did for the blog. The difference is that its extreme simplicity will make luring users a far easier task than acquiring users for traditional weblogging. Anytime a user sees something interesting online, they can click a quick ;Share on Tumblr bookmarklet that then tumbles the snippet directly. The result is varied string of media ranging links and text to pictures and videos that takes very little time and effort to maintain. There is little to no learning curve involved in using tumblr. Features are intuitive and quick to establish. More - 5
User-generated news links. Votes promote stories to the front page. - 6
Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search. They recently launched a new site section called ;Explore for external and third party tools that interact with Twitter and a new visualization tool called Twitter Blocks. The service was started by Obvious Corp, who also started Odeo. In April 2008 Twitter launched Twitter Japan in partnership with Digital Garage. MoreControversial - 7 The Onion is an American ;fake news organization. It features satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news as well as an entertainment newspaper and website. More
- 8 The biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. Over 10 million articles in over 200 languages, and still growing. More
- 9 BuzzFeed is a trends aggregator that uses a web crawler and human editors to find and link to popular stories around the web. More
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IMDB
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is a HUGE collection of movie information. They try to catalog every pertinent detail about a movie, from who was in it, to who made it, to trivia about it, to filming locations, and even where you can find reviews and fan sites on the web. We then do our best to present this information in a manner that is easy to search and access. The IMDb started as a hobby project by an international group of movie fans, essentially something by movie fans for movie fans. And despite their growth they retain that sensibility. They store over 15 million individual film/TV credits. More - 11 Ranker hooks users up to an intuitive interface and a database with over 5 million items, which they can use to easily create and share lists. Lists are also the basis for an extensive system of ratings, reviews and recommendations on Ranker. More
- 12 Ustream.tv is a live video community for everyone. Anyone with a computer, an Internet connection and a web cam can set up their own channel and broadcast live. The site launched in March 2007 and was the second live streaming site after Stickam.com. The site has attracted tech celebs Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo. Ustream can be used by many different kinds of people for many different purposes. More
- 13 Ad-supported streaming television shows and movies, including some in high definition. More
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ESPN
ESPN.com is an online American sports portal covering the NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS, European Soccer, college sports, and much more. More - 15
Slashfilm.com
- 16 Pitchfork media is an internet publication focusing on indie music. The content includes criticism, commentary, music news, and artist interviews. More
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Metacritic
Reviews, quotes, and composite review scores from major critics for film, video, DVD, music, and video games. More - 18
Turntable.fm
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Gawker Media
- 20 Former game designers Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake created Flickr, an online photo sharing network, in 2004. Flickr, which began as a photo-sharing feature of their gaming project, has since then blossomed into one of the premiere photo-sharing sites on the web. Yahoo purchased Flickr for $35 million in March of 2005. Since then Flickr continues to compete with other photo-sharing giant Photobucket. More
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TMZ
A telepictures production and America Online joint venture that provides an inside look at the latest celebrity scandals. More - 22
Read Write Web
ReadWriteWeb is a blog company that publishes news regarding web technology, reviews and analysis. The company has over 250,000 RSS and email subscribers and is one of the worlds top 10 blogs according to Technorati. More - 23 Break.com is the premier online entertainment destination for guys with over 18,000,000 unique viewers and 500,000,000 page impressions per month (Nielsen Site Audit). Men 15-35 come to Break to enjoy the best content online, helping show over 12,000,000 videos and 5,000,000 pictures daily. Break is a private company founded in June 1998 and based in Beverly Hills, CA. Break has a strategic investment from Lionsgate Entertainment, as well as partnerships with Tivo, NBC Universal, Endemol, EA, Vivendi Games, Twisted Pictures, and Limelight Networks. Break.com is owned and operated by Break Media More
- 24 Spotify has created a lightweight software application that users will simply download and then log onto their service enabling on demand streaming of music. More
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NFL.COM
Official site of the National Football League. It delivers in-depth team pages for all clubs, game-day coverage with real time statistics and play-by-play and chats with top players. More - 26
Know Your Meme
- 27 Includes codes, reviews, previews, features, releases, hardware, contests, and a gamestore for console and PC games. More
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Chill
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The Daily Beast
- 30 Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network of third-party entities (referred to as Affiliates) who have integrated its advertising offerings into their Websites (referred to as Affiliate sites) or their other offerings. More
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Bestweekever.tv
- 32 A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. More
- 33 Flat monthly fee by mail service.
- 34 Free weblog publishing tool from Google, for sharing text, photos and video. More
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RottenTomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website that aggregates movie reviews from all over the web, and assigns red fresh tomatoes to good reviews, and rotten green tomatoes for bad reviews. More - 36 Digg is a user driven social content website. Everything on Digg is user-submitted. After you submit content, other people read your submission and ;Digg what they like best. If your story receives enough Diggs, its promoted to the front page for other visitors to see. Kevin Rose came up with the idea for Digg in the fall of 2004. He found programmer Owen Byrne through eLance and paid him $10/hour to develop the idea. In addition, Rose paid $99 per month for hosting and $1,200 for the Digg.com domain. In December of 2004, Kevin launched his creation to the world through a post on his blog. In February of 2005, Paris Hiltons cell phone was hacked. More
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Imgur.com
- 38 Offers syndicated columnists, blogs and news stories with moderated comments. More
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Gorilla vs. Bear
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The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel is a news company reporting the weather for locations around the world. Their website features current conditions and forecasts for over 77,000 locations worldwide, along with local and regional radars. The site also contains weather-related news, educational material, a weather glossary, a storm encyclopedia, and seasonal features. More -
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Bing
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Badass Digest
- 43 MySpace, which launched in January of 2004, is the world’s leading social portal. MySpace empowers its global community to experience the Internet through a social lens by integrating personal profiles, photo sharing, professional and viral videos, blogs, mobile, instant messaging, and the world’s largest music community. MySpace is among the highest trafficked websites in the United States and includes an international network of more than 30 local community sites throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Fox Interactive Media is a division of News Corporation. Rupert Murdoch-helmed News Corp. acquired MySpace in June 2005 under its interactive business unit Fox Interactive Media based out of Los Angeles. More
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