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News, opinion, and fresh thinking for web developers and designers. The official podcast of sitepoint.com.

Why Facebook Will Have a Big 2009January 7

In my predictions for 2009, I guessed that Facebook would have a huge year in 2009, which would pave the way for an IPO in 2010. I was pretty vague on the details, though, with the only measurable reason why Facebook might be heading toward IPO land being my prediction that they’d expand on their search deal over the coming year. A lot of readers disagreed with me in the comments, predicting instead that Facebook would head the way of previous social networks like MySpace and Friendster — they’d be yesterday’s news once all those fickle teenagers move on to the next big thing, whatever that might be.

Here, though, is why I think that won’t happen to Facebook at all, and instead 2009 will be a huge year for the company.

1. They’re Growing Like Crazy

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning that Facebook now has 150 million active users (unique users who logged in over the past month), half of which use the site daily. Facebook has added about 10 million users over the past 3 weeks, which suggests that at their current growth rate the site would double its active user base to 300 million by year end.

Are All Web App Platforms Doomed by Fatigue?January 6

The life cycle of a new hot web application platform looks something like this: 1. the platform launches amid a lot of hype, 2. advertisers and speculators swoop in, 3. the platform is flooded with applications, most of which are silly or useless, 4. as a result the good applications get obscured, and people lose interest because discovery becomes such a big problem.

The flood of applications that inevitably follows the launch of a hot new web app platform leads to what we’ve termed app fatigue. Once the number of apps hits a saturation point, people start feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of applications they’re presented with in the given app store or application gallery. That in turn leads to increased selectivity and the potential for people to dismiss the entire platform as just a collection of trivial time wasters.

This is what happened to Facebook. When the platform launched, there was a huge amount of buzz around the potential for advertisers and app developers. Subsequently, a huge number of applications were created on the platform and users were faced with a rising tide of apps that demanded their attention. End result: app fatigue. We started seeing ap

A Little-known Way to Replace Some Scripts with CSS CountersJanuary 5

Ever since Eric Meyer highlighted how capable CSS is at his css/edge collection, we’ve been looking for ways to replace effects that were once only possible using JavaScript with CSS-based equivalents. Replacing executable scripts with style sheets often improves performance and results in a more accessible page. One of the earliest examples of this was Eric’s Pure CSS Popups, an effect he briefly summarized as text appears and disappears without JavaScript to drive it.

As CSS advances and implementations improve, more and more is possible purely using style sheets and without the need for additional scripting on either a site’s front- or back-end, which reduces the amount of executable code. One possibility that dawned on me recently was that, using only bits of CSS2.1’s generated content properties, we can aggregate and expose supplemental information about whole portions of pages.

Like many other blogs, SitePoint’s blog posts have a small paragraph of metadata at the end of each post. The paragraph gives readers supplemental information about the post, like its publish date, its tags, and any categories the post is filed under. Let’s see how easily we can add new information to this using only CSS.

Using (and abusing?) CSS counters

One feature of CSS2.1 that has remained

OpenID Needs to Start Getting RealDecember 30 2008

As we noted in our year-end round up, 2008 was a good year for OpenID on paper, but the emergence of other, corporate backed single sign-on products means icy waters ahead. Specifically, we’ve talked about Facebook Connect and why it might end up the winner because it makes sense to consumers, and comes with social data attached. For developers, Facebook Connect is attractive as well because it comes with a built in marketing channel — user actions on external sites using Connect can be reported back to their friends on Facebook via the news feed.

In order for OpenID to compete on this new playing field, the OpenID Foundation needs to stop dragging their feet and start working on efforts to educate people about what OpenID is. On the technical site, OpenID is more or less a sound protocol — there hasn’t been any foot dragging there, but on the consumer outreach side, they’re getting beat. Badly.

Most people have no clue what OpenID is, even though many of them actually have OpenID-enabled accounts. Everyo

What’s On Tap: Predictions for 2009December 26 2008

It’s that time of the year again. As we noted earlier in the week, nothing is more fun for tech bloggers than looking ahead to next year and trying to predict the future. Prediction posts are an annual tradition in the blogosphere, and we enjoy doing them.

So below are eight prognostications for the new year in web tech. Of course, if you saw our list of 2008’s top stories, you’ll know that reality is often too wacky to predict — and that A LOT happens in a single year. Remember to check out how we did with last year’s predictions, as well. And let us know in the comments what you think 2009 has in store for the web.

Note: I use the corporate “we” in this post, but these predictions are really just my own and not those of anyone else at SitePoint. So, don’t blame them for the terrible lack of foresight!

1. Twitter gets a business model. Twitter has a bunch of different options when it comes to monetization. Targeted ads in the Twitter stream based on what you tweet about, built in micro payments, charging h