Google dropped a bombshell today, declaring that it won’t censor Chinese search results after sophisticated attacks on the Gmail accounts of Chinese human activists. This opens the door not only for China to kick Google out of its country, but for a renewal of the battle over censorship and government oppression in China.

I’m going to divide this analysis of the ramifications of Google’s decision into three sections: what this means for China, the impact of the decision on global politics and its potential effect on censorship itself.

What It Means for China: Not Much

Google may be taking a stand and threatening to pull out, but we predict that it won’t be enough to sway the Chinese government to let the Google China search engine run unfiltered, even if world governments apply strong pressure.

Let me make it clear: China has a long and disturbing history of censorship. I could link to hundreds of examples, but I think you get the picture.

Google isn’t the U.S. Government; it doesn’t have the political or technological leverage to make the Chinese government to do anything. Even the U.S. Government has limited influence, due to the economic ties between the two nations and our large debt to the Asian nation.

To think that China would change its rules and allow its citizens unfiltered access to what it believes is objectionable content (e.g. porn), as well as information and images on its greatest atrocities, is absurd. China backing off would weaken its iron-grip hold and open it up to more calls for the abolition of censorship inside its borders.

The end result is that Google will likely be gone from China and censorship will continue, at least in the short term. Only if Google agrees to some less-restricted censorship rules will the search engine be allowed to stay.

China’s about to feel some heat from the rest of the world, though.

The Global Censorship Debate Has Been Reignited

Google pulling out of China won’t be the end of the issue. Members of Congress have been very critical of not only China’s censorship and human rights violations, but of Google for complying with Chinese censors.

Now lawmakers and governments worldwide have another reason to speak out if China kicks Google out. The criticism will mount from institutions, organizations and governments worldwide over China’s decision.

Google’s positioning it so that this is China’s decision, not Google’s, over whether the search engine stays operational within the nation’s borders. This is a smart move on Google’s part and places China in an uncomfortable position.

The world will also begin to focus on the specifics of the attack on Google’s infrastructure. Who was targeted? How deep of a role did China play? What information do they have? What actions can be taken against China?

In the end, though, China is a sovereign nation with one of the world’s largest economies. There will be a lot of head-butting over the next few weeks, but we doubt that anything more severe than condemnations will be issued.

The posturing and criticism will, however, return the spotlight to China and its questionable practices. That is a good thing. The debate has been reignited, which will make us question once again what China is doing on the web and beyond.

The State of Censorship

The world’s focus on major issues comes and goes. It was red-hot on Iran during the Iran Election Crisis and has been on and off when it comes to Chinese censorship and their human rights violations.

Today’s move places the spotlight back on China and the state of censorship, at least for the next few weeks. The 24/7 news cycle will analyze all angles, especially if China does end up kicking Google out. The more information that comes out, the more pressure that will be placed on China.

Even though Google will likely be a casualty of the censorship war, it will not have been taken down in vain. Activists will be reinvigorated, new information will be revealed, and the fight against oppression will continue.

How the war will turn out or when it will end is anybody’s guess. We haven’t even come close to seeing the full implications of Google’s decision. You can bet, though, that the effect will be felt for years to come in political, social and technological circles worldwide.

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

As the year comes to a close, several social media companies decided to take a look back and reflect on the events, people, technologies that captured our interest this year. Twitter took the first crack when it revealed the most discussed topics of 2009. Facebook was next when it released its Facebook Memology for the year.

Both reports are interesting and have a lot of useful information, yet nobody’s really taken the time to analyze just what these trends mean. What did our society care about, and why? What scared the crap out of us? How were our tastes different this year than they were last year?

While I could take days analyzing trending topics (weeks if you give me the raw data), I only have so much time for this column. This is why I wanted to share with you some of my conclusions about this year’s trend data from Facebook and Twitter.

First, A Recap of Facebook and Twitter’s Top Trends of 2009

Before you start reading this week’s column, please make sure to take a good, long look at this year’s top trends for Facebook and Twitter.

First, Twitter’s 2009 trending topics:

Here are Facebook’s top status trends:

1. Diseases (Swine Flu) Scare the Hell Out of Us

The #3 trend on Facebook? Swine Flu. The #2 and #6 news trends on Twitter? Swine Flu. The #4 Hashtag on Twitter in 2009? Yep, you guessed it, #swineflu. When it first burst onto the scene, our propensity for panic took over. We questioned if this was the next epidemic, reminiscent of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic that killed 50 to 100 million people.

As we all now know, we dodged a bullet, for H1N1 proved not to be any more deadly than most common flu variants. It still is a dominant discussion topic today though, as H1N1 has spread across the world. The CDC estimates that nearly 50 million Americans have contracted H1N1 and killed 10,000. There is a reason why it was the biggest long-term story of the year.

2. Want a Blockbuster Movie? Sci-fi/Fantasy Is the Way to Go

If you wanted to make a splash at the box office in 2009, you didn’t create an action thriller, a comedy, or a drama. No, you created a sci-fi or fantasy epic.

Out of the top ten Twitter trending movies, nine of them fell into the sci-fi or fantasy genres. Nine. The only one that doesn’t have anything to do with magic, vampires, weird suits, or aliens is Slumdog Millionaire. The only movie on the Facebook side that wasn’t sci-fi was The Hangover.

The box office numbers agree: Transformers and Harry Potter top the list with $402 million and $301 million total grosses each, with Twilight, Star Trek, Monsters Vs. Aliens, and X-Men all in the top ten 2009s grosses.

This was clearly the year of the sci-fi film. It’s even more fitting that Avatar is December 2009′s big film. Don’t expect this trend to let up over the next few years either: Twilight, Transformers, Star Trek, and Harry Potter all have a few sequels left in the tank (and a perfect market for my sci-fi novel).

3. Trends Reflect Differences Between Facebook and Twitter Users

First, let’s understand that Twitter and Facebook used different methodologies to come up with their top trends lists. Twitter’s top trends are likely based on words and phrases appeared the most as Twitter trending topics, while Facebook grouped together related phrases and put more emphasis on “bursts of activity” and percentage changes from 2008 to 2009.

Yet the result is still that we can see some stark differences between what Facebook and Twitter users like to do with their time and what’s on their minds. Here are some of my random observations:

- Facebook is still about personal connections: The fact that family ranks so high indicates that more mothers and fathers have joined the service, mostly to connect with their friends and their kids. The fact that religion popped up as a top trend supports this assertion.

- NFL dominated Fb and Twitter: The Super Bowl appeared on the top 2009 Twitter trend list not once, but twice. The Steelers were a top trend on Facebook.

- Facebookers like baseball, Twitter users like basketball? Well, the Yankees dominated the Facebook discussion just as much as the Steelers did, and on the Twitter side, the Lakers were the #2 sports trend and Koe Bryant was the #4 most discussed person in 2009. More likely, it’s just that basketball games have more tweetable moments than baseball games.

- The #IranElection Crisis was a singular event that Facebook didn’t have: This is probably because Twitter users potentially had the power to change the course of events in Tehran by helping their fellow users in Iran. It was a powerful message and one of Twitter’s watershed moments. Facebook definitely didn’t have an event that compared to it.

- How the hell is Lady Gaga not a top Twitter trend? Seriously, was Joe Wilson, A-Rod, and Chuck Norris more discussed than perhaps this year’s fastest rising music star? Maybe Facebook’s trend analysis was more accurate, or maybe Twitter users really just didn’t care about her. But they did care about Susan Boyle. very much.

4. This Year’s Big Technology Wasn’t Google Wave, It Was Twitter

If you look at the top technology trend on Twitter in 2009, you’ll find that Google Wave dominated the list. That makes sense – it was one of the most hyped and anticipated products of the year, and it still continues to gain attention (and requests for invites). Wave was groundbreaking technology, regardless of whether or not it goes mainstream.

Yet Google Wave wasn’t the technology of the year. Neither was Facebook, although I’d give it a very close second. No, it was Twitter and its emergence as a mainstream platform for communication. Even Facebook’s memology report acknowledges the microblogging service’s profound impact on society.

Think all the wa
y back to December 2008. Do you remember what Twitter looked like then? It was a smaller group of early adopters tweeting back and forth, with a few stars like Ashton Kutcher thrown into the mix. It had only 4-5 million U.S. visitors back then.

Then Twitter broke through into the mainstream consciousness. Oprah, Ellen, Ashton vs. CNN, and quadruple digit growth made it the subject of intense media attention. Then media outlets and businesses started latching onto the platform when the realized that it was an incredibly powerful promotional platform and communication tool. Nearly every media outlet has one, as do many companies.

Twitter trends may not have picked itself up as a top trend, but it really was. It scared Facebook enough to change. It became a regular part of U.S. and world culture. Hell, Twitter was even the word of the year. Its momentum may be stalling now, but the 140 character revolution clearly dominated 2009.

Tags: facebook, Movies, Sci-Fi, swine flu, The Social Analyst, twitter

Every year the ReadWriteWeb team tries its hand at predicting the future. Looking back at our 2009 predictions, we got some wrong (I predicted that Facebook would sign up to OpenSocial) but others turned out to be on the money. I correctly guessed that the usual suspects would remain unacquired in ’09 – Digg, Twitter, Technorati – but that FriendFeed would get bought. OK, so I guessed that Google would be the buyer. But close enough!

Without further ado, here are our predictions for 2010. We’d love to read your predictions in the comments.

Richard MacManus, Founder & CEO

1. There will be a breakthrough consumer application for Internet of Things – involving the iPhone, RFID tags and a major consumer product such as books or groceries. In general Internet of Things will ramp up in 2010, with thousands more everyday objects becoming connected to the Internet.

2. Google will acquire PostRank and promptly consign it to the same graveyard Feedburner went to.

3. Microsoft will acquire Wolfram|Alpha and Bing will continue to make small gains in the search market. Google will be distracted by increasing consumer complaints about content farms polluting Google search results.

4. A price war will erupt in the eBook market and Amazon.com will offer the lowest prices, leading to it gaining a dominant position in the market with its Kindle eBook Reader.

5. Google will partner with a large PC manufacturer from Asia, who will launch an inexpensive netbook powered by Chrome OS in the U.S. market. It will become a hot consumer item among school kids and university students.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, Lead Writer & VP Content Dev

1. Google Wave will win some respect back as people discover valuable uses for it and get used to the user experience.

2. Facebook will open aggregate user profile and social graph data for outside analysis.

3. Some serious user interface innovations will blow our minds.

4. Data portability will become more real, standard, expected and viable.

5. A new social network will rise to join the big ones. It may offer the privacy that Facebook is moving away from, it may be mobile and location-centric, it may focus on personal content recommendations.

Sarah Perez, Feature Writer

1. MySpace doesn’t quite make a comeback, but gets a fresh start of sorts with their music and entertainment offerings. The Gen Y/Gen Z demographic sees growth on the site but the network’s overall numbers continue to decline.

2. Twitter launches ads.

3. TweetDeck finally launches a web version and becomes the number 1 Twitter client other than twitter.com.

4. Cloud computing heats up. AWS, Google, Microsoft and others begin price wars to compete for customers.

5. The iPhone still rules and grabs more mobile market share than ever before.

6. Meanwhile, Android becomes the #2 mobile platform by year-end.

7. iPhone App backlash begins. There are too many worthless apps and no decent way to find the good ones. Then Apple surprises us with a brand-new feature that improves greatly upon their “genius” offering to help us find new and useful apps via iTunes.

8. iTunes announces a web service, thanks to the Lala acquisition.

9. Spotify finally gets the green light in U.S. and people go nuts for it.

10. The netbook craze dies down. People start buying new “in-between” devices that are slightly larger and more powerful than today’s netbooks – but smaller, more lightweight and cheaper than regular notebooks. Features like better processors, separate GPUs, and SSD HD options set these new “ultra portable” devices apart from the traditional netbook, but they’re still often called “netbooks” because of their size. Market confusion ensues.

Jolie O'Dell, Writer & Community Manager

1. MySpace relaunches as a content network, leveraging the bands and filmmakers they already have on board and dropping the emphasis on social networking.

2. Twitter will find a monetization model and launch things like ads and pro features.

3. Facebook will become the Borg. Its number of users will continue to climb until the network is as ubiquitous as Google and lay people confuse Facebook with “the Internet.” They’ll make more money and control more data than ever before.

4. iPhone’s exclusivity with AT&T; will come to a breaking point and we’ll see network-agnostic iPhones.

5. On the bright side, 2010 will signal the death of the login. Third-party authentications will become the norm, and user data will be entrusted to a discrete handful of online properties. Users will pitch a hissyfit if ever they’re asked to create a username and password and upload an avatar. After all, doesn’t the Internet know they have a Facebook?

6. File-sharing will continue to be shut down around the world; by 2011, we’ll all be downloading via Tor and the U.S. will have instituted a lame 3-strikes-no-Internet policy.

7. Cybercrime will be more of an issue than ever. Expect to see a major governmental security breach in 2010, as the government continues to adopt 2.0 tech without strong and permanent infosec personnel and procedures in place.

Dana Oshiro, ReadWriteStart Writer

1. AR: Geo-locational games and AR will come together in 2010. We’re going to see strange behavior from those playing zombie shooter games on their commutes.

2. Agree with Sarah: Netbooks and gadgets like the PsiXpda are going to gain ground.

3. Mobile Music: Offline music caching will be expected of all streaming music apps.

4. The browser really will be the new OS.

5. Payment Systems: Between Square, PayPal X and advances in internet TV, we’re going to see payment options integrated in unlikely places.

Alex Williams, ReadWriteEnterprise Writer

1. Cloud computing will go through a shake-out. There are just too many companies out there for the market to sustain. The big players will go on a buying spree. The consolidation will deeply affect users. Some companies will fold overnight. Users will lose access to their data, leading to a whole new wave of skepticism about cloud computing. But it won’t be enough to slow down the move to cloud computing. More companies will consider the security risks as less of a factor, compared to the cost benefits and potential for innovation. Cloud computing technology will become more of a commodity. The business applications for cloud computing will take center stage.

2. The big players will come back strong. IBM, SAP and Microsoft will innovate just enough to show big gains with customers.

3. Consumer based social networks will make big efforts to gain wider access to the enterprise, as more companies seek to open up to the social Web. The information architecture of social networks will change to accommodate the greater degrees of control that the enterprise requires. This will bring on the rise of “social middleware,” services that act as a layer between social networks and the enterprise.

4. A new breed of social networks will emerge that act as one-stop shops for applications and services. These will look more like marketplaces than social hubs for conversations around the proverbial virtual water cooler. SaaS leaders will face off for this growing market.

5. iPhone, Android or the Blackberry? I expect the Android to be the talk of the enterprise, especially if the Google Phone does make it to market. Such a phone would eliminate carrier costs and break down walled gardens that have limited application development.

Sean Ammirati, COO

1. Facebook will go public & the IPO will be a huge financial success.

2. Hyperlocal
advertising will heat up, delivering another nail in the traditional newspaper industry’s coffin. (Very similar to one of my 2008 predictions, but this time focused on the advertising aspects.) Specifically, it will be more common for a local establishment to pay marketing dollars to Yelp or FourSquare, for example, then their local newspaper.

3. Apple will release an “iTablet” and the world will be a better place for it. Ok, more accurately we’ll all think the world is a better place for it.

4. Agree with Jolie regarding “the death of the login.” I'm hoping for open distributed alternatives along with Facebook and a handful of others.

5. Between Boxee’s continued development and a new AppleTV (hopefully synched with their iTablet), it will become much more common to enjoy the Internet on a TV.

Elyssa Pallai, Marketing & Experience Manager

1. Skype becomes increasingly pervasive, as the younger generations force their parents to get online and consumers find new and interesting ways to cut costs and save money.

2. Software as service becomes ever more popular, as businesses and governments choose to focus on their core business and realize the benefits of lightweight technologies in the cloud – including rapid deployment and the low cost of switching.

3. The online user experience has a renaissance, as web browsers and hardware become more sophisticated and designers / developers take advantage of that.

4. The growth of Internet of Things continues, RFID tags in everything. The initial bugs will make funny things happen all around us.

5. iPhones and other smartphones become the purchasing tool of choice.

6. Consumers bypass carriers and create open wifi networks for all (which is already happening but not en mass).

Jared Smith, Webmaster

1. Backlash against the App Store causes more and more developers to defect to Android and competing platforms.

2. Google Chrome’s market share increases at Firefox’s expense. Internet Explorer continues to lose ground as more rich, HTML5-aware Web apps spring up on the scene.

3. Opera begins to struggle, as WebKit becomes the rendering engine of choice on mobile devices.

4. Social analytics features explode onto the scene in 2010. Twitter opens Pro accounts, including analytics and an API to access them. Google strikes a deal to integrate Twitter analytics with its Google Analytics product.

BNO News, the news wire service famous for publishing breaking news stories through its @BreakingNews Twitter feed, just announced that it plans to launch a new news wire service early next year. In order to focus on this project, the BNO team will hand over the management of the @BreakingNews feed to MSNBC.com. According to BNO News, MSNBC will provide 24/7 breaking news headlines via BNO’s Twitter feed, which will include updates from the new BNO wire service and other news organizations.

The @BreakingNews feed currently has about 1.4 million subscribers. MSNBC’s own breaking news feed only has 41,000 followers and the main MSNBC account only has 27,000 followers.

BNO News’ founder Michael van Poppel also announced that the company will focus on doing more original reporting. According to today’s press release, BNO News is also “in talks with other publishers.” Given that the company is now closely aligned with MSNBC, however, it remains to be seen if other publishers will be willing to work with BNO News.

iPhone App

Daniel E. Shipton, CEO of BitMethod, the developers of the push-enabled BNO News iPhone app, was less than pleased with today’s news. In a press release, Shipton states that he is “disappointed that BNO is choosing to leave behind their 1.4 million Twitter followers.” Indeed, it will be interesting to see how the @BreakingNews feed will change under the new management. The iPhone app will stay under BNO News’ control. It is not clear with it will continue to feature all the content from the MSNBC-managed @BreakingNews feed or just content from the new BNO news wire service.

Is This a Good Thing?

It was exciting to see the rise of BNO News over the last few months and today’s announcement comes as quite a surprise. BNO News was founded by Michael van Poppel, a 19-year old student in the Netherlands. Our own Marshall Kirkpatrick profiled the company in great detail earlier this year.

We are not sure why BNO News didn’t just make a deal with MSNBC to syndicate its feed. Given that BNO is a small business, chances are that the company just didn’t have the resources to run the news feed and build a wire service at the same time. With a stable income stream from syndication and its iPhone app however, we have to wonder why BNO News would leave its 1.4 million Twitter followers in the hands of MSNBC.

Joyent, the Californian provider of cloud computing solutions – although they like to refer to that as delivering “web application hosting Infrastructure as a Service” – today announced that it raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Intel Capital.

The news comes only a few weeks after Intel helped the 5-year old company launch a cloud computing service in mainland China, reportedly the first ever to launch over there.

Joyent says it will use the extra cash to accelerate its product development and expand its sales & marketing efforts around the world.

The investment by Intel Capital in Joyent was announced today at the investment organization’s 10th Annual CEO Summit, where seven investments were made public (for approximately $25 million in total). The other six capital infusions went to Korea-based Crucialtec, Taiwan-based Gudeng Precision Industrial Co, Japan-based V-cube, China-based Phoenix New Media, United Arab Emirates-based NeuString and US-based Active Storage.

In a blog post about the reasons for accepting institutional financing for the first time since its inception in 2004, Joyent founder and CEO David Young disclosed that the company earlier raised a small seed funding round from Peter Thiel and the good old “myself, friends and family” and turned profitable quickly. So why raise extra funding?

Young explains:

Joyent has been able to grow to thousands of customers globally by force of hard work, a lot of luck, and an extraordinary time when the costs of developing and delivering software products have dropped practically to zero. While Joyent has been profitable for much of the company’s existence, we raised money because Joyent has a revenue model, and a product model and roadmap, that we believe can benefit from immensely increased scale.

Joyent counts some noteworthy companies among its customers, including social network LinkedIn, social gaming platform operator Watercooler and clothing and home good retailer Gilt Groupe. They used to handle hosting for Twitter, too, but that relationship turned sour in early 2008 after frequent downtime issues.

Curious to see what the future holds for the company.

Bone-headed patent lawsuit number 573482: a company called WebMap Technologies is suing a host of technology companies over an online map patent that was issued over 5 years ago, reports Law360 (requires registration).

The patent (ID US6772142) is titled “Method and apparatus for collecting and expressing geographically-referenced data” and covers a web-based implemented system in which observers may pinpoint locations on a scalable map in order to fix data by latitude and longitude and to collect data describing that location.

Who’s the company suing over this? None other than Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Travelocity, CitySearch, IAC/Interactivecorp, Yellowpages.com, The Washington Post Company, Ticketmaster, Zagat Survey and City Accommodations Network.

Wait, all of these? Yes, all of them.

The suit claims Google has been aware of the patent-in-suit for “some time” prior to the filing of the lawsuit and is seeking enhanced damages for willful infringement. WebMap is also reserving the right to allege willfulness against any of the other defendants that continue to infringe moving forward.

Here’s the funny part: WebMap Technologies doesn’t seem to be in business anymore, and webmap.com – which used to be the address for its corporate website – now features nothing but a GoDaddy placeholder. Judging from this CNET article from February 2001, WebMap was a startup from before the dotcom bubble burst earlier this decade that was backed by at least $13 million in venture capital funding.

I’m still trying to pin down what happened to the Boston/Tel Aviv company and if it’s effectively this one that is taking the companies above to court in Tewas, but it’s safe to say the WebMap that was referenced in the CNET article didn’t exactly go anywhere. The company’s former CEO, Michael Iron, went on to found and lead a p2p video platform called StreamSoft, although he doesn’t seem to have made any friends with that venture either (see here and here). Iron is currently listed as director of ILCU, an event-sharing network (but his e-mail address bounces).

We’re trying to get in touch with some of the people that used to be affiliated to WebMap Technologies and will update if they get back to us.

Japan went crazy over the iPhone when it made its debut in summer last year, but China as another big Asian market for Apple seems to react differently. The iPhone officially launched in China today, offered by China Unicom, one the country’s three big cell phone carriers. But our friends over at major Chinese news portal 163.com are reporting [Google machine translation] that not too many people were actually queuing up to get one, at least in Beijing.