8 ms·

The 50 Best Websites of 2011

202 points by iamelgringo 15y ago

scorpion032 15y ago
Thanks to the SF billboards, non-nerdy people have noticed it.
dools 15y ago
I'm sure Gabriel will pass by here at some point so I want to ask a question: do you find that going into an industry where you have absolutely no "first mover" advantage, where several others are already "doing it better" and where those you're competing against are so insanely "better resourced" than you daunting or comforting? I guess what I'm trying to learn from you is what your mental state is like on a day to day basis: are you a long term thinker? Do you believe that you have many many years to solve the problem well and compete? Do you believe that DDG may die at any minute but you simply don't care? Do you know unequivocally that you can do this better than anyone and it's just a matter of sticking it out? Yeah. So that's my question :)
- epi0Bauqu 15y ago
  I'm definitely "a long-term thinker." I've already been at it for over 3.5yr :). However, I got into it out of pure interest with no original intention/particular belief that it would get this far. Now though, I believe we have an established long-term vision and are executing on it.
  - dools 15y ago
    Nice to hear some long term thinking going on. We need to cultivate that!
quizbiz 15y ago
Good PR. Congrats. :)
iamelgringo 15y ago
How many founders are able to boot strap a search engine to 8M monthly unique searches? Gabe, Jordan, and recent hires... Respect.
- iconfinder 15y ago
  I made it to 1M so far.
  - iamelgringo 15y ago
    Link to your site? :)
    - metachris 15y ago
      http://iconfinder.com http://iconfinder.com
      - Jem 15y ago
        Why have I not heard about this before? This is awesome.
        achristoffersen 15y ago
        Funny enough i often do a e.g "!icon vine" search on DDG :-)
        iconfinder 15y ago
        Thanks!
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
        matdwyer 15y ago
        Wow, I just found this as well - this is fantastic. Great job!
neuromage 15y ago
So did 49 other sites.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  140 million sites didn't make the list. [1] 1: http://news.netcraft.com/ http://news.netcraft.com/
  - dragonquest 15y ago
    And what's more, a site which for the most part remained a one-man show taking on one of the most difficult to penetrate markets and actually suceeding in surviving, getting noticed and loved. If that's not an achievement, I don't know what is.
    - ordinary 15y ago
      Why do you think the search engine market is so hard to penetrate?
      - dragonquest 15y ago
        Firstly it requires a decent amount of initial work and investment. While DDG does use the BOSS API, its still a lot of work to get it working right especially since DDG integrates not just that but other engines too. A search engine starting from scratch is a huge task, which is not made easier with the brand recognition the big guys get. Since search is such a fundamental concept to the use of the web, many people think of it as a start point to the internet. This is where its hard to get early adopters because only people specially interested in new SE's would try the new kid, everyone else uses the comforting familiarity of Google. And lastly, the leaders in the search space are some really big names. Names which have gone onto become verbs. To go head on against such competition is commendable if you're not in the vertical market. What is even tougher when the media calls you a *-killer and in the initial days you can't live upto the false hype that is created (see Cuil).
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
suprgeek 15y ago
For a start-up competing with Google in the search space - DDG has made all the right moves. Excellent PR and some well deserved respect to my favorite Search Engine. Kudos...
doctoboggan 15y ago
I've heard a lot of about duckduckgo on here and on reddit. Are there actual compelling reasons to use this service over google? Is the only reason their privacy policy? I saw a commenter on the linked site state that duckduckgo is great for programming, what does this mean?
- thecombjelly 15y ago
  The best reason for me is the quality. Between the disambiguation feature and the lack of spam and crappy sites, DDG is really good at finding what you want it to.
  - omaranto 15y ago
    In some domains. Whenever I give it a go, as soon as I turn to work it fails me (work is math for me).
    - epi0Bauqu 15y ago
      Would love to incorporate a lot more math stuff, as I suspect there are some great sources out there. If you are so inclined, please let us know about them or add them to this Wiki: https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo/wiki https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo/wiki
- dangrossman 15y ago
  Do some programming related searches on DDG and you'll see the difference. Google gives me a list of links, DDG gave me a function definition and description from a language manual... on the result page.
- aperiodic 15y ago
  These are the things I use daily that I find the most useful: Lots of nice zero-click goodies: * StackOverflow integration: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=remove+directory+symlink https://duckduckgo.com/?q=remove+directory+symlink (can also search directly with !so) * IP Address: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip * Common symbol tables: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table http://duckduckgo.com/?q=html+entities http://duckduckgo.com/?q=html+entities * Wolfram Alpha integration: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d%28cos%28x^2%29%2F%28e^x%29%29+dx https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d%28cos%28x^2%29%2F%28e^x%29%29+dx Disambiguation (great for software with a common word/term as a name), e.g. homebrew: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=homebrew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=homebrew Favicons in the results. This lets me easily focus in on the sites that I think will be most useful. Direct search of many programming references with bang-syntax: * Ruby: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ruby+IO http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ruby+IO * JQuery: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!jquery+fadeIn http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!jquery+fadeIn * Clojure: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!clojure+deref http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!clojure+deref There are many more goodies I keep discovering (one nice surprise the other day was that searching for "Community" (a TV show) gave me the air date of the next episode). The best feature of DDG is the extensive integration with domain-specific information sources or search tools that often give me the information I'm looking for with no clicks at all.
thecombjelly 15y ago
Great work DDG and yegg! I love DDG and have been using it for well over a year. The quality is just so good that anytime I get on computer set to search Google by default, I only get through a few searches before I'm compelled to head over to DDG.
dotcoma 15y ago
How many of you are using it as your default search engine? I am. I don't think it's as good as Google, but I think it's good enough, some things are useful, like the quick links, and at least the user interface is cleaner, there is no stupid auto-complete etc.
- masklinn 15y ago
  I do for now, but its match failures (especially on computers-related stuff) is making me consider switching back to google more every day. Match results really are much lower quality than on google. > there is no stupid auto-complete That's really something I don't care about, since I never search directly from the site, always from my browser.
  - aw3c2 15y ago
    Same here. I have it set as my primary search engine for months how but recently noticed that I am more often than not already add the !s or !g to get Google results instead when entering my terms in the address bar. One of my biggest gripes is probably that it will only display one result per domain unless you restrict a search solely to that domain. And it often shows not the most relevant or logical result for a query for a website. I should make notes on that and send them in.
    - epi0Bauqu 15y ago
      Please do send in specific examples -- we really do use them to make a lot of improvements.
  - revorad 15y ago
    When DDG fails, use !g followed by your query. It takes you straight to the Google results. Decent compromise while you wait for DDG to improve in certain areas (and it is improving).
    - masklinn 15y ago
      > Decent compromise while you wait for DDG to improve in certain areas (and it is improving). Since it mostly uses Y!S's results, which tend to suck compared to google's (for my searches anyway), I'm not sure it can improve much in that area, which is by far the one that pains me the most. And if I'm going to use google 9 times out of 10, I can just remove the indirection.
maxexcloo 15y ago
I love DDG but it seems to load more slowly then google (obviously, google takes 20 ms, DDG can take up to 5 seconds).
- roxtar 15y ago
  Yes, the search results load much slower than Google. Parts of the site load and then the remaining come one at at a time.
- iamelgringo 15y ago
  DDG is a handful of people, and it's boot strapped. Google makes Billions a year.
donaq 15y ago
Way to go!
- donaq 15y ago
  Eh. Weird. Congratulating Gabriel got me -4 votes? Sometimes I just don't know HN anymore.
timr 15y ago
So did Hipmunk: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088173_2088186,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2... ...and AirBnB: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088173_2088177,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2... The Instapaper guy is a long-time HN contributor, as well: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2087913_2087923,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2... The headline should really be changed to something neutral.
- dools 15y ago
  Do you have a blog? Why not do a blog post "A tribute to HNs own in Time Magazine's top 50 websites" or whatever and link through to it?
  - timr 15y ago
    Because that would be spam. Edit: voting me down for refusing to submit the same article to HN, linked through my own blog? Wow.
    - dools 15y ago
      According to the guidelines: "If you're submitting a link, put it in the url field. If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead." I think a blog post along the lines of "Several regular HN members made it into Time Magazine's Top 50" in follow up to a single link to DDG making it in fits within the guidelines, but to each their own. All I'm saying is that, this is obviously something that people were interested to know about, if you're complaining that coverage didn't extend to others you think are just as important, then write about it on your own blog and submit that
      - palish 15y ago
        timr isn't the submitter of this story. He's a commenter. PG was specifically referring to submitters, submitting links.
ck2 15y ago
Congrats to DDG but wow Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection. Where am I currently in that list? Where is the entire list? How do I start over? Go to the end? Why does it do full page reloads for every click?
- corin_ 15y ago
  Then you haven't seen many list features on major publications' websites. Not that there are many worse, just that this system is extremely common. There is a tiny bit of logic behind the thinking that some users prefer lists this way (the less techy you are, the more likely you're not a particularly quick browser, so these don't slow you down much, and having them on seperate pages cuts it into bitesize chunks), but the main reason is simply advertising, page views equal banner impressions.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >>Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection // It's pretty bad, I looked and saw "lists" at the bottom of the page but sadly it didn't link through to a list just the same page instead. >page views equal banner impressions // I wonder how this affects the sites ability to retain people, they're offering so many off-site links, every tiny bit of content has this big chunk next to it saying "please leave the site". For those that do make it through would any of them actually have been less likely to click through with less advertising on the pages? What I'm saying is that it certainly is going to increase impressions but at what benefit to the advertiser and with what cost to the content host ...
    - corin_ 15y ago
      In my experience, from a short-term business point of view (read: how most people think), you're looking for the balance that stops just short of being such bad UI that people actually decide not to use it; but getting almost that bad is just fine, if it drives up banner impressions. Personally I prefer to stay clear of anything that's actually annoying to users; I mean annoying as in genuinely annoying, rather than just "people will complain". For example, road block adverts (like when an entire page is taken over with an advert saying "your content will load in x seconds") are genuinely annoying, a sponsored site skin is (unless it's implemented/designed badly) not, because while people might see it and mutter to themselves, it doesn't actually harm their use of the site at all, and it's not nearly annoying enough to make them leave the site. Interestingly, on one of my company's websites (our entire business is based around advertising), we had discussed the possibility of doing things like this and decided against it, on the logic that even though we wouldn't directly drive away users, in the long run it might contribute to their not liking the site as much. However after various pieces of user feedback, we ended up doing just this for galleries that our journalists take at events, now each image loads a new page cleanly, (giving new banner impressions), and feedback since we made that change has matched the suggestions we had beforehand: our readers actually prefer it.
vynch 15y ago
Nothing but respect for Gabriel!
antimora 15y ago
Darya Pino's site (http://summertomato.com/ http://summertomato.com/) on there too. I came across her site through Kevin Rose's introduction on G+.
clark-kent 15y ago
Time could save us a lot of time by listing it in a single webpage. I just dislike this stale technique for getting pageviews.
- ivankirigin 15y ago
  Time is not one of the best publications, making this whole post odd. Their content is bad, and their format as you describe is annoying. Why would we care? Why trust shitty publications to tell me things like what is the best stuff or who is the most important person this year - as if you could even measure it!
- orky7 15y ago
  full list in single window http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2012721,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29...
  - emp_ 15y ago
    Took me a while, but this is 2010's.
chegra84 15y ago
Link directly to duck duck go page: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088176_2088178,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
craigmc 15y ago
Time.com is certainly not one of the best, given the terrible user experience they have created with this list in order to maximise page views...!
arn 15y ago
One of my sites was also listed. TouchArcade: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2087939_2087933,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2... I was pretty psyched.
revorad 15y ago
Time.com is not featuring on that list any time soon. </minirant>
pbhjpbhj 15y ago
The full list all on one page, FWIW (yes it's on my own blog), http://alicious.com/times-50-best-websites-2011/ http://alicious.com/times-50-best-websites-2011/.
voxmatt 15y ago
As much as this is obnoxious, pageview link-bait, they do have some smart calls. In addition to the YC crowd, Marco, DuckDuckGo, etc. I think they really highlighted some great blogs, including This is my Next, among others.
qeorge 15y ago
DearPhotograph.com is an amazing site, never seen it before This one broke my heart for some reason: http://dearphotograph.com/post/8311735731/dear-photograph-if-i-could-turn-the-corner-in http://dearphotograph.com/post/8311735731/dear-photograph-if...
winton 15y ago
Bleacher Report (#11 on the list) is looking for Ruby people in San Francisco. Great opportunity to work for a high traffic site and a fun company: http://bleacherreport.com/careers/engineering http://bleacherreport.com/careers/engineering
dabious 15y ago
HBOGO, haha i love that website..
yid 15y ago
Would any of the founders reading this care to post about the traffic bump the Time story brought?

202 points by iamelgringo 15y ago

Thanks to the SF billboards, non-nerdy people have noticed it.

dools 15y ago

I'm sure Gabriel will pass by here at some point so I want to ask a question: do you find that going into an industry where you have absolutely no "first mover" advantage, where several others are already "doing it better" and where those you're competing against are so insanely "better resourced" than you daunting or comforting? I guess what I'm trying to learn from you is what your mental state is like on a day to day basis: are you a long term thinker? Do you believe that you have many many years to solve the problem well and compete? Do you believe that DDG may die at any minute but you simply don't care? Do you know unequivocally that you can do this better than anyone and it's just a matter of sticking it out? Yeah. So that's my question :)

epi0Bauqu 15y ago
I'm definitely "a long-term thinker." I've already been at it for over 3.5yr :). However, I got into it out of pure interest with no original intention/particular belief that it would get this far. Now though, I believe we have an established long-term vision and are executing on it.
- dools 15y ago
  Nice to hear some long term thinking going on. We need to cultivate that!

quizbiz 15y ago

Good PR. Congrats. :)

iamelgringo 15y ago

How many founders are able to boot strap a search engine to 8M monthly unique searches? Gabe, Jordan, and recent hires... Respect.

iconfinder 15y ago
I made it to 1M so far.
- iamelgringo 15y ago
  Link to your site? :)
  - metachris 15y ago
    http://iconfinder.com http://iconfinder.com
    - Jem 15y ago
      Why have I not heard about this before? This is awesome.
      - achristoffersen 15y ago
        Funny enough i often do a e.g "!icon vine" search on DDG :-)
      - iconfinder 15y ago
        Thanks!
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - matdwyer 15y ago
        Wow, I just found this as well - this is fantastic. Great job!

neuromage 15y ago

So did 49 other sites.

dangrossman 15y ago
140 million sites didn't make the list. [1] 1: http://news.netcraft.com/ http://news.netcraft.com/
- dragonquest 15y ago
  And what's more, a site which for the most part remained a one-man show taking on one of the most difficult to penetrate markets and actually suceeding in surviving, getting noticed and loved. If that's not an achievement, I don't know what is.
  - ordinary 15y ago
    Why do you think the search engine market is so hard to penetrate?
    - dragonquest 15y ago
      Firstly it requires a decent amount of initial work and investment. While DDG does use the BOSS API, its still a lot of work to get it working right especially since DDG integrates not just that but other engines too. A search engine starting from scratch is a huge task, which is not made easier with the brand recognition the big guys get. Since search is such a fundamental concept to the use of the web, many people think of it as a start point to the internet. This is where its hard to get early adopters because only people specially interested in new SE's would try the new kid, everyone else uses the comforting familiarity of Google. And lastly, the leaders in the search space are some really big names. Names which have gone onto become verbs. To go head on against such competition is commendable if you're not in the vertical market. What is even tougher when the media calls you a *-killer and in the initial days you can't live upto the false hype that is created (see Cuil).
SkyMarshal 15y ago

suprgeek 15y ago

For a start-up competing with Google in the search space - DDG has made all the right moves. Excellent PR and some well deserved respect to my favorite Search Engine. Kudos...

doctoboggan 15y ago

I've heard a lot of about duckduckgo on here and on reddit. Are there actual compelling reasons to use this service over google? Is the only reason their privacy policy? I saw a commenter on the linked site state that duckduckgo is great for programming, what does this mean?

thecombjelly 15y ago
The best reason for me is the quality. Between the disambiguation feature and the lack of spam and crappy sites, DDG is really good at finding what you want it to.
- omaranto 15y ago
  In some domains. Whenever I give it a go, as soon as I turn to work it fails me (work is math for me).
  - epi0Bauqu 15y ago
    Would love to incorporate a lot more math stuff, as I suspect there are some great sources out there. If you are so inclined, please let us know about them or add them to this Wiki: https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo/wiki https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo/wiki
dangrossman 15y ago
Do some programming related searches on DDG and you'll see the difference. Google gives me a list of links, DDG gave me a function definition and description from a language manual... on the result page.
aperiodic 15y ago
These are the things I use daily that I find the most useful: Lots of nice zero-click goodies: * StackOverflow integration: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=remove+directory+symlink https://duckduckgo.com/?q=remove+directory+symlink (can also search directly with !so) * IP Address: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip * Common symbol tables: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table http://duckduckgo.com/?q=html+entities http://duckduckgo.com/?q=html+entities * Wolfram Alpha integration: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d%28cos%28x^2%29%2F%28e^x%29%29+dx https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d%28cos%28x^2%29%2F%28e^x%29%29+dx Disambiguation (great for software with a common word/term as a name), e.g. homebrew: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=homebrew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=homebrew Favicons in the results. This lets me easily focus in on the sites that I think will be most useful. Direct search of many programming references with bang-syntax: * Ruby: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ruby+IO http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ruby+IO * JQuery: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!jquery+fadeIn http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!jquery+fadeIn * Clojure: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!clojure+deref http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!clojure+deref There are many more goodies I keep discovering (one nice surprise the other day was that searching for "Community" (a TV show) gave me the air date of the next episode). The best feature of DDG is the extensive integration with domain-specific information sources or search tools that often give me the information I'm looking for with no clicks at all.

thecombjelly 15y ago

Great work DDG and yegg! I love DDG and have been using it for well over a year. The quality is just so good that anytime I get on computer set to search Google by default, I only get through a few searches before I'm compelled to head over to DDG.

dotcoma 15y ago

How many of you are using it as your default search engine? I am. I don't think it's as good as Google, but I think it's good enough, some things are useful, like the quick links, and at least the user interface is cleaner, there is no stupid auto-complete etc.

masklinn 15y ago
I do for now, but its match failures (especially on computers-related stuff) is making me consider switching back to google more every day. Match results really are much lower quality than on google. > there is no stupid auto-complete That's really something I don't care about, since I never search directly from the site, always from my browser.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  Same here. I have it set as my primary search engine for months how but recently noticed that I am more often than not already add the !s or !g to get Google results instead when entering my terms in the address bar. One of my biggest gripes is probably that it will only display one result per domain unless you restrict a search solely to that domain. And it often shows not the most relevant or logical result for a query for a website. I should make notes on that and send them in.
  - epi0Bauqu 15y ago
    Please do send in specific examples -- we really do use them to make a lot of improvements.
- revorad 15y ago
  When DDG fails, use !g followed by your query. It takes you straight to the Google results. Decent compromise while you wait for DDG to improve in certain areas (and it is improving).
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > Decent compromise while you wait for DDG to improve in certain areas (and it is improving). Since it mostly uses Y!S's results, which tend to suck compared to google's (for my searches anyway), I'm not sure it can improve much in that area, which is by far the one that pains me the most. And if I'm going to use google 9 times out of 10, I can just remove the indirection.

maxexcloo 15y ago

I love DDG but it seems to load more slowly then google (obviously, google takes 20 ms, DDG can take up to 5 seconds).

roxtar 15y ago
Yes, the search results load much slower than Google. Parts of the site load and then the remaining come one at at a time.
iamelgringo 15y ago
DDG is a handful of people, and it's boot strapped. Google makes Billions a year.

donaq 15y ago

Way to go!

donaq 15y ago
Eh. Weird. Congratulating Gabriel got me -4 votes? Sometimes I just don't know HN anymore.

timr 15y ago

So did Hipmunk: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088173_2088186,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2... ...and AirBnB: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088173_2088177,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2... The Instapaper guy is a long-time HN contributor, as well: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2087913_2087923,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2... The headline should really be changed to something neutral.

dools 15y ago
Do you have a blog? Why not do a blog post "A tribute to HNs own in Time Magazine's top 50 websites" or whatever and link through to it?
- timr 15y ago
  Because that would be spam. Edit: voting me down for refusing to submit the same article to HN, linked through my own blog? Wow.
  - dools 15y ago
    According to the guidelines: "If you're submitting a link, put it in the url field. If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead." I think a blog post along the lines of "Several regular HN members made it into Time Magazine's Top 50" in follow up to a single link to DDG making it in fits within the guidelines, but to each their own. All I'm saying is that, this is obviously something that people were interested to know about, if you're complaining that coverage didn't extend to others you think are just as important, then write about it on your own blog and submit that
    - palish 15y ago
      timr isn't the submitter of this story. He's a commenter. PG was specifically referring to submitters, submitting links.

ck2 15y ago

Congrats to DDG but wow Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection. Where am I currently in that list? Where is the entire list? How do I start over? Go to the end? Why does it do full page reloads for every click?

corin_ 15y ago
Then you haven't seen many list features on major publications' websites. Not that there are many worse, just that this system is extremely common. There is a tiny bit of logic behind the thinking that some users prefer lists this way (the less techy you are, the more likely you're not a particularly quick browser, so these don't slow you down much, and having them on seperate pages cuts it into bitesize chunks), but the main reason is simply advertising, page views equal banner impressions.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  >>Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection // It's pretty bad, I looked and saw "lists" at the bottom of the page but sadly it didn't link through to a list just the same page instead. >page views equal banner impressions // I wonder how this affects the sites ability to retain people, they're offering so many off-site links, every tiny bit of content has this big chunk next to it saying "please leave the site". For those that do make it through would any of them actually have been less likely to click through with less advertising on the pages? What I'm saying is that it certainly is going to increase impressions but at what benefit to the advertiser and with what cost to the content host ...
  - corin_ 15y ago
    In my experience, from a short-term business point of view (read: how most people think), you're looking for the balance that stops just short of being such bad UI that people actually decide not to use it; but getting almost that bad is just fine, if it drives up banner impressions. Personally I prefer to stay clear of anything that's actually annoying to users; I mean annoying as in genuinely annoying, rather than just "people will complain". For example, road block adverts (like when an entire page is taken over with an advert saying "your content will load in x seconds") are genuinely annoying, a sponsored site skin is (unless it's implemented/designed badly) not, because while people might see it and mutter to themselves, it doesn't actually harm their use of the site at all, and it's not nearly annoying enough to make them leave the site. Interestingly, on one of my company's websites (our entire business is based around advertising), we had discussed the possibility of doing things like this and decided against it, on the logic that even though we wouldn't directly drive away users, in the long run it might contribute to their not liking the site as much. However after various pieces of user feedback, we ended up doing just this for galleries that our journalists take at events, now each image loads a new page cleanly, (giving new banner impressions), and feedback since we made that change has matched the suggestions we had beforehand: our readers actually prefer it.

vynch 15y ago

Nothing but respect for Gabriel!

antimora 15y ago

Darya Pino's site (http://summertomato.com/ http://summertomato.com/) on there too. I came across her site through Kevin Rose's introduction on G+.

clark-kent 15y ago

Time could save us a lot of time by listing it in a single webpage. I just dislike this stale technique for getting pageviews.

ivankirigin 15y ago
Time is not one of the best publications, making this whole post odd. Their content is bad, and their format as you describe is annoying. Why would we care? Why trust shitty publications to tell me things like what is the best stuff or who is the most important person this year - as if you could even measure it!
orky7 15y ago
full list in single window http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2012721,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29...
- emp_ 15y ago
  Took me a while, but this is 2010's.

chegra84 15y ago

Link directly to duck duck go page: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088176_2088178,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

craigmc 15y ago

Time.com is certainly not one of the best, given the terrible user experience they have created with this list in order to maximise page views...!

arn 15y ago

One of my sites was also listed. TouchArcade: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2087939_2087933,00.html http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2... I was pretty psyched.

revorad 15y ago

Time.com is not featuring on that list any time soon. </minirant>

pbhjpbhj 15y ago

The full list all on one page, FWIW (yes it's on my own blog), http://alicious.com/times-50-best-websites-2011/ http://alicious.com/times-50-best-websites-2011/.

voxmatt 15y ago

As much as this is obnoxious, pageview link-bait, they do have some smart calls. In addition to the YC crowd, Marco, DuckDuckGo, etc. I think they really highlighted some great blogs, including This is my Next, among others.

qeorge 15y ago

DearPhotograph.com is an amazing site, never seen it before This one broke my heart for some reason: http://dearphotograph.com/post/8311735731/dear-photograph-if-i-could-turn-the-corner-in http://dearphotograph.com/post/8311735731/dear-photograph-if...

winton 15y ago

Bleacher Report (#11 on the list) is looking for Ruby people in San Francisco. Great opportunity to work for a high traffic site and a fun company: http://bleacherreport.com/careers/engineering http://bleacherreport.com/careers/engineering

dabious 15y ago

HBOGO, haha i love that website..

yid 15y ago

Would any of the founders reading this care to post about the traffic bump the Time story brought?