It was a big year for technology: Twitter and Facebook’s popularity exploded, while new smartphones, e-readers and a host of other gadgets cropped up to compete for our plugged-in affection.

But into each electronic life a little digital rain must fall.

We polled a handful of the most tech-savvy folks we know for their thoughts on the worst moments in technology from 2009 — the most epic “fails” of the year.

And now, in no particular order, our 2009 Tech Fails …

Y2-what? Zune gets off to a bad start

Technically it was a New Year’s Eve surprise. But many owners of Microsoft’s Zune media player started 2009 with little more than a paperweight with LED lights.

At midnight on December 31, all Zune’s 30-GB MP3 players froze up. Microsoft explained the problem as a problem with the way the device’s internal clock recognized (or didn’t recognize) leap years.

The glitch only lasted a day, but didn’t help a device that was already failing to gain ground on Apple’s iPod.

TwitterPeek fails to pique interest

The reaction of many in the tech community to the release of the TwitterPeek device was a collective, “Huh?”

Sure, there are some people who don’t have smartphones and don’t want to pay for expensive mobile plans. But is there really a market for a $199 device that does nothing but let you manage your Twitter feed?

“I already have a $200 device to update Twitter,” said one techie we spoke to. “It’s called my iPhone.”

The folks at Peek, makers of TwitterPeek, had already made the Pronto — a device that handled only texts and e-mails. Maybe a combination of the two gadgets is in the works. But even then, would enough people be interested? Probably not.

Facebook backtracks on owning your stuff

OK … so every time Facebook makes even the most minute changes, it sparks an outcry among its 350 million members, not to mention (irony alert) dozens of new Facebook groups geared at making the site change back.

But a terms-of-service change in February went further, implying that Facebook owned the rights to anything users uploaded to the site. Another change suggested that Facebook held those rights forever, even if people quit the site or took the material down.

Facebook responded that it simply needed those rights to be able to post information to other users. But when the backlash continued, the site eventually switched the terms back to their former wording.

Sidekick punts user info

In what one observer called “an almost incomprehensible data disaster,” T-Mobile told users in October that a server error at a Microsoft subsidiary had lost users‘ personal data it had stored for the devices.

All of it.

Phone numbers, contact lists, calendars and other information was gone — and even new data would disappear if users turned off or recharged the phone.

Users were offered free service and rebates in the wake of the mess, as T-Mobile scrambled to recover what little of the data it could. But that didn’t stop the lawsuits, Internet griping and ill will generated by the snafu.

Hacking Twitter

It started as a story about someone hacking the accounts of several Twitter employees. Then, after Twitter said the attack was limited to personal information, not sensitive, company-related stuff, the hacker behind the attack struck again — in a different way.

He sent 310 documents to leading technology blog TechCrunch. The blog published a small portion of them and sent the documents to Twitter, which is when the company learned that they included financial projections and notes from high-level executive meetings.

Twitter responded by reportedly closing the security holes that allowed the attack.

Enough with the updates, already!

This was the year that online social media exploded. That’s good news for the future of Facebook, Twitter and the like.

But sometimes it just got to be a bit too much.

Members of Congress abandoned any pretense of paying attention to President Obama’s State of the Union speech by updating their Twitter feeds as he was speaking.

There was the groom who updated his Facebook relationship status at the altar. And the women who tweeted during childbirth. [In fairness, the most high-profile tweeting new mom was Sara Williams, wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams].

And that’s not even mentioning all those friend requests you got from your grade-school teachers and members of your mom’s knitting circle.

Hyped-up Conficker fails

This is a failure we’re glad to report.

The Conficker worm was, by all accounts, a serious bit of malware that infected as many as 10 million computers worldwide. Instead of attacking those computers, it was designed to control them, paving the way for later attacks.

When researchers spotted the date April 1 in the worm’s coding, speculation began mounting that a major April Fools’ Day attack was on its way. Instead, it was mostly quiet — a false alarm of Y2K proportions.

“I think the joke’s on us a little bit, which you would have expected, having an April 1 date,” Holly Stewart, threat response manager for IBM’s X-Force, a computer security service, said at the time.

Attacks cripple Twitter, Facebook

On August 6, the concept of computer addiction didn’t seem so silly.

A massive denial-of-service attack hit Twitter, Facebook and the LiveJournal blogging site. Twitter was by far the hardest hit, completely blacking out for several hours.

The attacks were believed to have targeted a blogger in the country of Georgia who had been critical of Russia. The attacks, the blogger said, coincided with the one-year anniversary of renewed violence between the two countries.

What was telling was how freaked out people became. Users described feeling naked, jittery and upset without the ability to post on Twitter. When the site came back up, the top topic of conversation was the hashtag for “When Twitter Was Down.”

Gmail crashes

We heard some different views on this year’s string of outages or slowdowns of Google’s popular e-mail system.

Some thought coverage was overblown.

But as more computing power moves “into the cloud,” people and businesses are relying on programs like Gmail not just for e-mails, but to archive documents, chat with friends or co-workers and store contact information.

Gmail went through several high-profile crashes in 2009, including one in February and two in September. While e-mail crashes are nothing new to any provider, 2009’s were the first since Google begain offering offline support.

Response to the crashes simultaneously showed how many people depend on Gmail and how easy it is to make fun of those people. Social-networking blog Mashable responded with a list of five things to do while Gmail is down (No. 1: “Immediately flood Twitter with tweets alternately proclaiming, ‘Gmail is down!’ and inquiring, ‘Is Gmail down?’ “)

I got Google Wave — now what?

OK, so it’s a little early in the game to call this one a total fail. But after the breathless anticipation that greeted Google Wave and the hot rush to get an invitation for its beta testing, lots of users found themselves asking, “OK … now what?”

Google, for its part, released an 80-minute tutorial video — leading some observers to argue that if you need an hour and 20 minutes to explain what your product does, you might be in trouble.

It’s designed as a platform to allow users to communicate and collaborate in real time — a tool some predict will be used effectively by developers in the future.

But for now, it’s inspired the creation of a Web site — Easier to Understand Than Wave — on which users compare the online tool to other sometimes obtuse subjects (Both Ozzy Osbourne and the geopolitical climate of Southeast Asia are easier to understand than Wave, users voted, while Sarah Palin and Scientology are both more difficult).

www.cnn.com

One of the world’s largest media agencies has cut its forecast for global advertising spending in 2009, casting doubt on hopes of a near-term recovery for broadcasters and publishers in western markets.

Carat, Aegis’s media agency, now expects worldwide advertising expenditure to fall 9.8 per cent this year, having forecast a 5.8 per cent decline in March.

The US and western Europe face the most significant downgrade, with ad spend expected to drop 16.3 per cent and 11.0 per cent respectively in 2009.

But the Russian ad market – which grew by 16.6 per cent last year – is now expected to plummet 21.9 per cent in 2009.

Carat nudged up its global forecasts for 2010 to growth of 1 per cent from 0.7 per cent, but western Europe and the US are still expected to decline next year.

The downbeat outlook comes as the chiefs of WPP and Havas, rivals to Aegis, warned that they saw few signs of recovery in the media markets.

Fernando Rodés Vilà, Havas chief executive, said on Wednesday that he did not see “solid signs” of an upturn. He told Reuters he expects a 7 to 11 per cent decline in worldwide advertising this year.

The admen’s gloom contrasts with hope at media owners such as ITV, JCDecaux and News Corporation that the bottom of the market had been reached.

Yet the internet is the only medium expected to show growth this year, albeit at just 1 per cent, after 16.4 per cent growth in 2008.

Carat reduced its forecast for television advertising’s decline from 3.7 per cent to 6.3 per cent in 2009 globally. Newspapers and magazines are projected to fall around 17 per cent, while radio could fall 12.4 per cent.

That shift would see online reach a 10 per cent share of worldwide advertising spend for the first time this year.

In the first half of 2009, the UK became the first major media market where online overtook TV to become the largest advertising platform, according to PwC and the Internet Advertising Bureau.

As a result of the perilous declines in advertising revenues, publishers are looking to new sources of revenue. A UK poll of the Association of Online Publishers found 70 per cent expect to charge for accessing content on the web within the next year.

The UK is set to see total ad spend fall 11.7 per cent this year, according to Carat, with only internet and cinema advertising escaping a double-digit decline. A modest recovery of 1.4 per cent growth is expected in the UK in 2010, while the US ad market will drop another 2.6 per cent.

“We expect the market to bottom out in North America and Europe, and to improve further in developing markets” next year, said Mr Buhlmann. “Even after that initial recovery, however, the global advertising market will still be below its absolute 2006 level.”

www.ft.com

We believe that the UK, parts of Europe and Asia will start to stablise.

“In an environment where clients are focusing on the value they can get from their media spend, they want proven and accountable communications. This could be one reason for the relative resilience we are seeing in TV and online.”

The US and Spain have the most severe falls in growth, with forecasts predicting -9.8% and -16.5% respectively. They are also both predicted to record negative growth into 2010. The UK, France and Italy are forecast to have single digit declines in 2009, moving back into positive territory for the following year. Japan is forecast for a -5.5% reduction in spend for 2009.
Germany and Canada seem less volatile, in relative terms, with one or two percentage points of negative growth predicted. And with a prediction of 4.6% for 2009, China is the only major market with positive growth, albeit well below the 18.9% recorded for 2008.

www.carat.com