It feels like just yesterday I was writing the yearly review for 2010, but believe it or not, another year has passed again. It’s time to recall what 2011 brought to WOT.
Key numbers & Service development
We started the year with 16 million downloads. 20 million downloads was reached in May, and now, right this moment, the exact number is 29,520,920 (which keeps growing fast, so check the counter on our front page for the exact number). Firefox still remains the most popular add-on among WOT users, but Google Chrome’s catching up fast and helped make the 3rd of November a day that will be remembered for the daily download record of all times – 80,000 downloads in just one day! (NB: We broke the record several days in a row and therefore the date and the number is different on the linked blog post.) We will break that soon again so let’s not get too exited… 😉
To serve our users the best possible way it’s important to make sure they see the WOT donuts where they need them. 2011 brought relief to those who like to network safely online: WOT reputation icons are now also visible on social networking sites Facebook, its Russian equivalent Vkontakte, on Twitter, and on several other popular sites. They are also shown for shortened URLs. The add-on’s now available in 15 languages, the newest being Korean – Thanks to our lovely intern Kaye who was with us for the first half of the year.
Business & Legal matters
Businesswise, 2011 was fruitful. In May, Facebook started using WOT to warn its users of potentially untrustworthy links. It was a great honor to us to be one of Facebook’s first security partners. In August, Russia’s leading free email service Mail.ru also started using WOT’s reputation database to protect its users. These reference cases give strong evidence that we’re going to the right direction.
Despite the promising numbers and achievements, the year wasn’t all sunshine and butterflies. In February, WOT was sued in Florida by ten Internet companies that demanded WOT to remove ratings and comments for their sites. As we expected, the claims were baseless and the judge dismissed the case with prejudice. The freedom of speech won.
What will 2012 bring?
Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
This is a good starting point for 2012, and we look forward to new challenges and opportunities it will bring. Big things are coming up, and we’ll let you know more when the time comes. Thank you all for the great year 2011, and we hope you will stay with us for many years to come! Happy New Year 2012!