There are plenty of new cool, James Bond-esque inventions every year. But inventions like an aqua car or artificial heart aren’t for this list. No, this list is for websites that have changed our lives. We use many so frequently that it is hard to imagine life without them now that we have them.

It really is quite amazing what has been invented in the past decade and how we have become a society of virtual relationships.

So Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010. 

Here’s a list of the

Top Ten Most Useful Websites of This Decade 

YEAR: 2000

No. 1  The decade kicked off with Pandora. Using a now-patented algorithm that “captures the essence of music at the fundamental level” by using ”almost 400 attributes to describe songs” and a complex mathematical formula, the group of  William T. Glaser, Timothy B. Westergren, Jeffrey P. Stearns, and Jonathan M. Kraft created the Music Genome Project which resulted in Pandora.

YEAR: 2001

No. 2  How many of us now look up information on Wikipedia? (Okay I can hear a collective cringe by some, but it is a good  place to start for the basics.) I just can’t image life without it. According to it’s founder, Jimmy Wales, more than 340 million people use Wikipedia every month. Wales started Wikipedia in 2001 growing it into a non-profit in 2003.  Wikipedia now contains more than 13 million articles in 271 different languages, according to a Time.com article that was published in August 2009.  

YEAR: 2002

No. 3 LinkedIn Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003. Many people don’t use LinkedIn enough. It’s a great place to find work and connect with those you want to keep in your professional network.

YEAR: 2003

No. 4 Yelp. Sure it’s had problems. The review website was caught in 2008 allowing businesses with negative reviews to pay (see story here) with a “Sponsorship Program”  that pushed more positive reviews to the top. It still is one of the top go-to sites that many use on a daily basis for information about everything from doctors to restaurants. Former PayPal engineers Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons created Yelp with the help of a US$ 1 million investment from their former boss, PayPal founder Max Levchin in 2003.

Image via CrunchBase

No. 5 MySpace. Yes, before there was Facebook there was the 2002 launch of Friendster, and then the launch of MySpace in August 2003 which became the most popular social networking site in June 2006 before being taken over by Facebook in April 2008.  It’s passé now, but at the time it served a purpose that helped get us to where we are today.

No. 6  Hello talk time. I LOVE Skype. If you haven’t used it, you are  missing out. It changed my life because for $2.95 a month I can make unlimited calls to anywhere in the United States. Plus it drastically helped me make very inexpensive international phone calls, which is terrific when you have to interview someone in Australia or South Korea.  (It’s also free. You can sign up and talk free to people who also have Skype. And if they don’t they can sign up for free. It’s ingenious.) It’s just like picking up a telephone, only the number pad is on the computer and you wear a headset.) Skype launched in August 2003. Now more than 521 million use it.

YEAR: 2004

Image via CrunchBase

No. 7 Facebook. Harvard graduate Mark Zuckerberg invented Facemash on October 28, 2003 and launched Facebook in January 2004. Most people can’t image life without it.

No. 8 Just about everyone knows this site: Flickr. Share  your photos for free or watermark them to showcase your portfolio. Everyone from amateurs to professionals are on it. The beauty is having the Creative Commons tag which allows others to use your photos for free.  in 2004  

 YEAR: 2005

No. 9   YouTube  Videos here have made us laugh and cry for years. It also helped birth reality t.v. (ugg) and the birth of YouTube sensations like Susan Boyle.  The trifecta of Taiwan’s Steve Chen, Chad Hurley of Pennsylvania, and German-born Jawed Karim, who met while working together at PayPal created YouTube in February 2005. (In case you were wondering: Google bought YouTube in November 2006 for $1.65 billion.)

YEAR: 2006

No. 10 Twitter. A lot of people are still trying to figure out Twitter’s purpose. But it’s like a constant newsfeed and a great source for finding information from people and sources you trust and letting other people know about your business or personal life. It also is ingenious insight into how people think. 140 characters or less is the average attention span of a person today. The site publicly launched in August of 2006. While it won’t change the world it certainly is a great tool to use.

HONORABLE MENTION: Hulu (Created 2007)

* Please note Google (1998), Craigslist (1995) Amazon (founded 1994/launched 1995) and Ebay (1995) were created in the 1990’s.