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Websites, products, technology, people, media, games, memes, slang and timeline events, all with sources.
A $99 black puck for renting shows and streaming Netflix
The second-generation Apple TV, announced on 1 September 2010, shrank to a tiny black box with no storage, rented TV episodes for 99 cents and films from $3.99, streamed Netflix, and previewed...
Google puts Chrome on your television
Google TV launched in October 2010 on the $299 Logitech Revue set-top box and Sony televisions, promising web search and Chrome on the big screen with a full keyboard remote. The networks blocked it...
Free TV on the web, with ads, US only
Hulu streamed current episodes of network TV shows for free with commercials, a revelation in 2010 when most television was still cable or DVD. Hulu Plus, a $9.99-a-month subscription with more...
File lockers, 72-minute limits and pirated TV
Megaupload and its video arm Megavideo were among the busiest sites on the internet in 2010, hosting everything from legitimate file transfers to full seasons of pirated television. Free viewers hit...
"Hey Apple!": the web series that became a TV show
Dane Boedigheimer's Annoying Orange, a talking orange with a human mouth and eyes, was one of the biggest channels on YouTube in 2010, with episodes routinely passing tens of millions of views. Its...
Random strangers, webcam to webcam
Chatroulette paired you with a random stranger over webcam and let either of you hit Next. Built by 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy in late 2009, it exploded in February and March 2010, inspired piano...
The show whose covers topped iTunes every week
Glee was the pop-culture juggernaut of 2010: its cast recordings sold millions on iTunes, its Madonna and Lady Gaga tribute episodes were events, and "Gleeks" organised on Tumblr and Twitter....
The series finale the internet argued about for weeks
Lost ended on 23 May 2010 with a two-and-a-half-hour finale watched by about 13.5 million Americans and dissected on forums, Twitter and recap blogs for weeks. The show's six seasons had been the...
The little box that made Netflix streaming a habit
Roku's 2010 line, the HD, XD and XDS at $59.99 to $99.99, were the cheapest way to get Netflix Watch Instantly, Hulu Plus, Pandora and Amazon on a TV. With the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3, they turned...
From a Twitter account to a CBS sitcom in a year
Justin Halpern's Twitter account quoting his father's blunt remarks gained a million followers in 2009-2010, became a bestselling book in May 2010 and a CBS sitcom starring William Shatner in...
Twelve years later, the sequel arrives
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released on 27 July 2010 and sold three million copies in its first month. It relaunched competitive real-time strategy, Battle.net 2.0 and the esports scene, with...
Anonymous drunk texts, sorted by area code
Texts From Last Night posted anonymous text messages submitted by readers, tagged only with an area code, and became a 2009-2010 phenomenon with a book deal and a TV option. Alongside FMyLife, it was...
Reaction GIFs, GIF sets and Tumblr's looping economy
Animated GIFs, a 1990s relic, came roaring back in 2010 thanks to Tumblr's reblog culture: reaction GIFs from TV shows, GIF sets of scenes, and glitter graphics ironically revived. With no native...
AMC's zombie drama arrives on Halloween 2010
The Walking Dead premiered on AMC on 31 October 2010 to 5.3 million viewers, a cable record for a series premiere, and went on to become the most-watched drama on American television. It arrived...
At its developer conference Google announced Android 2.2 Froyo with Flash support, open-sourced the VP8 codec as WebM, previewed Google TV, and launched the Google Font API.
Verified Supported Editorial Labels show how well each record is documented; open any result for its sources.
Ten billion songs sold, and the Beatles arrive
The iTunes Store was the centre of legal digital music in 2010: it passed ten billion songs sold in February, iTunes 10 arrived in September with the ill-fated Ping social network, and in November...
Hulu introduced a $9.99 subscription with full seasons and apps for the iPhone and iPad, its first step from free ad-supported TV toward paid streaming.
Apple's music event introduced Ping, a social network inside iTunes that flopped, a touchscreen iPod nano, an iPod touch with cameras, and a tiny second-generation Apple TV.
MySpace unveiled a new logo and a redesign focused on music, film and TV, conceding the social-networking fight to Facebook.
