Time’s top 50 websites champion the smaller players

Time magazine has released its annual Top 50 websites feature and this year – unlike last year’s list – isn’t as predictable as you think.

In a sometimes strained bid to remove itself from the predictability of last year’s list – which included Google, YouTube, Facebook and Skype – Time magazine’s Top 50 Website’s of 2010 has opted to give some of the smaller hitters a boost in 2010.

By a boost we mean that the likes of Google, YouTube and Facebook didn’t even make the list.

YouTube rival Vimeo – a “respectful” community website of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos – made the number one spot -for being more intuitive than YouTube.

Gowalla was dubbed more fun than Foursquare and LinkedIn was rated as “informative without being intrusive, for opening the channels of communication without veering too casual or random, LinkedIn is the forum we still believe in,” according to the magazine.

WikiLeaks has made the top five News and Info list, but then again, so has The Onion.

The list is accompanied by the magazine’s own complementary piece, “The Five Most Overratted Websites”.

News Corp’s MySpace gets its regular pasting for not being innovative enough, while Craigslist is too boring, even for a classifieds listing.

The real interest is the vote against news aggregator slash social network Digg, criticised again for not keeping up with the likes of social networking heavyweight Facebook.

Here’s the full Top 50 list:

1. Vimeo
2. Movieclips
3. Grooveshark
4. MOG
5. Labuat
6. Sports-Reference
7. Rotoworld
8. Yardbarker
9. Total Pro Sports
10. Citizen Sports
11. Design Mom
12. Serious Eats
13. Babble
14. Etsy
15. Sesame Street
16. Guardian
17. The Onion
18. The Daily Beast
19. National Geographic
20. WikiLeaks
21. Mint
22. Wikinvest
23. StcokMapper
24. Springpad
25. Wakerupper
26. Groupon
27. Gilt Groupe
28. Rent the Runway
29. Stay
30. SeatGuru
31. Keas
32. Mayo Clinic
33. Walk Jog Run
34. Exercise TV
35. Fit by Fun
36. Gowalla
37. Foodspotting
38. LinkedIn
39. StockTwits
40. Tumblr
41. Kongregate
42. Cactus Squid
43. Pogo
44. Newgrounds
45. Games.com
46. Livemocha
47. Chegg
48. MIT OpenCourseWare
49. Read Print
50. TED