Once upon a time it was up to the pundits to put together their own selections of the most important stuff from the past 12 months.

Now, it's machines that read back the things that moved their little dials most in 2010

Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook have all released reports on the top trending searches, tweets and status messages.

In short, it's been a brilliant year for Justin Bieber, and for the Chilean miners (apart from the first 69 days, of course). Vuvuzelas, the World Cup and the psychic Octopus called Paul all larged it too.

Throughout 2010 trending stuff was more important, interesting and shareable than anything that didn't trend. Anything not trending is now officially forgettable. My prediction for 2011 is that trending will continue to trend. Yep, trending is here to stay.

And if you haven't seen it have a good look at YouTube's new trending tool, "YouTube Trends". It's never been easier to spot trending things and spread them even more. The trending timeline sounds particularly brilliant (although I haven't found it yet - it looks good in the video.

Simply ace.