In 2010 the Ushahidi community managed to shift the way information flows in this world, just a little bit, and these repercussions will be felt for a long time to come. This year has been an exciting year for the Ushahidi organization, with major upgrades in the platform(s), greater visibility globally and amazing deployments around the world.

This was a year of focusing on architectural upgrades and changes, as well as getting SwiftRiver off the ground and Crowdmap built. All big, engineer-heavy, work. This was led by the core dev team, and augmented by the volunteer community that make Ushahidi what it is as an organization.

With the deployments of Ushahidi picking up, there’s been an increasing engagement with user communities. This includes the outstanding teams at Tufts and Columbia who worked on the Haiti and Chile work, but also the teams behind the work in Pakistan, Russia, Sudan and others, many of who are part of the newly formed Konpa Group. These relationships have spurred on a new community section of the website which rolls out in a couple weeks.

Some of the Big Items:

• 2 Ushahidi core builds, including a plugin architecture [Video]
• SwiftRiver‘s accelerated development [Video]
• Crowdmap released and (big) uptake
• Ushahidi (org) involved in deployments: Haiti [Video], Kenya [Video], Tanzania, etc.
• Other’s (massive) deployments: Pakistan, Russia, BP Oilspill [Video], Chile, etc.
• Major media use: BBC, Washington Post, The Guardian, South China Morning Post
• Universities for Ushahidi program launched
• Ushahidi.com & Community section design and replumbing
• Brought on 6 new core members, doubling the size of the team
• iHub buildout
• 4 awards
• Mobile apps for Android, iPhone/iPad, WinMo and SMSsync
• Major media
• Big talks by the whole team from PopTech to Lift (and most places in between)

You can also find out more by watching some of the Ushahidi videos that have come out this year and we have the Ushahidi Flickr account that has screenshots of deployments and images of the team.

By the Numbers

For mid-December, here are the Ushahidi 2010 numbers. We use these as metrics against which we measure ourselves:

Ushahidi Platform Downloads

Ushahidi mobile app downloads

In addition to the platform and mobile app downloads, here are a few more numbers:

• 3,600+ externally hosted deployments
• 77 internally hosted deployments

• 4,000 Crowdmap deployments
• 21,000 internally hosted reports
• 257,000 externally hosted reports
• 22,000 Crowdmap reports

• 700,000 hosted unique users
• 1,100,000+ externally hosted unique users

Looking Forward

While 2010 has undoubtedly been a great year, we have many more plans for the year ahead. The Ushahidi, SwiftRiver and Crowdmap platforms are being used by a lot of organizations now, not just for crisis and emergency situations either. We’re excited about the future of this organization, it’s trajectory and the way that we’re starting to see fundamental changes in the way information is flowing in the different verticals that it touches.

In 2011 look for a refinement of the user experience, speed increases, usability and better integration between the tools we build. We’ll also be working on a couple more commercial pieces with clients, showing how the platforms can be used in new and interesting ways. Finally, we’re creating products based off of the Ushahidi, SwiftRiver and Crowdmap platforms that show the real market potential of what we’ve created. Standby for more on that in January.

Thanks for believing in us, and for helping us to get where we are. 2010 was amazing not because of a technology, but because of the way that you made it work in ways we didn’t dream about even a year ago. Thank you.

[Also read the SwiftRiver Update]