2000 to 2009: The Rise of Social Networks and Economic Crises - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 274

Toward the end of this decade, cloud and software as a service (SaaS) applica-
tions began to expand in numbers. In addition, smartphone and tablet applications
entered the arena and are now on an explosive growth path. As of 2010, the world
total of programming languages topped 2,500.
The topic of “big data” (or heterogeneous collections of large volumes of in-
formation) would start to attract interest during this decade, as would the field of
predictive analytics. In fact, big data and predictive analytics form a synergistic
combination.
Companies Formed During the 2000s
In spite of the economic damages caused by the two burst bubbles of this decade,
many new companies were founded, including Facebook and Twitter, which both
grew rapidly to have millions of customers and earn billions of dollars. Table 9.1
shows a representative sample of companies started from 2000 to 2009.