Link Post for December 25th through December 27th

This is the A2SM Link Post for December 25th through December 27th:

• 2009 As Seen Through Twitter Hashtags – You may have seen Twitter’s recently announced most discussed topics of ‘09. The list really highlights the gravity of this important year: A new US President was sworn into office, celebrities died and celebrities were born, there were revolutions, there were pandemics, and technology continued its rapid advance.
• The Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010 – Below is our list of the top ten IPO candidates for 2010 in the technology industry (and, no, it doesn’t include Twitter).
• 64% Prefer Old Twitter Retweets to New Style – We mixed up our weekly Web Faceoff series a bit this time, with a novel head-to-head battle between Twitter’s old and new style of retweets. In the previous 3-way matchup we saw Digg beat out Reddit and StumbleUpon for social news supremacy, and this week we saw another heated battle come to a close with perhaps a surprising winner.
• Drunk Drivers in Texas to Be Named on Twitter – Drunk driving in Montgomery County, Texas, this holiday season? Expect to see your name in Tweets, as the local district attorney’s office has vowed to name and shame drunk drivers on Twitter.
• Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown – Just when you thought you had enough social networks in your life, two hot new ones are vying for your attention. Combine the benefits of sites like Yelp, Twitter, and Google Latitude, add in social gaming and some privacy measures, and you have the recipe that Foursquare, the app that’s been called “next year’s Twitter,” by Mashable’s own Pete Cashmore, and its chief competitor, Gowalla, are cooking. Each has attracted a rapidly growing user base in 2009, and each is rushing madly to beat the other to your smartphone in 2010.