Webby Awards 2009

Back in March we had the Gaming BAFTA Award Winners 2009, the awards that celebrated achievement in the gaming world; but that’s not the only computer orientated awards out there – the internet also has its own awards ceremony that rewards those that have stood out in the world of the web, the Webby Awards.

And yesterday was the date for the 13th Annual Webby Awards and with just under 70 categories from ‘News’ to ‘Best Use of Typography’ and from ‘Banking/Bill paying’ (I know, one category for both, ridiculous! :p) to ‘Weird’ there really is an award for everyone.

However, I think it’s important to point out the major flaw with these awards before I go on, and simultaneously explain why Zath.co.uk hasn’t won any. It was of course because we were not entered as both a pay-on-entry and pay-on-attend policies are in effect and although both generate revenue, both also put off some of the smaller websites that may otherwise win awards.

But on with the awards; but before you all leave in fear of probable boredom due to the very large number of awards (in fact they only allow 5 word acceptant speeches to save on time) I will only look at the highlights – feel free to go through the whole list (including nominations) via the link on the bottom of the page. It’s also worth noting that not only are there Webby Awards but also People’s Voice awards which are voted for by the public; although this does often correlate to the Webby Awards I will concentrate on the latter.

First the multiple award winners, and it may come as a surprise to find that the three sites to win more than award were all News related: the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times. The Guardian heads the group with three awards – for podcasts, religion and spirituality, and (for the fourth time in five years) newspaper website.

The BBC won the award for lifestyle with its climate change initiative Bloom as well as best news website, and the New York Times won best copy/writing and best practices. Although they may not seem like the most obvious sites to ‘dominate’ the web, many of the other well known sites managed to win awards: the Huffington Post won ‘Politics Website’ category and NIKEid won the ‘Retail’ award.

The majority of the rest of the awards are made up of websites that you won’t necessarily have visited – like the ‘Turbo Gene Test’ from Saab which is very innovative in the way in which it guides you through the ‘car selection’ process – and it is very refreshing to visit some of these to discover some of the less well known sites.

But of course there are some pretty big categories – for example Digg won the Social Networking award and the best community award went to Yahoo owned Flickr; and of course it wouldn’t be complete without Twitter winning something, they got the Webby award for ‘Breakout of the Year’.

I have only really begun to scratch the surface of the the Webby Awards and the wealth of talent that is out there on the internet, and I would encourage you to have a look on the list and go on a few of the ones you haven’t heard of – you may be surprised!

Via – Webby Awards

Related Pages:

1. Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 2009 Nomination for Zath
2. BAFTA Video Games Awards Winners 2009
3. BAFTA Video Games Awards 2009 Nominations – Part 2
4. BAFTA Video Games Awards 2009 Nominations – Part 1
5. BAFTA Video Games Awards 2010 Winners

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