Shockingly, despite millions of bloggers and podcasters generating original content on the Web, relatively few individual efforts will be recognized at the 10th annual Webby Awards dinner next month in New York.
Winners, announced today, have a definite corporate-patina: ESPN, HBO, Expedia, Burst! Media, and so on. In the 12 months since the last Webbys, notable for the rising voice of the little guy, the Webby Awards will pay almost no notice. The June 12th dinner will be sparkling, unfortunately with, as the news release puts it, "industry leaders (and) celebrities." Same old, same old.
Arianna Huffington's year-old HuffingtonPost.com Web log grabbed first place honors for best political blog from both the Webby Award judges and the event's own People's Choice voters. It was one of 19 sites to win nods from both judges and voters on the site. Organizers said 300,000 votes were cast in the People's Choice balloting in 69 business, consumer and culture categories.
Web log winners in the "personal" category were We-Make-Money-Not-Art.com, Cute Overload. In the "Business" category, awards go to 5 Blogs before Lunch and Gartner Inc. No individual podcasts won, none was nominated. The award went to directories of podcasts from Yahoo and NPR.
There's no question that it's getting more complicated and competitive to be a $uccessful web site, and to have the resources to do new and cool and multimedia things.
At heart, tho, I'm a "content" guy. And with all the value in blogs and podcasts, I'm just disappointed so little of that talent, dedication, and even sacrifice is being recogized.
Maybe it's time for ANOTHER awards competition.
??
Frank
Posted by: Frank Barnako | May 09, 2006 at 19:36
I dutifully went through and voted based not on popularity -- I hadn't known of many -- but my experience with the websites listed on the Webby Awards' People's Voice website. Having been online since the 70s (ARPANET), with a design career, I'd figured at least some of my votes would be in the majority. Wrong.
While I applaud many of the winners for good work (for example, who can argue that the BBC News provides an excellent news website?), I agree with you, Frank: unless you're big and institutional, your chances of winning a Webby are slim to none.
I do urge your readers to check out the award nominees, however: several merit their attention. I loved the Big Fat Institute For Advanced Interactive Experiences (http://www.bigfatinstitute.org/) and Organic City (http://theorganiccity.org/). These and other entrants showed real passion, not just a passion for sales.
Posted by: Bob Jacobson | May 09, 2006 at 19:28
I tried to be interested, checked the Webby page, and clicked one "winning" link that resized my browser window and started a very artistic but absolutely useless flash animation. I couldn't close the page fast enough and have no interest in anything that might be published on that site.
If a site that commandeers my display is a winner then the Webby Awards and their selected sites are complete losers.
Posted by: Scottitude | May 09, 2006 at 16:55