Webby Awards
Encyclopedia
A Webby Award is an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences or IADAS was founded in 1998 in New York to help drive the progress of the Internet and evolving forms of new media. The academy selects the nominees and winners for the Webby Awards, and their European equivalent, the Lovie Awards.Membership...

 for excellence on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile.

Two winners are selected in each category, one by members of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences or IADAS was founded in 1998 in New York to help drive the progress of the Internet and evolving forms of new media. The academy selects the nominees and winners for the Webby Awards, and their European equivalent, the Lovie Awards.Membership...

, and one by the public who cast their votes during Webby People’s Voice voting.

The award is one of the older and better-known internet-oriented awards and has come to be associated with the phrase "The Oscars of the Internet".

History

The Webby's were founded by Tiffany Shlain
Tiffany Shlain
Tiffany Shlain is an American filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards. Recognized by Newsweek as "one of the women shaping the 21st century."-Bio:...

 when she was hired by the The Web Magazine (an IDG Publication) to establish the awards. The event was held in San Francisco from 1996 to 2004 and quickly became known for their "5 word Acceptance Speeches". After the first year the awards became more successful than the magazine and IDG closed the publication. Shlain continued to run The Webby Awards with the help of Maya Draisin until 2004.

The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences or IADAS was founded in 1998 in New York to help drive the progress of the Internet and evolving forms of new media. The academy selects the nominees and winners for the Webby Awards, and their European equivalent, the Lovie Awards.Membership...

, which selects the winners of The Webby Awards, was established in 1998 by co-founders Tiffany Shlain
Tiffany Shlain
Tiffany Shlain is an American filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards. Recognized by Newsweek as "one of the women shaping the 21st century."-Bio:...

, Spencer Ante and Maya Draisin. Members of the Academy include David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

, Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart is an American business magnate, author, magazine publisher, and television personality. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she has gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing publishing, broadcasting, and merchandising...

, Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein, CBE is an American film producer and movie studio chairman. He is best known as co-founder of Miramax Films. He and his brother Bob have been co-chairmen of The Weinstein Company, their film production company, since 2005...

, Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington is a Greek American author and syndicated columnist. She is best known as co-founder of the news website The Huffington Post. A popular conservative commentator in the mid-1990s, she adopted more liberal political beliefs in the late 1990s...

, Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....

, Biz Stone
Biz Stone
Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone is a co-founder and Creative Director of Twitter, Inc and also helped to create and launch Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and , founded in June 2011 with his long time collaborators Evan Williams and Jason Goldman to focus on building systems that help people work together to...

, Internet inventor Vint Cerf
Vint Cerf
Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf is an American computer scientist, who is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with American computer scientist Bob Kahn...

, Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies....

, and R/GA Chairman and CEO Bob Greenberg
Bob Greenberg
Bob Greenberg was an employee of Microsoft who left Microsoft in 1981 and then helped launch the Cabbage Patch Dolls that were popular in the 1980s...

.

Since 2005, The Webby Awards has been operated and owned by Recognition Media, which also operates the Telly Awards
Telly Awards
The Telly Award is an award presented by the namesake, New York City-based organization. The stated purpose of the award is to "honor the very best local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions, and work created for the Web." The...

 and other awards programs.
In 2006, The Webby Awards launched new categories honoring interactive advertising and original film and video that premiered on the Internet.

In 2007, The Webby Awards launched new categories honoring mobile Websites.

In 2009, the thirteenth Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries. That same year, over 500,000 votes were cast in The Webby People's Voice Awards.

Nominative Procession

Thousands of entries are submitted during the Call for Entries procession, and each is first rated by Associate Members of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences. Entries that receive the highest marks during this first round of voting are included on category-specific shortlists and further evaluated by Executive Members of the Academy.

Executive Academy Members with category-specific expertise evaluate the shortlisted entries based on the appropriate Website, Interactive Advertising & Media and Film & Video criteria, and cast ballots to determine Webby Honorees, Nominees and Webby Winners. Price Waterhouse Coopers audits the results.

In addition to the award given in each category by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, another winner is selected in each category as determined by the general public during People’s Voice voting. Winners of both the Academy-selected and People’s Voice-selected awards are invited to the Webbys.

Awards granted

The Webby Awards are presented in over a hundred categories among all four types of entries. A website can be entered in multiple categories and receive multiple awards.

In each category, two awards are handed out: a Webby Award selected by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences or IADAS was founded in 1998 in New York to help drive the progress of the Internet and evolving forms of new media. The academy selects the nominees and winners for the Webby Awards, and their European equivalent, the Lovie Awards.Membership...

, and a People's Voice Award selected by the general public.

Past winners include Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

, eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

, SimplyHired.com, Kayak.com
Kayak.com
KAYAK is a technology company providing online travel tools through its global family of websites and mobile applications. Started by cofounders of Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity, KAYAK allows users to compare information from hundreds of other travel websites in one display when booking travel...

, Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

, iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, FedEx
FedEx
FedEx Corporation , originally known as FDX Corporation, is a logistics services company, based in the United States with headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee...

, BBC News
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...

, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

, MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox
Annie Lennox, OBE , born Ann Lennox, is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving minor success in the late 1970s with The Tourists, with fellow musician David A...

, NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

, Salon Magazine, Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

, Meetup, Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

, Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...

, ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....

, Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....

, PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

, The Onion
The Onion
The Onion is an American news satire organization. It is an entertainment newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club...

 News Network, The Office
The Office
The Office is a popular mockumentary/situation comedy TV show that was first made in the UK and has now been re-made in many other countries, with overall viewership in the hundreds of millions worldwide. The original version of The Office was created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. It...

 Webisodes, and My Damn Channel
My Damn Channel
My Damn Channel is an entertainment website.- History :My Damn Channel was founded by Rob Barnett. It launched July 31, 2007.Named one of the 50 Best Websites of 2011 by TIME Magazine...

.

Each year, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences also honors individuals with Webby Special Achievement Awards. Past Webby Special Achievement winners include Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

, Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...

, David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

, Meg Whitman
Meg Whitman
Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman is an American business executive. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard. A native of Long Island, New York, she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School...

, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels, CM is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.-Early life:...

, Craig Newmark
Craig Newmark
Craig Alexander Newmark is an Internet entrepreneur best known for being the founder of the San Francisco-based international website Craigslist.-Biography:...

, Thomas Friedman
Thomas Friedman
Thomas Lauren Friedman is an American journalist, columnist and author. He writes a twice-weekly column for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs including global trade, the Middle East, and environmental issues and has won the Pulitzer Prize three times.-Personal...

, Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...

, Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry is an Academy Award winning filmmaker, whose works include being a commercial director, music video director, and a screenwriter. He is noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scène. - Life and career :...

 and the Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....

.

Ceremony

Since 2005, The Webby Awards has been presented in New York City. Comedian Rob Corddry
Rob Corddry
Robert William "Rob" Corddry is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his work as a former correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and for his starring role in the comedy film Hot Tub Time Machine...

 hosted the ceremony from 2005 to 2007. Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers
Seth Adam Meyers is an American actor and comedian. He currently serves as head writer for Saturday Night Live and hosts its news parody segment Weekend Update.-Early life:...

 of Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

 hosted in 2008 and 2009, and in 2010 the host was B.J. Novak of NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

's The Office
The Office
The Office is a popular mockumentary/situation comedy TV show that was first made in the UK and has now been re-made in many other countries, with overall viewership in the hundreds of millions worldwide. The original version of The Office was created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. It...

.

The Webbys are famous for limiting recipients to five-word speeches, which are often humorous, although some exceed the limit. In 2005 when accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award, former Vice President Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

's speech was "Please don't recount
Florida election recount
The Florida election recount of 2000 was a period of vote re-counting that occurred following the unclear results of the 2000 United States presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, specifically the Florida results. The election was ultimately settled in favor of George W. Bush when...

 this vote." He was introduced by Vint Cerf
Vint Cerf
Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf is an American computer scientist, who is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with American computer scientist Bob Kahn...

 who used the same format to state, "We all invented the Internet." In 2008, Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...

 shouted “Me. Me. Me. Me. Me” when accepting his award for Webby Person of the Year. Accepting the award for Best Political Blog in 2008, Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington is a Greek American author and syndicated columnist. She is best known as co-founder of the news website The Huffington Post. A popular conservative commentator in the mid-1990s, she adopted more liberal political beliefs in the late 1990s...

’s speech was “President Obama ... Sounds good, right?"

Other popular speeches include "Can anyone fix my computer?" (the Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....

); "Everything you think is true" (Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...

); "Thank God Conan got promoted" (Jimmy Fallon
Jimmy Fallon
James Thomas "Jimmy" Fallon, Jr. is an American actor, comedian, singer, musician and television host. He currently hosts Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, a late-night talk show that airs Monday through Friday on NBC...

), "Free, open... Keep one Web" (Sir Tim Berners Lee), “Holy - Fucking - Shit, Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history...

" (Jake Hurwitz), and "Holocaust. Did it happen?
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...

 Yes." (Sarah Silverman
Sarah Silverman
Sarah Kate Silverman is a Jewish American comedian, writer, actress, singer and musician. Her satirical comedy addresses social taboos and controversial topics such as racism, sexism, and religion....

).

Criticism

The Webbies have been criticized for their pay-to-enter and pay-to-attend policy (winners and nominees also have to pay to attend the award ceremony), and thus for not taking most websites into consideration before distributing their awards. Gawker, its Valleywag
Valleywag
Valleywag was a Gawker Media blog with gossip and news about Silicon Valley personalities. It was initially launched under the direction of editor Nick Douglas in February 2006. After Douglas was fired, the blog was taken over by Owen Thomas. Thomas himself left in May 2009, to be replaced by Ryan...

 column, and others, have called the awards a scam, with Valleywag saying, "...somewhere along the way, the organizers figured out that this goofy charade could be milked for profit."

In response, Webby Awards Executive Director David-Michel Davies told the Wall Street Journal that entry fees “provide the best and most sustainable model for ensuring that our judging process remains consistent and rigorous and is not dependent on things like sponsorships that can fluctuate from year to year.”

See also

  • Interactive Media Awards
  • International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
    International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
    The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences or IADAS was founded in 1998 in New York to help drive the progress of the Internet and evolving forms of new media. The academy selects the nominees and winners for the Webby Awards, and their European equivalent, the Lovie Awards.Membership...

  • Streamy Awards
    Streamy Awards
    The Streamy Awards, popularly known as the Streamys, are presented annually by the International Academy of Web Television to recognize excellence in the arts and science of web television production, including directing, acting, producing, and writing. The formal ceremony at which the awards are...

  • WebAwards

Further reading


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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