Webware 100: The official 2009 kickoff
Welcome to the 2009 Webware 100 awards!
They're back! Just as they did in 2007 and 2008, the 2009 Webware 100 Awards will honor the people's choice for the best Web 2.0 apps and services. Last year, nearly 2 million votes were cast to determine the most popular Web apps. This year, the apps are better and the market is even more competitive, so we expect a vigorous contest.
There are 10 categories users can vote on in the Webware 100, plus an 11th category for Webware editors' special awards. Each category will have 10 winners. The categories this year are:
- Audio and music: Music streaming and download, podcasting, audio book services, recommendation systems.
- Browsing: Tools to access online content, including browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, and runtime engines
- Commerce: Retail, auctions, marketplaces, travel, event tickets, and real estate
- Communications: E-mail, chat, voice
- Infrastructure and storage: Web app platforms and tools; online storage and synchronization products
- Location-based services: Mapping, friend finders, business locators, geographic services (new category for 2009)
- Photo and video: Photo storage, sharing, and editing; video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation
- Productivity: Tools for work and organization
- Search and reference: Data and ways to find it; search tools and knowledge repositories like wikis
- Social and publishing: Social networking, shared online environments, content management, blogging, and micro-blogging
- Editors' awards: To be announced, but these will include awards for up-and-coming products, design, innovative use of technology, and so on.
See the previous years' winners: 2008 | 2007
Nominations are open
Nominations for 2009 Webware 100 are now open. If there's a service you think people should be voting for, nominate it now. Nominations will close on March 6. See full terms and conditions.
There's no need to nominate a site more than once, or to encourage friends to nominate a site that you have already nominated. Reserve your grassroots efforts for the voting phase, which will start after we've processed all the nominations.
All live sites that have been covered in the Webware blog so far will be automatically nominated, but if you are an official representative for a product that we've written up, please nominate your product and enter your contact information so we can contact you when necessary as the Webware 100 process progresses.
Qualifications for nomination: The service must be live by March 1, 2009. It's OK if it's in beta, but it must be an open beta. The site must be entered into 1 of our 10 user-voting categories. We reserve the right to recategorize nominations.
Once the nominations are closed, Webware editors will go over the entries, remove the non-qualifying and duplicate nominations, and make sure all services are in the correct category. Then we'll select the best services in each category for the finalist round. We'll make sure the most important, most innovative, and most useful products are selected as Webware 100 finalists.
Voting starts on March 31
Users will be able to vote on their favorite webware in each category. Voting will happen on the Webware site, and we also will distribute voting buttons and code to the finalists that they can put on their sites.
Voting will run through April. The top 10 services in each category, and the 10 additional editors' picks, will be crowned the 2009 Webware 100 on May 19.
Nominations are open now. What are your favorite Web apps and services?
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
