NEW YORK--"They've created quite an industry around this whole thing," one woman in a black cocktail dress and diamond earrings commented as the lights dimmed for the start of the 13th annual Webby Awards on Monday night.
The annual awards ceremony for all things in digital media, held once again at the upscale Cipriani Wall Street restaurant, had packed the gilded space--once home to the New York Stock Exchange--with a mixed bag of folks from marketing, advertising, entrepreneurship, social media, online content, and what-have-you. (A common observation at the cocktail hour beforehand: "I don't know many people here.") It was the final event of Internet Week New York, which is co-organized by the Webby's parent, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. And it was, arguably, the most lavish.
Seth Meyers of "Saturday Night Live" hosted this year's Webbys.
(Credit: Courtesy of Webby Awards)A cheeky take on traditional entertainment awards shows, the Webbys limit acceptance speeches to five words. The opening video montage, projected on several massive video screens throughout the venue, featured goofy Internet memes like "Keyboard Cat." Red carpet interviews featured a handful of "real" celebrities (like "Saturday Night Live" actor and writer Seth Meyers, who hosted the show) along with Internet-minted stars like "Fail Blog" and "I Can Has Cheezburger" blog impresario Ben Huh, who showed up to the ceremony wearing his trademark cheeseburger hat. (Does he ever wash it? "Every once in a while," Huh told me.)
But this year, following complaints that the ceremony was simply too long, as well as to deal with the fact that the smaller Webby Film & Video awards were rolled up into the main Webbys ceremony this year, the organizers pared it down. All speeches were recorded for video to post on YouTube (a Webbys sponsor) and a select number of winners who would give their speeches live at the ceremony were chosen via random selection. More glaringly, the gulf between traditional and digital media grows slimmer with every year--as exemplified by the increasing number of "real" celebrities who are enlisted as Webby presenters and honorees, like this year's surprise guests Martha Stewart and Cameron Diaz. The Internet has come into its own as a part of life rather than a novelty. The question arises: Do we still need the Webbys?
The see-and-be-seen scene
The thing about the Webby Awards ceremony is that it isn't really an awards ceremony: it's a networking event, albeit one with ball gowns, a Seth Meyers standup routine, and Cipriani's trademark bellinis. Winners know well in advance that they've won. There's something a bit self-congratulatory about the whole thing, as the Webby Awards are bankrolled in part by entry fees that companies must submit just to be nominated, and winners have to pay for seats at the awards show. The real point, as with so many tech industry events, is to be seen, and the best way to do that at the Webbys is the five-word acceptance speech.
Get up there and do something ridiculous--as an Animoto executive did when he walked to the podium to accept his award, stripped off his suit to reveal a pair of zebra-print leggings, donned a wig inspired by the styles of '80s hair metal, and shouted, "Wooooo, thank you, New York!"--and you might get noticed by somebody who eventually approaches you at the ceremony's afterparty. Maybe it's a potential client or investor. Or just somebody who's hearing about your company for the first time and will go check it out.
Musician Trent Reznor received the Webby Artist of the Year award.
(Credit: Courtesy of Webby Awards)But that changed this year, with the organizers' decision to emphasize the more star-studded awards, bestowed upon Web-savvy celebs like comedian Sarah Silverman and industrial music icon Trent Reznor, as well as Web influentials like Twitter co-founder Biz Stone (accepting the award for "Breakout of the Year") and World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who was given a "lifetime achievement" award. Small-time winners were no longer front and center.
While some Webbys-goers welcomed the new format and how it did away with the lengthy parade of accolades that seemed to just grow longer every year, a few were grumbling that they'd reconsider whether to come back next year if they couldn't be guaranteed those five words at the podium. Listening to Seth Meyers wax philosophical about the Web ("Without the Internet, prostitutes would have to find a Craig without a list") and knowing that their taped acceptance speeches would be on YouTube the next day wasn't enough for at least a handful of winners in the crowd.
This odd dichotomy between community and celebrity might sound familiar.
"So, it's like Twitter," Klickable founder Roger Wu quipped at the noisy Webbys afterparty, held further uptown at the Hiro Ballroom nightclub. On the dance floor below, Webbys-goers were dancing up a storm (a rarity in the tech industry) to a performance by ?uestlove, a member of Jimmy Fallon's house band The Roots. It didn't look like a particularly nerdy affair.
Wu had a point. Once a geek craze, Twitter has turned into the latest vehicle for celebrity self-promotion. Ashton Kutcher's hordes of Twitter followers were what catapulted the microblogging service into the mainstream, but some have said that the community-building work accomplished by Twitter's core pack of early adopters was ignored amid the Hollywood glitz.
And the same could be said about the Webbys. A decade ago, actress Cameron Diaz likely would've snubbed the chance to show up at an Internet awards ceremony, and yet on Monday night she was up there bestowing the "Person of the Year" award to Twitter-happy late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon. The Internet isn't a niche corner of entertainment anymore; it is entertainment--but that's overwhelmingly thanks to the innovators and entrepreneurs behind the scenes, not just the actors and TV hosts who've jumped on board the hottest digital trend. Still, it's going to be the likes of Fallon and Diaz who pull in the headlines.
Digital media's triumph is cause for celebration from all sides. And the Webbys team puts on a well-run, enjoyable show every year. But the increasing presence of celebrity is a sign that maybe this is an industry that's outgrown the need for a quirky awards ceremony. Or maybe it isn't. I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd be happy to debate the point on Twitter.
A correction was made to this article: The acceptance speech involving a strip-down was from Animoto, not Ustream.
There are literally dozens of categories in the annual Webby Awards--too many, if you ask some--covering pretty much every niche of digital media. This year's winners, announced Tuesday, are quite a lot to scroll through.
The list of top honors, however, is short.
This year, the Webby Awards' Person of the Year is former "Saturday Night Life" cast member Jimmy Fallon, whose new "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" has brought Twittering and gadget fandom to the network-TV crowd.
The film-specific Person of the Year award goes to "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, who has partnered with Google on an animated Web series and whose creations consistently rank at the top of Hulu's most-watched clips.
The Artist of the Year accolade is for Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. A vocal critic of the mainstream music industry, Reznor has been skeptical of "innovative" digital distribution efforts and most recently lashed out at Apple on his blog for turning down a Nine Inch Nails iPhone app.
A new category, Breakout of the Year, joins the Webbys this year. It's been awarded to--surprise, surprise--Twitter.
The fact that the Webbys' top awards go to known entities isn't new. Its highest honors tend to go to mainstream celebrities who have built their fame offline and have then turned to the Web as a sort of experimental platform. Last year's Person of the Year awards, for example, went to comedian Stephen Colbert, director Michel Gondry, and Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am for his YouTube sensation "Yes We Can" in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
The Webbys ceremony is set for June 8 as part of Internet Week New York.
The nominations for the Webby Awards, that annual extravaganza of accolades for just about anything connected to the Internet, have been announced. Leading the pack of nominees for the 13th annual Webbys are The New York Times' nytimes.com with 13 nominations, NBC.com with 12, and The Onion with 8. There are, in case you were counting, two nominations for Fail Blog.
There are also plenty of video productions nominated, like FunnyorDie.com's "Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad" and "Children's Hospital," the comedy series on TheWB.com starring "The Daily Show" alums Rob Corddry and Ed Helms.
If you're interested in the full list, it's here.
As always, Webby winners are limited to five words for acceptance speeches. Last year, when late-night comedian Stephen Colbert accepted his award for "Person of the Year," his chosen five words were, "Me, me, me, me, me!"
What's different this year: In 2008, there were separate awards shows for the Webby Awards proper and the Film & Video offshoot. This year, perhaps because of budget cuts, both sets of awards will be presented at the same show on June 8, in conjunction with Internet Week New York. But it'll still be at its regular location at the luxe Cipriani Wall Street space--and Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers will be hosting.
I'm still crossing my fingers for a surprise performance by Rick Astley, but at this point that fad is totally over.
NEW YORK--The inaugural Internet Week New York was eight days of open bars and missed opportunities.
On the red carpet at the 12th Annual Webby Awards on Tuesday night, the final event of the week-long city-sanctioned festival, I called out to Internet Week executive director David-Michel Davies and asked him what he'd do next year to change it. "We'd like to do a better job with the schedule," he said to me after hesitating for a moment. He added a few more words about how a better calendar could help Internet Week-goers connect, before publicists snagged Davies for a string of photo ops.
That was the problem with Internet Week: connecting. But it's an issue that can't just be solved by hiring a few extra Ruby developers for the festival calendar.
As a string of individual events, Internet Week was wildly successful--there was, literally, something for everyone. Tech enthusiasts were treated to job seminars at Google, industry roundtables at Time Warner, and free beer at the "Wiimbledon" tournament. There were no fewer than four digital-ad conferences, two evenings of Webby Awards, a whole BlackBerry's worth of parties every evening, and enough power-breakfast panels to make you never want to see a cheese danish again.
The crowd at the New York Tech Meetup.
(Credit: David Karp)But even all those cheese danishes couldn't fill the sizeable gulf between Gotham's stalwart media-advertising machine and the digital start-ups popping up across the country.
It's an age-old stereotype: the friction between the big guys with the deep pockets and the business expertise who are short on new ideas, and the newcomers teeming with innovation but lacking the financial cred. And in New York's digital scene, it's a reality. Given the shaky economic conditions and uncertain outlook for the ad industry both online and offline--display ad spending dropped in the first quarter of 2008--an effort toward more cohesion in the media business would be a smart move. Internet Week was a stellar opportunity to focus on that cohesion, and it didn't happen; that's why the festival was a disappointment.
True, Internet Week was hindered from the start: because there was no central conference or event, a la South by Southwest Interactive, festival-goers were less likely to encounter new people and make new connections, and more likely to be socializing instead with the people they already knew. During the day, Internet Week's conferences were populated by ad-industry types in suits; at night, it was local entrepreneurs and their fun-loving groupies who were out on the town.
Neither party looked good in the process. It didn't do much of a service to the image of the big-media guys that they rolled into town for a handful of expensive conferences--the Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit, Digital Hollywood's Advertising 2.0 conference, ContentNext's EconAds--where, in typical New York fashion, the focus was on the money rather than the innovation.
Revelers at Thrillist's 'Information Superparty'
(Credit: Nick McGlynn/RandomNightOut.com)The tech start-up CEOs who'd been called in to speak at those conferences seemed very conscious of the ad industry's impatience. "This whole 'application economy' that was meant to emerge is really concentrating on a handful of developers," said Joanna Shields, president of Bebo, the social network acquired by AOL earlier this year, in a panel at the Conversational Marketing Summit.
She was speaking to a crowd of ad-industry types who, with pens and notebooks out, were attempting to get an idea or two on how to tackle social-media marketing campaigns. Regarding developer platforms' failure to explode into a cash cow, Shields said, "that's just the reality of the situation." In other words, the advertisers needed to calm down.
"I think it's important to also acknowledge the fact that...the concept of a platform and application developers is one year old, that's it," Gina Bianchini, CEO of the hyped social-media start-up Ning, said in the same panel about cashing in on social-network platforms. "I think that certainly everybody is motivated to enable more people to have the freedom to create and customize and use what they want where they want to use it, but we're still really early here."
On the flip side, there are those on the big-media side who perceive their start-up brethren as brash, fiscally irresponsible, and unduly disrespectful of the status quo. Some current leaders in the Valley don't disagree with the characterization.
"There's a little bit of the sense that you have to come in and tell people that things have to change and that you have to be this visionary," Bianchini told CNET News.com in an interview during Internet Week. Instead, she said, the focus should be problem-solving. "I think you have to be a lot more respectful of a business that is established."
Bianchini went on to emphasize that the dialogue between old media and new media, San Francisco Bay Area and New York, is more than crucial given the fact that she estimates the economy will be very challenging for the next year and a half. "It's going to take advertising and marketing teams a few years to catch up," she said. "(The media business) is under pressure...and I'm respectful of that, and I think online media companies need to be. That's not to say that things aren't changing."
Somewhat ironically, the brightest glimpses of industry-wide cohesion were at the Webby Awards ceremony, which some members of the New York media like to rip on for its exclusivity and ostensible irrelevance. True, the overlong ceremony and seemingly endless parade of "winners" seemed to underscore the common wisdom that the Internet industry in New York is just too jumbled and scattershot for a week-long festival.
But on the other hand, the lavish event space at Cipriani Wall Street was a more diverse crowd than Internet Week had seen yet: the heads of oddball start-up blogs were seated alongside representatives from the world's biggest media companies and advertising agencies. (I was placed, for example, between an ad strategist from the BBC and one of the editors of political activism site FactCheck.org.)
When it came to the Slinky-shaped Webby Award trophies, sometimes it was the big corporations that won. And sometimes it was the start-ups, as emphasized by the five-word acceptance speech on behalf of Web browser Flock when it won the Webby for best social-networking product: "No s***! We beat Facebook!"
Love them or hate them, the Webbys were Internet Week New York's finest example of digital media's big and small players standing side-by-side. It was a closing note that would do well as a catalyst for a hypothetical Internet Week next year: not just a way to show off the diversity of New York as a digital city, but to help it march in lockstep.
And Davies' team will likely get a chance. Considering Mayor Michael P. Bloomberg took the inaugural Internet Week as an opportunity to throw an official press conference and launch a new venture fund for local tech start-ups, signs indicate he'll want to bring it back next year.
But for the sake of the entire industry, let's just hope everyone will be using the word "monetize" about one-fifth as often.
NEW YORK--The 12th annual Webby Awards Gala on Tuesday night was, unsurprisingly, an evening devoted to all things Internet. "Without the Internet, someone like Tila Tequila would have five or six friends, max," host Seth Meyers of Saturday Night Live quipped about the Web's ability to roll out cult micro-celebrities. "Without the Internet, only Ron Paul would know who Ron Paul is."
The quotable Colbert: 'Me, me, me, me, me.'
(Credit: Comedy Central)The glitzy ceremony, held at a Greek Revival building that once housed the New York Stock Exchange and New York Merchants Exchange and now houses the upscale Cipriani Wall Street event space, celebrated just that. In a pastiche of entertainment awards shows, a moderately impressive red carpet featured Internet-famous folk in the line of "Obama Girl" and Ben Huh, the twentysomething guy from Seattle who's responsible for "I Can Has Cheezburger, as well as a few "real" celebrities like rappers Ludacris and Will.I.Am, and music icon David Byrne.
It was a marathon ceremony. With two awards given in each of a seemingly endless number of categories--a judge-chosen Webby and a vote-chosen "People's Voice"--there were so many winners that, in Webby tradition, each acceptance speech was limited to five words. So here, in an attempt to sum up the awards show without taking three more hours to do so, here are the Meta-Webbys: the best of the best of the Web's acceptance speeches.
Most memorable acceptance speech: Browser start-up Flock picked up the judge-chosen Webby in the Social Networking category, and the company founder used his five words to say, "No s***, we beat Facebook!" (Facebook went on to win the People's Voice award in the same category.)
Most predictable acceptance speech: Geek hero Stephen Colbert, receiving the Person of the Year award for his portrayal of an egomaniacal blowhard pundit on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, went onstage as Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." played, and proclaimed, "Me, me, me, me, me!"
Corollary: Colbert's pop-culture influence was reflected in Facebook's acceptance of the People's Voice award in the Social Networking category--"One million strong for Colbert!"--as well as FactCheck.org's acceptance speech in the Politics category, "Where truthiness goes to die." FactCheck won another award later in the evening; the site's second acceptance speech was, "No, Obama's not a Muslim."
Most productive speech: "We're hiring, send us resumes" from ad agency Tribal DDB in one of the Interactive Advertising categories.
Worst play on words: Conde Nast's Style.com picked up an award in the Fashion category and used its five words to say, "Guess we're still in fashion."
Runner-up: VH1's Best Week Ever, in the Celebrity category, "Who let the blogs out?"
Most professionally appropriate speech: The American Bar Association's ABA Journal, in the Law category, "Had we lost, we'd sue."
Geekiest acceptance speech: A representative from ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi picked up an Interactive Advertising Webby for a Toyota Tacoma ad campaign, held up the Slinky-like metal trophy, and said, "My robot costume is complete."
Best onstage stunt: Picking up the People's Voice award in the Best Practices category, Digg marketing manager Aubrey Sabala chugged a glass of champagne and proclaimed, "Webbys 'dugg' for the free drinks."
Best use of two awards: The "Happiness Factory" ad campaign for Coca-Cola picked up two awards; the representative accepting the award from agency Shift Control Media used his first five words to say "Seth, your fly is open" and his second, an hour later, to say, "Still down, Seth, getting creepy."
The "And it sounds even better in your sulty Greek accent" award: Liberal news pundit and IADAS member Arianna Huffington, receiving the award in the Blog - Political category, proclaimed "President Obama sounds good, right?"
Least shocking surprise of the evening: In between rounds of awards, host Seth Meyers said he was going to show a video tribute to members of the Web community who had died in the past year, and showed part of Rick Astley's corny "Never Gonna Give You Up" video instead. Seth, Rickrolling is so over.
Most shocking surprise of the evening: In an interview on the red carpet, Ben Huh, the owner of kitty humor site I Can Has Cheezburger said that he's allergic to cats. Clad in a white suit and a massive hat shaped like a cheeseburger, I guess he also gets the Best Dressed nod.
He might not get to fulfill his presidential dreams, but comic pundit Stephen Colbert will still end 2008 with at least one, uh, honor: Person of the Year at the 12th Annual Webby Awards.
The "Oscars of the Internet," presented by a consortium of technology, media, and entertainment hotshots known as the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, announced their winners and honorees on Tuesday. This year's Webbys will be presented next month as part of Internet Week New York.
Colbert received the Person of the Year accolade for his reputation as a digital buccaneer of sorts: over the past year and a half, his Colbert Report show on Comedy Central has prompted Google bombing, Wikipedia vandalism, what might have been the fastest-growing Facebook group in history, and (on a completely different note) hundreds of thousands of dollars for DonorsChoose.org when he promoted it on air.
Stephen Colbert: comedian, pundit, Web renegade, Webby honoree.
(Credit: Comedy Central)The Webby Film and Video Awards, an offshoot of the Webbys proper, selected filmmaker Michel Gondry as its Person of the Year: Gondry's latest flick, Be Kind Rewind, sparked a trend in "sweding" (low-budget "remakes" of movies) on the likes of YouTube, and Gondry has made an online-video splash himself, with seemingly impossible Rubik's Cube puzzle clips.
The Webbys' "Artist of the Year" award went to Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am for his "Yes We Can" song and video in support of presidential candidate Barack Obama.
For a full list of Webby winners, which include Flickr, Facebook, I Can Has Cheezburger, Yelp, Digg, Apple, The New York Times, TED Conferences, HuffingtonPost.com, Kiva, Mint, PostSecret, and CNET Networks' Chow, click here.
NEW YORK--On Tuesday night, Webby Awards executive director David-Michel Davies welcomed a crowd of media and tech enthusiasts to the nightclub-like Nokia flagship store in midtown Manhattan for a pre-Webby cocktail hour.
The specific purpose was to draw attention to the "Peoples' Voice" division of the awards, which take place on June 10; many nominees were present to drum up support, and the massive video screens lining the walls of the posh Nokia store were playing Webby video contenders on repeat.
But the party chatter didn't necessarily have anything to do with the awards ceremony. I asked one dot-com founder, whom I'll leave as anonymous, if he was nominated this year. He turned to his business partner and said, "I don't know. Are we?"
True, the newsworthy announcement hadn't yet gone out that Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers and 30 Rock actor Judah Friedlander were selected to respectively host the Webby Awards on June 10 and the Webby Film and Video Awards on June 9. (That release hit the wires on Wednesday.) And the Webbys are still more than a month away. That's eons in Internet time.
More heated topics of conversation: the fact that GroundReport founder Rachel Sterne and Rocketboom producer Elspeth Rountree were both in attendance, considering that one was mistaken for the other a few days ago; and the fact that earlier in the week, MainStreet editor Caroline Waxler had triumphantly connected her boss, TheStreet.com czar and Mad Money host Jim Cramer, with Wine Library TV's Gary Vaynerchuk, who made a name for himself with a loudmouthed Web show and a reputation as "the Jim Cramer of wine." (Vaynerchuk will be appearing on Cramer's show in the near future. Watch out. Something might explode.)
Let's face it. I've forgotten most of last year's Webby Awards winners already. It's kind of like how I've already forgotten most of this year's Oscar winners, except for Marion Cotillard because her speech was all over YouTube within hours, and her wacky September 11 conspiracy theory sound bites were all over the Web a few days later.
The real reason to get excited for the 12th Annual Webby Awards isn't who actually wins. It's the surprise guests, the photo ops, the parties, the chance to see some Web personalities whom you might not normally see (or whom you might not normally see within two days of a shower), and the ephemeral feeling that geek culture is worthy of celebrity cred too.
This year might shape up to be different. The 2008 Webbys are officially part of Internet Week New York, a weeklong series of events that could be described as "Fashion Week for geeks."
It could go either way: on one hand, the Webbys could get extra attention. On the other hand, they're on the last night of Internet Week; interested locals might be too wiped out or hung over from seven days of panels and parties. Call it South by Southwest syndrome.
I just hope they can get Rick Astley to perform at the ceremony.
On Friday morning, YouTube announced the second annual iteration of its YouTube Video Awards. What? Awards?
The video-sharing service, owned by Google since 2006, awarded accolades in categories like "Adorable," "Creative," and "Comedy" to original videos hosted on its site that were uploaded in 2007, as voted on by users. The prizes, per YouTube, are "bragging rights, a trophy, and a special invitation to an event later this year."
Okay, so the videos are kind of amusing. The "Adorable" category winner is a video of a baby who falls over every time he laughs (wonder what'll happen when his friends find out about that in 10 years), the "Creative" winner is that "Human Tetris" thing you've seen a million times, and the "Music" winner is none other than that "Chocolate Rain" video that everyone was watching last year.
But the culture of YouTube doesn't really lend itself that well to awards. YouTube, for better or worse, is a cultural hub rather than strictly a creative outpost; there's plenty of cool, original content there, and it's no surprise that Google would want to highlight the good stuff rather than the goofy prank videos and pirated content that propelled it to the upper echelon of the Web.
Content on YouTube, however, doesn't necessarily become popular because it's high-quality or original--just look at the Rickroll phenomenon, an '80s music video that has been seen millions of times because people get a kick out of tricking their friends into watching it. Or the current hot clip, a British public service announcement with a hilarious twist.
Or, for that matter, this week's number-one YouTube video: Barack Obama's most recent speech.
It might not be Austin's South by Southwest Interactive, but New York City will be getting its own digital-culture festival.
Called Internet Week New York (OK, they could have picked a better name), it will span June 3 to 10 and encompass several existing events like Federated Media Publishing's Conversational Marketing Summit, Advertising Age's Advertising 2.0 conference, and the 12th annual Webby Awards.
In addition, a number of tech and media companies--PaidContent, Flavorpill, The Onion, Thrillist, and Nokia, to name a few--have announced preliminary plans to host events in conjunction.
The office of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself a local tech baron, has officially sanctioned the festival. "It will capture the energy, diversity, and creative spirit that are a hallmark of both New York City and the Internet," a statement from Bloomberg read.
Hosting a week of technology events isn't entirely new for the city, as it has traditionally held a "Digital Technology Week" in conjunction with Ziff Davis Media's annual DigitalLife gadget expo. But with last year's DigitalLife a disappointment, and Ziff Davis' future uncertain, it's an apt time for the city to shake up its showcasing of the local tech industry. And with a focus on new media and entertainment, Internet Week will be a more accurate portrayal of what actually goes on in Gotham, rather than centering on a hardware trade show in which most of the products are brought in from out of town.
In addition to Bloomberg's office, Internet Week is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which organizes the Webby Awards. The festival's "executive council," meanwhile, is a who's-who of Gotham digital media: among its ranks are About.com CEO Scott Meyer, TreeHugger founder Graham Hill, Greycroft Partners czar Alan Patricof, former AOL exec and current Pilot Group investor Bob Pittman, NBC Universal digital chief George Kliavkoff, and CondeNet President Sarah Chubb.
Despite its A-list leadership, the organizers of Internet Week have said that as an homage to the "open structure" of the Web, anyone can create an event in conjunction with the festival for free.
"The event can take whatever form you imagine," the Internet Week site promises, "within the boundaries of good taste, of course."
AUSTIN, Texas--The South by Southwest Interactive Festival's 11th Annual Web Awards, which honors online innovations that saw their official launches in the previous year, kind of flew under the radar. Sure, an awards ceremony was held on Sunday night, but it unfortunately had to compete with a number of parties, dinner get-togethers among old friends, and a Twitter-organized bowling outing. And when it came to press, the Web Awards were largely eclipsed by reports surrounding the Mark Zuckerberg interview earlier that day.
But the Web Awards did indeed happen. Accolades were given out in 21 categories, ranging from "games" to "film/TV" to a people's choice winner. Some of the notable sites awarded were "social browser" Flock, which won the "community" category; funky video mixer Animoto in the film/TV category; and the Wired News site in the "classic" category. Wired bloggers Michael Calore and Megan McCarthy (no relation, we think--23andMe, where are you?) were spotted posing for photos with their Web Award at a Gawker Media party later on Sunday night.
The growing popularity of casual gaming was evident with the selection of Launchball as "best of show" as well as winner of the "games" category, and Kongregate as the "people's choice" winner.
But not every Web Awards winner was a piece of technology, per se. The "blog" category, which two-time SXSWi phenomenon Twitter won last year, went this year to Passive-Aggressive Notes. Hey, maybe it'll be the next I Can Has Cheezburger--although one of the lessons I think we've all learned at SXSWi 2008 is that saying "is the next" is so 2007.
