Webware

Nearly half a million votes have been recorded so far in the Webware 100, our annual awards program where Web 2.0 users and Webware.com readers vote for their favorite online apps. Voting closes at noon Thursday, so if you want your opinion to count, go vote now.

There are 30 products in each of 10 categories, and there will be 10 winners in each, for a total of 100 products that get designated the 2009 Webware 100. Some clear winners have emerged in each category, but there are battles going on in each, as well as some oddities.

In Audio & Music, iLike is trailing and is not in the Top 10. Grooveshark's in the lead, and Pandora and Last.fm are neck and neck.

More people are voting in the Social & Publishing and the Browsing categories than the others. But in Social & Publishing, Digg has yet to crack the top 10 in the voting, although two-time Webware 100 winner Gaia is performing well (never underestimate the power of the teen girl demographic).

In Browsing, Maxthon is leading the pack just as it did last year, while Flock trails the list of the top 10. The usual suspects (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera) are doing well.

The Productivity and the Location-based services categories are getting the smallest numbers of votes, which means that some relatively small products may place in the Webware 100 this year. In productivity, Google Docs is in the lead, but Microsoft Office Live is doing well. Enterprise favorite Salesforce.com is not, though.

In Location services, popular online maps from Google and Microsoft are performing well, as is the local reviews service Yelp. Ask.com's online mapping product--a Webware editor's favorite--is falling off the map this year, though.

Other surprises: Woot has yet to crack the top 10 in the Commerce category, and Netflix hasn't yet cracked into one of the top spots in Photo & Video.

To vote in all categories, go to the Webware 100 now. Click into the slideshow below for more about the current leaders.

Images: Webware 100 front-runners

Webware 100 voting is now open

I'm happy to announce that we have opened the voting for the 2009 Webware 100 awards. This is our annual program in which CNET readers select the top Web 2.0 apps and services from our hand-picked list of 300 finalists.

This year--the third year we've done the Webware 100--we had about 5,000 qualifying submissions from which we selected the final 300. These are 300 very strong Web apps, spread into 10 groups of 30 each. We have a new arrangement of voting categories this year, including the important Location-based Services category for apps that provide local info, as well as mapping products. We also combined two 2008 categories, Publishing and Community, into a new category, Social and Publishing, recognizing that today, writing is a two-way activity. Publishing is, by nature, social. See all the categories.

There will ultimately be 110 Webware 100 winners this year. There's a special category that's not open to user voting: The Editors' Awards. I created this category because the popular vote isn't always enough to recognize some of the most important small or up-and-coming services. There will be 10 winners in this category, chosen by me and other Webware editors, in categories including design, most innovative business model, and so on.

All the winners will be announced on May 19.

I think it's worth noting that despite the pall of the economy, which has spelled the end of many interesting Web-based businesses, nearly all of the 2008 Webware 100 winners are still up and running. Only three (so far) have been terminated: Yahoo shut Briefcase; MotionDSP withdrew FixMyMovie and will release the function as downloadable software; and iWantSandy shut down when the app's developer took a job at Twitter. As far as I can tell, everything else is still in business.

Finally, a vote of thanks to the Webware 100 technology providers: I use Wufoo to run the nominations process. They make a great system for building online forms. Polldaddy (acquired by Automattic in 2008) supplies the voting technology for the Webware 100. Last year their system processed nearly 2 million votes without a hiccup.

Go vote!

See the previous years' winners: 2008 | 2007

The annual Web 2.0 Expo kicks off at the end of this month in San Francisco. As in years past, it should be an interesting conference with a ton of useful sessions for those involved in the Web ecosystem, as well as an exhibit hall populated by core Web 2.0 infrastructure companies.

You can get a 35 percent off a conference pass to the event by using the code websf09btd45 on the registration site, or better yet, win a free, all-access pass (I have two to give away) by participating in our contest.

Here's the game: Describe, in one paragraph, the Web service you want someone to build for you that hasn't been built yet. In addition to winning the free pass, I will harass the entrepreneurs and VCs I meet for next few months with the best ideas, trying to actually get them built.

Use the feedback system below to tell us what you'd like to see. If you haven't already, you'll have to register on CNET to post a comment. Or you can use Facebook Connect to sign on. If you use a CNET ID, we'll need to reach you through e-mail if you're a winner, so please be sure your e-mail address is current. If you've been registered on the CNET network for a while, use this form to check your e-mail address. If you use Facebook, we'll notify your Facebook account. In the case of multiple versions of an idea we like, the earliest entry will win.

You have 24 hours--I'll stop taking submissions at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday. Good luck!

The contest is now closed! We'll announce the winners on Monday Tuesday. Thanks!

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?

I'm happy to announce the winners of the 2008 Webware 100. These are the 100 top Web apps, 10 each in 10 categories, according to Webware users and the fans of the products that were finalists in the awards.

You can see all the winners in one place, or page through the winners one-by-one in the Webware 100 Navigator.

Over 1.9 million votes were cast for the 300 finalists this year. These finalists were selected (by Webware editors) from a pool of over 5000 qualifying nominees. But the 100 winners were selected by popular vote. These winning 100 products represent the best of the Web, according the people who use it.

Voting overview

As with the 2007 awards, the majority of votes, 88% this year, were cast for winning products. Of the ten categories, the most popular in terms of votes cast was Browsing. However it's worth noting that one of the entries in that category, Maxthon, drove an inordinate amount of votes by putting a vote-driving popup in the software itself. Even after we had the popup removed, though, Maxthon easily garnered a winning number of votes.

If you subtract the initial Maxthon Effect votes from Browsing, by far the most voted-in category was Social, just like last year. And again, Gaia Online got the most votes in the category. However, competition in this space is heating up. Gaia's 136,000 votes, while well ahead of the 91,000 it won last year, represented only 34% of the votes cast in the Social category, compared to 60% last year.

Just slightly more than half of all the votes cast in the Webware 100 went to the top 10 vote-getters. Six of these top 10 are no surprise at all: Facebook, Firefox, Google, iTunes, MySpace, and YouTube. But the other four may not be as familiar to most Webware readers:

... Read more

Thanks to the readers who contributed to the Webware 100 challenge in order to get a free all-access pass to Web 2.0 Expo, we now have a bunch of really good ideas for improving the Webware 100 awards program for 2009.

The two winning ideas (that are getting passes to the show) are:

1. Allow nominees to submit screencasts. I love this. We'll limit the pitches to 30 seconds, and we'll only ask for them from the finalists (not all the nominees), but this will be a great way to add some depth to the voting process.

2. Highlight the rookies. A few users wanted to know which of the finalists' products were actually new. We'll work on a way to both flag the new guys for next year and to highlight the rookies who are Webware 100 winners. We may even create a special award for the newbies.

Another idea we liked: have more categories. I hear you on this one. It was tough to fit all the products into 10 categories, and we had to make some tough choices to make it work at all. For example, we killed the "mobile" category outright this year, the logic being that mobile is a platform, not actually a category, and apps in particular categories such as "video" may (or may not) be mobile. Even so, I would have liked to have a mobile bucket, and we'll try to figure out a way to put it in for 2009.

On the other hand, another interesting idea was to kill the categories entirely and have 100 undifferentiated winners from a pool of several hundred finalists. I kind of like that, since so many products span categories, but I fear that the bigger the pool, the more the big fish would take over the voting, and the harder it would be for Webware 100 voters to find their personal winners in the big mosh pit of finalists.

We'll contact the winning readers with details on their passes very shortly. As I said in the original post, only the first people to submit the winning ideas get the passes.

Again, thanks to all who contributed. And don't forget to check back here on Monday, April 21, at noon Pacific Time, when we announce the winners of the 2008 Webware 100.

Web 2.0 Expo starts in San Francisco on April 22. It's the biggest Web 2.0 show there is, and Webware will be there in force, scouring the show looking for new companies, interviewing the architects of Web 2.0 companies, and celebrating the winners of the Webware 100, which we announce on April 21, right before the show opens. (Webware is a partner of the Web 2.0 Expo.)

As I've posted before, you can get a free exhibit pass, which also gets you in to the keynotes, by using the code "websf08pb6" at the Expo registration page.

But the Web 2.0 Expo is more than exhibit booths and talking heads (as fascinating as both are). There are also dozens of how-to workshops, strategy sessions, and behind-the-scenes presentations on Web 2.0 topics (see schedule). The full Web 2.0 Expo conference pass is valued at $1,695, but we have two to give away. Here's how to grab one for yourself:

Tell us what we did wrong in the Webware 100 this year.

Really, we want to know. While we increased the voting from the 2007 Webware 100 four-fold, from 490,000 votes cast in 2007 to more than 1.9 million this year, we know there's room for improvement. So let us have it. Enter your ideas in the talkback below before 6:00 p.m. PDT on Monday, April 14. Josh and I will pick the best ideas. In the case of multiple versions of an idea we like, the earliest entry will win. (So don't just rip off another idea that's already been entered.)

Use the feedback system below to tell us what you'd like to see. You'll have to register to post a comment, if you haven't already. Since we'll need to reach you if you're a winner, please be sure your e-mail address is current. If you've been registered on the CNET network for a while, use this form to check your e-mail address.

Best two entries get the passes. Good luck!

Also: Join us in the exhibit hall on Thursday, April 24 at 4:30 p.m. during the Web 2.0 Expo Booth Crawl. We'll be celebrating the Webware 100 winners then. And there will be beer. As in free.

We closed the voting for the 2008 Webware 100 today, after recording more than 1.9 million votes. Webware 100 Winners will be announced April 21 (we need time to go over the polling logs and write up blurbs for the winners). But in the meantime, we can already spot the major trends. The biggest shift, from last year, is that fewer sites for geeks are in the winners' circle.

In the hotly-contested Social category, for example, only the very largest sites generated enough votes to place in the Top 10. Even sites considered must-reads by the powerful nerd intelligentsia didn't have the pull to displace the major branded social networks.

Webware.com will continue to report on what's new, and will continue to evaluate the most recent innovations on the Web--the products of greatest interest to those of us who like to experiment with the newest ideas. We use programs such as the Webware 100 as a backstop, to show us which of these products and ideas are getting traction out there in the real world.

Vote distribution: Browsing and Social were the most contested.

Voting in the 2008 Webware 100 closes Monday, March 31 (at noon PDT), so if you haven't taken a moment to vote up for your favorite Web 2.0 applications in this year's contest, now's the time. We are closing in on 2 million votes cast in the 2008 Webware 100 awards, so be sure to get in there to make your opinion count.

I've heard form several readers that the Webware 100 finalist list is a great resource for people new to Web 2.0 applications. So if you're looking for 300 cool Web applications to use yourself, or to show off to other people as an example of what can now be done on the Internet, be sure to check out the full list of Webware 100 finalists.

We'll announce the winners of the 2008 Webware 100 on April 21. We'll start celebrating the winners' success at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, which opens the next day. To get a free exhibit pass for the Web 2.0 Expo, use the code "websf08pb6" at the Expo registration page.

Go vote! >>