SEOmoz's first Web 2.0 Awards launched two years ago, and today we've finished compiling, ranking and awarding hundreds of websites across forty-one categories for the 2008 version. We've added new categories and removed outdated ones. We've also again teamed with a great group of bloggers, marketers, and web-based business people who acted as our voting panel. I needn't go into too much detail in this blog post, as the Awards' zeitgeist explains the details of what happened this year, including some things we feel have changed with the concept and understanding of "Web 2.0."
This is the third installment of the Web 2.0 Awards and this is the first year we've awarded real prizes to the winners (aside from the badges we've always provided). This year, we'll be sending customised Jones Soda bottles to the sites that won first place. In debating what sort of prizes would be best for something like the Web 2.0 Awards, we decided to go for an unconventional option. It seemed only appropriate for websites which, by their definition, should be unconventional.
Our latest New Guy (there's one every week or so) Timmy Christensen has designed some fantastic labels for the bottles. Here's the label for the Music winner, Last.fm.
We've also received eleven interview responses from winning sites, including Last, Google Blog Search, Zillow, and a couple of other great companies. A select few have also treated us to a look inside their offices, which for me is always interesting.
A big thanks go our to all our judges and to Jeff and Rand, who've put a lot of effort into the Awards as well. And yes, this is the point at which you can start nominating sites for next year!
A big thanks go our to all our judges and to Jeff and Rand, who've put a lot of effort into the Awards as well. And yes, this is the point at which you can start nominating sites for next year!
As usual, great work Jane. I know how much time and effort you put into this and I think it's really interesting to see how the relatively diverse set of judge's voted (also quite impressed by the people you managed to get to do the judging!).
Have to say I'm surprised by a few of the winners - Del.icio.us in social news is a bit odd, I'd have gone for Reddit :) And there's also a number of sites I'd never visited before (sorry 88 remaining unanswered emails, I need to check these guys out).
Congrats to the winners and here's to hoping that more new blood makes its way into the Web 2.0 world.
p.s. I think Jane, Jeff & Timmy deserve this - https://digg.com/tech_news/The_2008_Web_2_0_Awards.
Hi Jane, particulary impressed with standoutjobs - they're one to watch. I don't think anything exists like that in the UK, yet.
Echoing my tweet from earlier today (on the best social networking site, bar none ;) ):
awesome awesome job. my browser is overloaded with tabs right now looking at all the winners
It's readily evident how much work you guys put into this, but the final product is well worth it.
Thank you David :) And thanks for the note about some of the errors! I think they're fixed now.
Suprised by one or two results tho probably has an American slant to it does it not?
That confabb site is interesting. From what I can tell has only been in existance, in one guise or another, for about 18 months. Thats some powerful networking in a short space of time huh?. I need to see where they pull that from for one of my conference related sites. (Interesting that the copyright date says 2008.)
Will browse these a little more, tho to be honest im not personally fan of all these social and bookmarking sites, perhaps to my own detriment.
Simply too much 'noise' for my liking. This often can lead to "Too many bits of information spread across various sources" as mentioned by one winner above so I will be taking a look at that site for sure. Its taken a cple of years to drop about twenty things/tools/sites in this area and wish I had just worked properly on just one or two of them all this time!
Excellent work!
Thanks Paz! We had some non-US judges, but indeed most of them are based over here.
Thank you guys for the positive comments (and the corrections / notifications of broken links, etc, that you've been sending me!)
The Awards aren't doing badly on Digg right now (Digg button at bottom of post, atop comments), so a little social media love would be much appreciated ;)
Twitter has beaten out facebook!!!! murmur in the courtroom, murmur in the courtroom.
I don't know. This past week Twitter has really suffered with their poor service and inability to scale. I'm sure they'll correct it, but wow - twitter beats out facebook.
My thoughts exactly! It was all in the judges... they also voted prior to this past week's problems!
The only thing I'll say in Twitter's favour is at least they're candid with their problems. Also, when they say they're down and will be back in ten minutes, they're back in ten minutes.
But yes, I wish Facebook had won ;)
twitter makes me cry every night.
It makes me cry that I, a card-carrying Twitter hater, have now written 2,147 updates, have 337 followers and put the page on auto-refresh every thirty seconds because I don't like the destktop clients. Did you ever see the things I used to write about Twitter?
Rand says he knew this was going to happen.
That sounds scary...
Very interesting. I love awards like this, no matter how arbitrary they are, if only because they alert me to cool sites to check out.
Twitter rocks and so does jane.
(at least when they both can see straight)
Jane when do you find time to do all the writing?
LinkedIn and Craig's List easy winners.
We neen a Web 2.0 Awards readers badge.
Readers' badges now! Timmy will be busy ;) He's currently working on Judges badges after Joost pointed out (on Twitter) that they'd be a really good idea.
I for one am not surprised that Twitter beat out Facebook. Although less popular, it's flat out a better application.
You mean, when it's not down, failing to load, "overtapped", undergoing maintenance or missing half its features?
;)
For me, Facebook's features (photos, groups, events, wall-to-wall feature, inbox, networks, etc) make it more useful than Twitter. However, Twitter is a strange beast that grows on me by the day. I think they're inherently different.
The one thing I like a LOT better about Twitter is their transparency with the site's problems. This is feedback you only get from Facebook if you actively go after it.
Hi Jane,
Great work.
It was an intresting list. Although, I was surprised with some of the results.
There is a music category but I think there should also be a Movies category for next year. Great work Jane. Not sure about some of the choices but it's a cool list to browse through.
Just a little feedback, The whole design of the page looks just awesome but may be that yellow batch looks empty. Please write some thing on it. "Web 2.0 Award" may be...
I didn't design the page but thanks anyway.
I was surprised to see Google Docs so highly rated, I find it quite frustrating and use Zoho instead.
Great list though, very complete.
BTW: In the attribution links, Pete Cashmore's link to Mashable is broken. Nitpicky I know, but I really like Mashable.
There is a music category but I think there should also be a Movies category for next year. Great work Jane. Not sure about some of the choices but it's a cool list to browse through.
Yes, some of the choices surprise me too, but those are the sites our judges voted for...
well, there's no accounting for taste ;)
Hear that, judges! Tasteless! I'm looking at you.
No, I take full responsibility for the finalists, at least :P
Google gets the 1st prize for (almost) anything it was nominted for, I guess. Very strange indeed considering it is only best in search to my mind :)
Great job, Jane and the team!