I ask those of you for whom the phrase "Web 2.0" is an anethma to refrain from judgement while you read this post and browse the site we've created. Afterwards, when you've had time to process it, I invite you to comment with as much passion (for or against) as you like.
My first order of business with this post is to congratulate Kat Ortland. This young woman, who we hired less than 6 months ago, has proven her mettle. The amount of time, energy and thoughtfulness she put into what was orginally just a pet project of mine is truly astounding. Bravo Kat.
Without further ado:
The Web 2.0 Awards
(Web2.0Awards.org)
More than 700 sites were initially reviewed, of which 300 were categorized, investigated and directly used by the SEOmoz team. Our goal was to find those players in the "Web 2.0" space who were doing a truly exemplary job - to show our fellow web developers and web marketers how this movement (whether named or unnamed) is contributing to the growth of the Internet as a whole.
On the site, you'll find:
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The awards themselves, including the winners, 2nd and 3rd place finishers and the honorable mentions in each category.
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Our judging criteria and award selection process.
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A Web 2.0 Zeitgeist article that includes a look at the phenomenon (not through rose-tinted glasses, but with a truly skeptical eye) and asks prominent players in many spaces to contribute their thoughts (I've even thrown in my own little rant at the end).
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Interviews with 19 of the 22 winners, including folks like Dave Sifry from Technorati, Craig Newmark from Craigslist, Jen Mazzon of Writely (prior to the Google PR dept. acquiring them), Mike Davidson of Newsvine and many more.
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A terrific rant on the subject of Web 2.0 by the search industry's own Danny Sullivan, as well as some great chats with folks like Brad Stone (who just wrote Newsweek's cover article on Web 2.0) and Emily Chang (who runs the popular eHub blog).
There's so much to talk about here that it doesn't fit in a single post. I welcome your feedback and look forward to taking lots of flack (as anything "Web 2.0" must). I suspect that there will be lots more to say on this issue over the next few days, but for now, with all this work behind us, the team here at SEOmoz needs a wee break.
UPDATE: Wow, already on del.icio.us and Digg... Those guys are fast.
Sorry Rand, I think I have to agree with Peter.
Nice bit of linkbait for you guys, worth the effort I'm sure, but that's about all it is ;)
Web2.0 is a marketing term(IMHO), and I think it's a marketing project you've undertaken here more than anything.
I can certainly say that the intent behind it started as something entirely different, and morphed into this, but there's no real refutation. We're a marketing company, and a PR company, so those are certainly part of our tasks.
Kat, great work. Thanks for allowing me use the graphic (used at the topic of this blog post) for use on my own blog. I am excited see how the Internet is evolving to help us more.
Great job Kat. Takes a lot of time to look over a few hundred sites and write about them in a coherent manner =)
Sorry about the slowness earlier, apache KeepAlive is an important directive to remember when you're getting dugg :)
Amazing. Great work and I've already signed up for some new sites.
How in the world did Netvibes get left off the list? Was this for American companies only?
I admit that this list has helped me find a lot of great new sites, but I can't help but scratch my head at the winners for start pages. Netvibes blows Pageflakes, Google and Live.com away. Anyone have some insight here? Is it because they don't have a bold arial graphic for their logo? Does that make the site more Web 2.0-y?
Nice job on the awards and everything, but it seems like a big oversight.
We really like Pageflakes and the others better than Netvibes. The tabbed system in Pageflakes is just awesome, and their plug-in creation system rocks, too. As for Netvibes not being on the list... they're right there, in honorable mentions. We reviewed them!
Brilliant job guys!
1533 links on del.icio.us in two days - that -really- is impressive!
You just can't beat great content!
https://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID...
A thread created on MSDN forum with a list compilation
Here's a great user driven list: koolweb2.com
Best of Web 2.0 sites ranked by actual users. Drag & drop sites to desired spot in the list and submit rankings. Overall rankings reflect cumulative average of all user submissions. Recommend a new site as well..
Fantastic! Kudos Rand to you and your team.
For the moment this is the definitive resource on 2.0.
I'm already looking forward to next years awards... 2.1???
decent aggregation of web 2.0 info. Good job.
I'm a bit confused. How does Craigslist win 1st place in a "Web 2.0" contest? That just goes to show how pointless the hype is.
Qualifications for being "Web 2.0": - User generated and/or user influenced content - Applications that use the Web (versus the desktop) as a platform, in innovative ways - Similar visual design and shared functional languages - Leveraging of popular trends, including blogging, social tagging, wikis, and peer-to-peer sharing - Inclusion of emerging web technologies like RSS, AJAX, APIs (and accompanying mashups), Ruby on Rails and others - Open source or sharable/editable frameworks in the form of user-oriented "create your own" APIs
I think they fit at least 4 maybe 5 out of 6.
I agree they CraigsList fits 4 of the 6. 5's a stretch. My point is that they've been doing the same thing since 1997. They are really like Web 0.4. Oh and they won a "webby" award back when Clinton was still President.
I don't care what you call it you've done an excellent job of "defining" Web 2.0 and this is the best awards "list" I've ever seen. My fave is LinkedIn which I have used to meet some incredible people. Thanks Kat, et al, now I have my Bookmarks 2.0.
You know what's funny about "Web 2.0" that I've been noticing? People are calling it overhyped and over-invested before it ever really got hype or investment (some, yes, but not much). That's not neccessarily a bad thing, I think it shows that we're close enough to the dot-com crash that people are still remembering the lessons of that experience. Very different time than the 97-01 period.
It depends on who you talk to. I've met some very over-eager people who show all the signs of "gold fever" that we encoured last time. Lack of planning or vision or even a hint at how they might turn a proffit. So it is something to watch out for. But I think a big difference between this round and the last is that this time it isn't about being as original and cool as it is about being useful in a nice package.
Wow! What an accomplishment! Even at a quick look, it is easy to see that this was a massive project well executed. Nice work SEOmoz, and Kat in particular.
That´s a real useful overview of Web 2.0 projects and a great linkbait. Probably https://www.openbc.com/from Germany is missing.
Jojo - make sure to nominate them
Rand, the link at the end for feedback is broken (invalid id).
This is very thourough. Quiete a resource. And a hub. Obvious linkbait. I say kudos.
Great linkbait =P. Good work.
This is great. What a great site. And thanks for making Openomy an honorable mention. :)
Ian
Hooooooooly cow! I consider myself up-to-date in the online scope, but I've never even heard of some of those sites... This is an internet geek's heaven! Thanks to all involved!
I've been up to my eyeballs in work today, so when I saw the post and the new site, I had to only glance at it and make a mental note to come back to it. First off, its a beauty! Now that my day has settled down some, I'm looking forward to checking out all the sites listed. What a fun, geeky way to spend some quality time with my computer! LOL. As everyone else already said, good job, and great linkbait!
Good work guys, you guys surprise us - as always... Well done Kat! ;)
Thanks everyone! It was lots of work but we're glad to finally be able to present it to the public. :)
Congrats on a wonderful list! I was pleasantly surprised to find Sellsius listed as an honorable mention in the Real Estate Category. We appreciate you support and look forward to finally launching soon.
Sincerely,
Rudolph D. Bachraty III
Co- Founder Sellsius
It'd be interesting to see where these players stand next year...for the most part I agree with what was said, though I can't help but feel a lot of these have fragile business models and may be surplainted by less-quality (but better funded / more profitable) players.
Anyhow, good work. Give that girl a raise.