Today, we're launching our second annual Web 2.0 Awards. Only a month after we'd intended on launching (SES New York and that pesky "real work" stuff kept getting in the way), we've finally collected, collated and presented just over 200 sites in forty-one categories. Some of the winners and "honorable mentions" are similar to last year; others are completely different.
I won't go into too much detail here about the process and how it was different to the inaugural awards of 2006 - Rand has put together a neat zeitgeist to explain all that fun stuff - but I do want to say a huge thank-you to all of our readers who nominated websites. The majority of the new entrants and finalists were brought to our attention via nominations, and more than one reader-nominated site ended up winning its category.
While we've ended up awarding places and "honorable mentions" to 205 sites, we reviewed many more. We have also re-opened nominations for next year (ducks from barrage of emails), so if you find that your favourite site is missing, submit it via our online form.
So we hope you enjoy the awards and find some cool sites you haven't come across or haven't used before!
While we've ended up awarding places and "honorable mentions" to 205 sites, we reviewed many more. We have also re-opened nominations for next year (ducks from barrage of emails), so if you find that your favourite site is missing, submit it via our online form.
So we hope you enjoy the awards and find some cool sites you haven't come across or haven't used before!
Thank you for this honor. Zillow greatly appreciates the recognition.
- Spencer (from Zillow)
Long time, no see, Spencer :) Congrats on the win; our judges ovewhelmingly voted in your favor - I think you can be proud that Zillow is leading the way in not just real estate, but Web 2.0 overall.
Thanks to the mozzers for the invitation to help judge the 2007 awards.
Judging some categories was a lot of hard work. In fact, I spent almost 3 hours 'reviewing' the games section alone ;)
Hmm, that games section gave me a headache too. I spent quite some time narrowing down the nominees into finalists in that category. Funny that, huh?
Guys, phenomenal job putting this together. I have to block out some time this weekend to go through all of these, but like FrankA, I saw a ton of sites I'd never heard of that at first glance looked just amazing. Just an exceptional post.
Thanks for recognizing Menuism in the awards! We really appreciate it. Here's a write up on our blog.
- Justin
Menuism Co-Founder
I want to eat the zero in "Web 2.0 Awards."
Haha, that's what I thought when I saw Matt's design.
The H.F. said "wow, that's amazing" when he saw the header :P
Thanks for the honorable mention!
We're very happy to be featured on your list.
David Givoni
Quomon.com
If you're feeling giving, we'd love a Digg or a Reddit :) Only if you think it's worthwhile, of course.
Great work, Jane & Matt, and our 25 judges. This was truly a labor of love and going through the site, it's amazing how much progress has been made in only a year's time.
Dugg.
Nice work all - it looks great, the content's great and it was clearly loads of work.
Dugg
fascinating list, will have to take some time to go through these sites.
but, jane, twitter? i realize you weren't soley responsible for the judging, but...twitter? after all your rants i just can't believe it made #1.
...i am typing a comment on seomoz...i am clicking the 'add comment' button now...
I was only 1/26th of the judging :P You'll have to take it up with the other judges, as I didn't vote for Twitter but thought I should include it because of its astounding popularity.
Sorry :) Democracy sucks when it doesn't elicit the result you wanted :(
My screenshot and browser comment is nested under Jane's previous comment (in case you missed it).
Matt will take a look at it.
Great job everyone! I thought last year's awards were awesome and you managed to outdo yourselves with this one. I also appreciate that you've showcased a few newer companies over the steadfast juggernauts. Bravo.
I have one question and a couple errors to report:
1) How come Pandora beat out Last.fm in the Music category? If you go by their scores, Last.fm technically beats out Pandora for not having any social networking element while matching them on all other accounts. At least a tie perhaps?
2) In the Social Networking category, I noticed you are using the Digg logo for Imbee and in Social News, you're using Youtube's logo instead of Digg.
I think there were a few other minor inconsistencies as well, but great job overall!
1) The scores were assigned by me; the placings were voted on by judges. The scores have nothing to do with the results - they're just there for interest's sake.
2) We've heard from one other person that some logos are out of place. We've tested it in many different browsers and have not seen this. What browser are you using?
Firefox 1.5.0.11 is my current browser.
Here are the screenies:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/8250051@N06/
The errors I found are located in the image descriptions.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for taking those screenshots brooke. It looks to be an issue specific to Firefox 1.5.
I adjusted the img src so they images are no longer being pulled from our secondary host- are you still seeing that issue?
Screenshot the swapped logos the next time you see it
PS: What I see
Some great websites in there, I bet it must have been pretty darn tough judging that one.
I did notice one small discrepancy, my site wasnt listed, must have been an oversight i guess..lol
Interesting that there was no jobs/careers category....
Perhaps you should suggest that for next year, then? Along with a few candidates.
Tony - Agreed; it was an oversight, and probaly not the only one. Hopefully we can improve even more next year :)
Very well done. I can tell that this must have taken hundreds of hours.
You get plenty of linklove from me for it!
Thanks for the nice write-up! The awards did take up a fair amount of Matt's, Rand's and my time, but it has come together well.
It took up little to none of my time.
P.S. I'm JOKING (ahem, Matt "I have no sense of humor" Inman).
P.P.S Matt is a humorless abomination. He eats children and crap out death missiles. And he farts in the office.
That's cos we don't trust you.
Death missles? What happened to the FluffyBunnyRainbow Missles?
Thank you Jane, Matt, Rand, judges, and anyone else involved in putting the awards together. I can appreciate the time and work that goes into a project like this.
And just as with last year's awards there are a few sites that are completely new to me. I'm looking forward to giving them a look.
Wow, what a year. Loved going through some of the winners, I think I had forgotten about half of them.
I used to seriously hate the term "Web 2.0" but it's starting to stick.
It's starting to seem a little bit less like a meaningless buzz word.
Great list...it's really in depth and well put together.
Just curious though, why are sites like Craigslist and Oodle considered web 2.0 ?
Truth - you can see our list of criteria in the Zeitgeist, and based on that, Craigslist and Oodle fit nearly every parameter of what defines "Web 2.0" so we'd be remiss to exclude them, just because they're older or don't "look" Web 2.0.
I think Craigslists is more "Web 2.0" than it initially appears. If one takes into account the user-generated-content side of Web 2.0, Craigslist has been the source of a lot of viral UGC content. Their "Best Of" section is priceless.
Yes, the site pretty much as no-frills as you can get, but the content and social structure is far more webtwoey than, say, Monster.com.
Interesting take. I guess I never really think web 2.0 when I think of Craig's List, but you're right when looking at it from the UGC side. It's easy to forget sometimes that the look isn't what makes a site web 2.0.
Glad to see Pandora beat out Last.fm! I like both services, but Pandora's interface is great. Also interesting that MySpace didn't rate a mention in social networking. Maybe its days are numbered.
Navtej, you suck at frisbee
I love the list - lots of great resources here for us to explore.
One company that didnt make the mapping category (probably because they're pretty new) is CommunityWalk. We LOVE these maps as they allow us to embed on our clients' pages not only map points but photos, descriptions, etc. Also the maps that actually live on CommunityWalk rank well in Google because of the Robust location and text features. (No i dont get paid to say that - I just really like them!)
Great Job as usual Mozzers!
~Carrie
Your best bet is to nominate CommunityWalk for next year's awards.
No mention of the ultimate Web 2.0 site: Brett Tabke's Blog
Seriously, great job folks. See y'all at SMX!!!
Rand and team- PEERtrainer thanks you as well.
-Habib and Jackie
That one sentence site is awesome and funny, wouldn't never know about it if I didn't check out this list
You guys did a great job on this as I'm sure it took a great deal of time to complete. I'm also amazed at all of the different companies on this list that I was not aware of.
I'll have to spend some time tonight going through them as it looks like they are doing some really nice stuff.
Just found a typo on the "Nominate" menu. It should be "Nominate a site for next year's awards". I just woke up and I read it as "Nomiate".
For once, a typo that's not my fault! Because most of them are.
We'll get that fixed :P
Man alive! What a great resource! And what alot of work... thanks again seomoz (and jane :-)) for making your blog utterly invaluable as a prime go-to place.
Awesome work putting this list together. The winners chart has a ton of useful sites I've never heard of before. I'm already on cocktail builder researching my next drink for happy hour.
Quite honestly, the cocktail builder is my favorite. Laptop is set atop the "bar" at home now :)
Wow, good job on this. Awsome list.
Awesome stuff guys n gals! I have passed this to our team to look at, and already got some great responses.
I have to agree that the cocktail creator one is one of my favourites in the list but the librarything one and stuff like pandora are brilliant too.. I had heard of pandora recently.. is it true that its likely to shut down soon?.. A real shame!
Keep up the great work :D
Excellent job, I think we can all agree that it is a ton of work putting all this together.
Thanks,
It did take quite a long time; the reviewing of the sites took the longest!
Yeah, hopefully with the launch of the awards you'll slowly start to regain your sanity.
Unlikely, but dreams are free.
Jane I alluded to it at sugarrae, but I wanted to tell you that your article on Social Media Marketing Tactics was reallly helpful to me. I knew of most of those sites but have really not explored them yet and that article was a great intro to the ones I didn't know, or hadn't checked out.
It is funny, but just last night I went through, site by site the 2006 awards and found a bunch of neat sites, but it took alot of time to go through it all, then the next morning what do I see? This post. :)
Thanks.
I can't believe Adobe Kuler didnt even get an honorable mention in the design category :(