11th Annual Webby Awards Winners Announced

The Webby Award winners for 2007 have been announced, and though the variety of categories doesn’t allow Web 2.0-centric entries to claim a majority, some well-known names – quite a few mentioned here on Profy in the past, in fact - are present on the roster to be celebrated come June 5th at a gala held in New York City for all winners. Here are a few of this year’s number-ones.

Remember Zopa? Diana Tan covered the “money marketplace” here on Profy back in mid-December of ’06. The company claims this year’s Webby for the best of the Banking/Bill Pay category.

Flickr’s been both talked about and mentioned in passing here on Profy quite a bit, but we doubt it was us who nudged the photo host to three Webby wins. It’ll take ‘Best Practices’, ‘Best Visual Design – Function’, and ‘Community’ next month.

What about blogs? Blogs are part of the core of Web 2.0. Without them we wouldn’t have…roughshod, small-budget journalism, extremely partisan punditry with a hefty side dishes of unfounded snobbishness, nor boring diaries stuffed with stuff that wouldn’t have a chance at being published anyplace else.

Joking? Yep. The top blogs to be honored at the 11th Annual (yeah, as of June 5th the awards ceremony will have been held for over a decade) Webbies are as follows:

‘Best Business Blog’, The New York Times’ DealBook;
‘Best Cultural/Personal Blog’, we make money not art;
‘Best Political Blog’, Truthdig.

As far as the ‘Music’ category is concerned, Last.fm gets the trophy. And ‘Podcasts’? The series of downloadable NPR productions was thought the top of the top-notch.

LinkedIn wins two 2007 Webby awards, one for ‘Services’ and another for ‘Best Social Network’. In the latter category, the site bested Digg, StumbleUpon, and Vox. Facebook didn’t nab #1, but it is a ‘People’s Voice’ winner. But aren’t the Webbies all given as a result of the “people’s voice”? We’ll try not to think about that too hard.

Who gets the prize for ‘Best Travel Site’? Not Expedia. Kayak.com was nominated, but didn’t get enough votes. TripAdvisor? Nope. Gods of Chinatown, a site I personally am learning about for the first time ever, lost, too. Wikitravel, it turns out, was dubbed the best of the best. Not bad, Wikimedia, not bad.

Oh, by the way, if you’d like to know what site consistently measured up as the best for ‘Copy/Writing’, do pay a visit to HowStuffWorks. No, not Slate, not The New Yorker, not Salon. HowStuffWorks. The site claimed top honors in the ‘Education’ category as well.

Lastly, we mention a few of the Special Achievement Webbies announced. For ‘Best Actor’, the ninja people ask for ninja wisdom stands stealthily atop Podium One. The ‘Best Actress’ of 2007 is (though perhaps not very deserved), Jessica Lee Rose, the protagonist of the Lonelygirl15 “storyline”.

And for Person(s) of the Year, the voters have propped both Steve Chen and Chad Hurley of YouTube fame atop the pedestal this year.

Congrats to all, though we’re baffled that Profy doesn’t get to take home even a single Webby. Perhaps it’s because we don’t offer Profy-branded apparel. Oh well, there’s always next year.