The 2007 Webby Award winners were announced today. The Webby’s are the premier awards for web sites. They’ve added so many categories in recent years that you wonder if some award inflation has occurred; it’s less special to win something these days with 69 categories than with the old six categories (and yet they still neglected to add a “Best in Show” award). Many of the new categories have more to do with industry categories than tracking best practices or new web technologies. With new categories such as “Pharmaceuticals”, “Beauty and Cosmetics” and “Insurance”, it seems these were created to allow potential sponsors a chance to win awards since they couldn’t possibly compete in genuine categories like “Best Home Page” or “Best Copy/Writing”. After all, KFC and Geico were winners this year, not exactly institutions you’d think of to be the Best Of anything on the Web.
Notable winners include Al Gore’s channel, Current TV, which won the Television category. Will he personally accept the award at the ceremony in June? The Webby’s are known for limiting recipient’s acceptance speeches to five words — tough for any politician.
Also, savetheinternet.net won the People’s Voice Activism award for their campaign to keep the Internet free. This means that Verizon, the major sponsor of this year’s Webby Awards and fierce opponent of Net Neutrality, will have to present the award to their adversary.
