The winners of the 10th Annual Webby Awards, an international award honoring excellence in web design, creativity, usability and functionality presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, were announced this week. Two winners are awarded in each of the 60 plus categories: the Webby Award winner is chosen by the Academy and the People’s Voice Award winner is chosen by public vote. Additionally, five Special Achievement Honorees are awarded as well as, literally, hundreds of Official Honorees. It seems it’s harder NOT to be recognized by the Academy then it is to get noticed. Some interesting winners were: MySpace.com for Break Out Site of the Year (duh!) and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as Webby Person of the Year. Not sure how you become a “Webby Person�? but I do like his columns. Other winners of note include:

Best Welcome/Home Page
Remember Segregation
With NewYorker.com, BBC.com, NPR.org and MotherJones.com also winning awards, it seems that the Webby Awards are as left bent as the Academy Awards (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Best Navigation/Structure and Best Practices
Flickr
Hmmm. Watch this space for a contrarian view…

Best Business Blog
5 Blogs Before Lunch
Nicely organized, well written and entertaining — but, there are surprisingly few comments for such a popular Blog.

Best Political Plog (Webby and Peoples Voice Winner)
The Huffington Post
You gotta love a Blog that features posts about Michael Jackson, Hillary Clinton, Condi Rice, Mel Gibson and Jon Stewart all on the home page. Guest commentators keep this Blog lively.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 9:01 pm and is filed under General.