04/12/09 – Critical acclaim was once again lauded on Twitter, as it picked up a haul of influential internet honours at the annual .net Awards, announced last night in London.
Now in their 12 year, the .net Awards are organised by the world’s bestselling magazine for web designers and developers, .net and sponsored by Nokia, Fasthosts, Packt Publishing, Web Creation UK, Dedipower, Hosting UK, Mr Site and Adobe.
Celebrating the very best web design has to offer, the .net Awards mixes public opinion with the insights and opinions of a leading panel of industry judges from the likes of Yahoo, Opera, Microsoft and the BBC – deciding which of the short listed nominees will scoop an award.
The .net Awards themselves saw an incredible 69% upsurge in votes, with more than 60,000 submissions as web users cast their votes on the industry’s best people, agencies, web sites, applications and companies who they felt were worthy of a prestigious .net Award.
Twitter, the burgeoning social network, beat its rival Facebook to win the “Best Community Site” – whilst the UK developed Tweetdeck application, which enables people to use Twitter on a desktop device or mobile was crowned “Best API Use.” Twitter continued its domination of the .net Awards scooping the ultimate accolade, the judge’s “Best of the Best” – winning by majority decision,
.net Awards 2009
- Web Application of the Year – Dropbox
- Best Community Site – Twitter
- Best API Use – Tweetdeck
- Interactive Site of the Year – Nvidia Speak Visual from Odopod
- Blog of the Year – Smashing Magazine
- Podcast of the Year – Boagworld
- Vodcast of the Year – Diggnation
- Design Agency of the Year – Clearleft
- Innovation of the Year – Google Chrome
- Web Personality of the Year – Stephen Fry
- Viral Campaign of the Year – Best job in the World by Nitro
- Standards Champion – Jeffrey Zeldman
- Open Source Application of the Year- jQuery
- Redesign of the Year – Whitehouse.gov
- Mobile Site of the Year – Flickr Mobile
- Mobile App of the Year – Shazam
- Best of the Best – Twitter
Elsewhere amongst the 17 categories, which were announced by web designer and podcast host Paul Boag at London’s Altitude 360 venue, Stephen Fry was named “Web Personality of the Year.” Accepting his award in a video speech, Fry beat fellow Twitter user Ashton Kutcher and Britain’s Got Talent and global You Tube star, Susan Boyle to the award.
Whilst Google only collected a single .net Award in 2009, the company continued to raise the bar, as its Google Chrome web browser was named “Innovation of the Year” ahead of the scientific search engine, Wolfram Alpha.
With Barrack Obama described by many as the world’s first “Internet President” thanks to his use of the internet and social networking in his election campaign, it was no surprise to see his relaunched www.whitehouse.gov website taking the “Redesign of the Year” category.
Dan Oliver is Editor of .net Magazine:
“This year’s Awards have been more successful than ever – with more than 60,000 public votes being cast. In each Awards category we whittled a list of nominees down to a shortlist of three – at which point they were sent out to a panel of more than 50 industry judges. We’re confident that this makes the .net Awards one of the most transparent in our industry and it¹s what makes winning a .net Award such a special achievement.
“Not surprisingly, Twitter has been the standout nominee this year, bagging two awards. In the short space of a year Twitter has captured the imaginations of millions of net users, who have fallen in love with the concept of micro-blogging. With just 140 characters at their disposal, people have used Twitter to keep in touch with friends, share breaking news, and – in some cases – change government policy and hold journalists, politicians, and other public figures to account. In 2009, it was impossible to ignore the power of twitter.”
More information is available at http://www.thenetawards.com and the special .net Awards issue of .net Magazine goes on sale 8th December 2009, with a cover price of £5.99.
ENDS
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Future plc is an international special-interest media group that is listed on the London Stock Exchange (symbol FUTR). Founded in 1985 with one magazine, today we have operations in the UK, US and Australia creating over 180 special-interest publications, websites and events for people who are passionate about their interests. We hold strong market positions in games, film, music, technology, cycling, automotive and crafts. Our biggest-selling magazines include T3, Total Film, Digital Camera, Fast Car, Classic Rock, Guitar World, Official Xbox Magazine, Official Playstation Magazine, Nintendo Power, Maximum PC and MacLife. Our websites include gamesradar.com, bikeradar.com, techradar.com, and musicradar.com. Future produces over 4 million magazines each month; we attract more than 18 million unique visitors to our websites; and we host 25 annual live events that attract hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts. In addition, Future exports, syndicates or licenses its publications to 90 countries internationally, making us the UK’s number one exporter and licensor of monthly magazines.
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