A blog award is an award for the best
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
in a given category. Some blog awards are based on a public vote and others are based on a fixed set of criteria applied by a panel of judges.
Blog awards are a descendant phenomenon from awards given by
GeoCities
Yahoo! GeoCities was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest. GeoCities was started in November 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and w ...
users during the 1990s. These awards had titles such as "Top Site of the Nite" and were bestowed in the form of a
gif
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...
embedded on the site's
guestbook
A guestbook (also guest book, visitor log, visitors' book, visitors' album) is a paper or electronic means for a visitor to acknowledge a visit to a site, physical or web-based, and leave details such as their name, postal or electronic addres ...
page.
Process
Like
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
or
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
awarding committees, blog awards are started by a certain body, usuall
composedof blog enthusiasts. Since blogging is an
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
activity, most of the process is done online.
Nominees are usually accepted from anyone in the Internet as long as the one who nominates adheres to given policies and procedures. The nominated websites, varying from independent servers to provider hosted are scanned by a selected team of
judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...
s.
The filtered nominees are then announced online or by other means such as
newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
or
radio stations
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio signal, audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-b ...
. Other
bloggers
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
or Internet users are given the opportunity to vote for several categories such as Best Single Post, Best Blog Site, Best Design, and others. The winners are announced in a ceremonial night usually held in large venues and online.
There are also blog awards initiated by small groups of bloggers in certain locations. The nomination and selection process is usually the same with major awarding bodies but the awarding is usually less extravagant.
Major awards
Among the major blog awards are
The Weblog Awards (Bloggies)
The Weblog Awards, nicknamed the Bloggies, was an annual non-profit blog awards that began in 2001. Until its end in 2015, it was the longest running and one of the largest blog awards, with winners determined through internet voting by the publ ...
, and
the BOBs
The Bobs were an a cappella vocal group founded in San Francisco, California in the early 1980s. They moved to Seattle, Washington and were active recording and touring throughout the United States, Canada and Europe until their farewell show a ...
(Best of Blogs). The bestower of the BOBs, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, describes their awards as "the world’s largest international blog competition". Awarded since 2004, the BOBs are selected by an "international jury of independent journalists, media experts and blog experts".
The Weblog Awards (Wizbang)
The Weblog Awards, presented by Kevin Aylward's Wizbang LLC, were a set of annual blog awards that were presented beginning in 2003. They were one of the largest blog awards, with winners determined through internet voting by the public, and were ...
ran from 2003-2008.
Defunct awards
The UK newspaper ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' ran a Best British Blog competition in 2002 and another in 2003, but then stopped because of limited enthusiasm from the UK blogging community and a few public boycotts.
Weblog competition a 'bloody stupid idea'
Guardian, 2002-07-29
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blog Award
Blogging