A blog award is an award for the best

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

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 GeoCities, later 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, active from 1994 to 2009. GeoCities was started in November 1 ...

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 , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

embedded on the site's guestbook page.

Process

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

awarding committees, blog awards are started by a certain body, usually composed of blog enthusiasts. Since blogging is an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

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 wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...

s. The filtered nominees are then announced online or by other means such as

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, 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 poli ...

radio stations Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting 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 lan ...

. Other

bloggers A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

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), and the BOBs (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) ran from 2003-2008.

Defunct awards

The UK newspaper ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' 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