Webby Awards nominees announced, from Angry Birds to the BBC

With a plethora of award shows, Hollywood devotes an entire season to discovering who was the best of the best, but for the web, far more popular than old Hollywood, there’s only one arbiter… The Webby Awards.

The Webbys, 15 years old this year are famous for often being the first to identify up-and-coming stars along with their memorable and oft times hilarious five word acceptance speeches. Last night, Jake and Amir of the hilarious collegehumour.com’s web-series announced this years nominees.

Nominees include breakout pop culture and internet sensations ranging from Angry Birds, Groupon, the Old Spice Guy, and of course the web phenomenon Justin Bieber. The New York Times, nominated in 18 categories leads the pack of nominees followed by Funny or Die with ten, Google Creative Lab with eight, and the British newspaper The Guardian, and news channelsBBC and CNN making up the remainder of the top five most nominated with six nominations each.

Looking at the list of nominees, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which organises and runs the Webbys are entirely justified in saying, “the high-caliber and diverse scope of the nominees reflects how the internet has become the driving force shaping everything from entertainment to business.”

The awards have four primary categories, “Websites,” “Online Film & Video,” “Interactive Advertising” and “Mobile and App,” under each of which there are sub-categories. For each category, two types of awards are handed out.

The first type of award is “The Webby Award,” and is judged by a panel including amongst others, industry leaders such as Huffington Post creator, Arianna Huffington, and Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone alongside celebrities such as David Bowie and Jamie Oliver.

However the gold standard, the one most coveted by nominees is the one judged by none other than Time Magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year: You “The People’s Voice Award.”

This years awards are being held on the 13th of June and, in keeping with the spirit of the Webbys, they promise to be both exciting and innovative.

Beyond merely being streamed live online, as the organisers promise, viewers will be able to interact with the show on multiple screens using mobile phone and tablet apps, share in-progress highlights, and vote on the best speeches. With all that, one can see why the organisers feel that, this years ceremony will allow viewers of the awards to not only view, but also participate with and shape the ceremony as it unfolds.