Blog award

A blog award is an award for the best blog 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.

Various organizations have started blog awards with varying degrees of success. Some have become defunct.

Blog awards are a descendant phenomenon from awards given by Geocities users during the 1990s. These awards had titles such as "Top Site of the Nite" and were bestowed in the form of a gif embedded on the site's guestbook page.

Process

Like film or television awarding committees, blog awards are started by a certain body, usually composed of blog enthusiasts. Since blogging is an Internet activity, most of the process is done online.

Nominees are usually accepted from anyone in the Internet as long as the one who nominates adhere to given policies and procedures. The nominated websites, varying from independent servers to provider hosted are scanned by a selected team of judges.

The filtered nominees are then announced online or by other means such as newspaper or radio stations. Other bloggers 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

Founder of Parikalpna Award Mr. Ravindra Prabhat addressed in International Hindi Bloggers Conference in Lucknow, 27 August 2012

• 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".^[1] Awarded since 2004, the BOBs are selected by an "international jury of independent journalists, media experts and blog experts".^[2]

• The Weblog Awards (Wizbang), have been canceled for 2010.

• The Parikalpna Award is a literary blog award in India.

Minor awards

Paweł Rogaliński, one of the most awarded Polish bloggers, during a ceremony

Some blog awards are specific to a particular topic such as The Photobloggies, others to a specific region like the Search Maryland Top Blog Awards. The nominees are broken down into categories such as Environmental and Land Use Law Blogs, Criminal Law Blogs, Tax Law Blogs, and Divorce Law Blogs to name a few. They also choose the National Top 100 which is a compilation of the Top 100 blogs, regardless of category.

There are also blog awards targeted at people of various nationalities, races, and ethnicities. Indibloggies, started in 2003, is targeted at Indian Blogs. The Indibloggies shut shop in 2010.^[3] However IndiBlogger^[4] started by Renie Ravin^[5] has instituted a new award called Indian Bloggers Award 2013(IBA)^[6] with a hashtag #IBAwards2013.^[7] The IB Awards 2013 will be given in as many as 50 categories including special ones for expat Indians, Indian regional language bloggers and community blogs.

BlogAdda, founded by Nirav Sanghavi, started BlogAdda Blog Awards in India to recognise and honour bloggers as a part of their Celebrate Blogging Campaign (Hashtag #CelebrateBlogging ^[8]). BlogAdda Awards^[9] has 19 categories where the awards would be given.

The Black Weblog Awards is targeted at Black bloggers and those in the African diaspora, and has been around since 2005. In 2007, the Greek Blog Awards^[10] were determined by public vote. Awards were given to 12 blogs in different categories.

In Poland there are two major contests: The Polish Blog of the Year ^[11] and The Polish Internet Awards in Blog Category.^[12] Until 2010 there was also a contest The Blogger of the Year, which was later joined with The Polish Blog of The Year contest.

The Philippine Blog Awards which recognizes Filipino blogging talent around the world, started in 2007. Another Philippine award honoring the best and inspiring Filipino Expatriates and Overseas Filipinos' blogs and bloggers around the world is the Philippine (Pinoy) Expats/OFW Blog Awards started in 2007.

The Expat Blog Awards ^[13] also celebrate the wide diversity of expats blogging around the world. The annual blog awards feature over 1500 bloggers from over 100 countries. The World Media Awards were launched in 2011 to celebrate the best in blogging and media.

CosmopolitanUK started the CosmoBlogAwards in 2010, celebrating the best of British fashion, beauty, lifestyle and other blogs. More than 15,000 blogs entered in 2010 and more are expected to in 2011.

Goodreads.com, in a joint sponsorship with the Association of American Publishers (AAP), started the Independent Book Blogger Award^[14] in April 2012, open to all independent bloggers who have an account with Goodreads and who blog on a regular basis about books or the book publishing industry.

Defunct awards

The UK newspaper The Guardian ran a Best British Blog competition in 2002^[15] and another in 2003,^[16] but then stopped because of limited enthusiasm from the UK blogging community and a few public boycotts.^[17]

References