2012 Webby Awards

The 16th annual 2012 Webby Awards were held at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on May 21, 2012 and hosted by comedian Patton Oswalt. Winners were selected from among roughly 10,000 entries and voting by the public for the People's Choice Award was available prior to April 26th. The awards ceremony was streamed live in HD at www.webbyawards.com.

Newly added to this ceremony were awards for the categories "Mobile Advertising," "Corporate Social Responsibility," and "Best Meme." The "Best Meme" Category represented the first time that there would be no individual credit and no award recipient apart from the meme itself.

Nominees and winners

References

Winners and nominees are generally named according to the organization or website winning the award, although the recipient is, technically, the web design firm or internal department that created the winning site and in the case of corporate websites, the designer's client. Web links are provided for informational purposes, both in the most recently available archive.org version before the awards ceremony and, where available, the current website. Many older websites no longer exist, are redirected, or have been substantially redesigned.

Webby Award

A Webby Award is an award for excellence on the Internet presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over one thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include websites, advertising & media, online film & video, mobile sites & apps, and social.

Two winners are selected in each category, one by members of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and one by the public who cast their votes during Webby People’s Voice voting. Each winner presents a five-word acceptance speech, a trademark of the annual awards show.

Hailed as the "Internet’s highest honor," the award is one of the older internet-oriented awards, and is associated with the phrase "The Oscars of the Internet."

History

The Webby Awards began in 1996, sponsored by the Academy of Web Design and Cool Site of the Day. The first Webby Awards were produced by Kay Dangaard at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel as a nod to the first site of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars). That first year, they were called "Webbie" Awards. The first "Site of the Year" winner was the pioneer webisodic serial The Spot.

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American information technology entrepreneur and inventor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc.; CEO and largest shareholder of Pixar Animation Studios; a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT Inc. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Shortly after his death, Jobs's official biographer, Walter Isaacson, described him as the "creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing."

Adopted at birth in San Francisco, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s, Jobs's countercultural lifestyle was a product of his time. As a senior at Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, his two closest friends were the older engineering student (and Homestead High alumnus) Wozniak and his countercultural girlfriend, the artistically inclined Homestead High junior Chrisann Brennan. Jobs briefly attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out, deciding to travel through India in 1974 and study Buddhism.