Online innovators gathered on the 13th to celebrate the 15th annual Webby Awards at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. Categories included interactive advertising, websites and online film. The event was hosted by ‘Friends’ star Lisa Kudrow with awards also being given out by Daniel Radcliffe and US Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
Winners of the awards were told to keep their speeches ‘web friendly’ which meant keeping them within a five word limit. The only recipient who had trouble with this was comedian Will Ferrell who commented: “Thanks for this award. I will put it in my house next to my instructional poetry textbooks. Thank you.”
Other winners at the Webby awards included the creators of the hugely popular mobile game Angry Birds, voucher app Groupon and the IBM Super Computer, Watson. This won the Webby Person of the Year title and accepted the award by saying: “Person of the year. Ironic.”
Inventor of the first mobile phone, Martin Cooper, was also honoured at the event. He was awarded the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for inventing the mobile phone whilst working at telecommunications company Motorola. The first mobile phone, the DynaTAC, could provide 35 minutes of talk time and weighed 2.2lbs.
The recognition of apps such as Angry Birds and Groupon highlighted the increasing influence mobile apps are having on the online community. With demand rising for devices such as iPads, smartphones and tablet devices the app market has been flourishing with developers from all over the world creating tools for a variety of devices.
