Announcing The Next Web Award nominees, now it is up to you
Written on 14th March 2008
21 COMMENTS 
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
We haven’t got that much sleep last couple of nights. Working at the office, checking out startups and companies, coding the voting system (thanks Arjen), not being able to reach our deadline, but now I’m happy to announce the final nominees of The Next Web Awards. In total 235 nominations were made in seven categories. Five companies per category made it to the final.
We know that there are tons of awards out there, but we try to change the rules and distinguish ourselves by NOT building up a database (we don’t want your info, so no registration needed), by NOT nominating every company out there, by NOT having 100 categories and by NOT considering all votes equal (you can empower your vote -1 vote counts for 2- if you vote in all categories).
All this combined with our endless ambition, our super partners ( TechCrunch UK, TechCrunch France, Loogic, and Frankwatching), and the drive to celebrate European startups we hope to cast even more votes then last year (85k) and distribute the traffic back to the nominees.
The award ceremony will take place on April 4, in the Transformatorhuis in Amsterdam, during The Next Web Conference. Afterwards we will have a great party at the Odeon.
Enough said. Who will own the Social space? Who’s Europe’s Web Celeb? Who’s Europe’s Rookie of the year? What European company gives you most pleasure… I mean entertainment!. What is the one European company to rule them all? Cast your vote, empower it and give your favorite service unlimited bragging rights!
The nominees are:
Best European Entertainment site
Last.fm
Weewar
Floobs
GamesGames
Dailymotion
Best European Company
Moo
Dailymotion
Hyves
eBuddy
Bebo
Best European Social site
Hyves
Dopplr
Xing
StudiVZ
Netlog
Web Celeb
Loic LeMeur
Niklas Zennstrom
Stefan Glaenzer
Marc Samwer
Tariq Krim
Best European Technology Weblog
Frankwatching
Loogic
TechCrunch UK & France
D.I.Y. startup news
Dutchcowboys
Rookie of the Year
Glubble
Sellaband
Wakoopa
Fring
QuotationsBook
Best on-stage start up (during The Next Web conference)
eBuddy
Wakoopa
Netlog
Twingly
andUNITE
CoComment
Backbase
Lookery
Webnode
Bemba
Goojet
Radionomy
Beezbox
Symbaloo
Wauw.fm
Your votes please…
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
By Catharina on Mar 14, 2008
Is this a joke or is it just a coincidence that the organizing partners are all nominated by the professional jury in the technology blog category? Who are actually the jury?
Reply
By Ernst-Jan Pfauth on Mar 14, 2008
@Catharina I don’t think it’s weird, since Patrick wanted the most successful European blogs to co-host the awards. So why would you be surprised if they are also nominated for the Award of best blog? They simply are as good as no other.
Reply
By Catharina on Mar 14, 2008
Well it is my opinion that if you organize a competition, it is wise to keep out of participating. Like for example Marketingfacts does with it’s marketing blog top 100 list. Also still curious to the jury members..
Reply
By Patrick de Laive on Mar 14, 2008
@Catharina I understand your comment. This is also the reason why this blog is not nominated. The category for best Weblog was the one with the least nominations (only 8), so it was an easy choice.
We hoped to receive a lot of nominations for this category (like in all others) but that didn’t work out as we expected. I would have loved to see other great blogs here, but it is hard to nominate a blog when it is not suggested for nomination by the public or the blogs itself.
Reply
By Tim Molendijk on Mar 15, 2008
Catharina’s comment made me think. How did you guys come up with the nominees? Were they nominated in some kind of pre-election? Or do you have some kind of jury-like group of people doing that for you? Or is it simply you guys hand-picking some candidates that you know and like?
Don’t get me wrong. I would be very glad to see any of the current nominees winning an award. But as you Next Web guys are trying to create an award that people take seriously, I think you ought to shed some light on how the nominees come to be.
Reply
By Patrick on Mar 15, 2008
@Tim So here is the deal: we opened up nominations for the awards 2 weeks ago (see: http://thenextweb.org/2008/02/.....gy-heroes/ )
From all nominations the jury (consisting of representatives/editors from all the co-hosting blogs: TC UK, TC FR, Loogic, Frankwatching and The Next Web) picked out the five final nominees.
This is pretty straightforward for how to organize a public award… I understand that some of the companies who didn’t make it to the final nominees can be dissapointed, but from their side we haven’t had any complaints so far. So I guess it is something Dutch to try to see a dark side in stead of seeing the beauty.
Hope this will answer your question.
Reply
By Tim Molendijk on Mar 15, 2008
@Patrick: C’mon! Now you are seeing dark sides instead of (beautifully) engaged comments :). My comment had nothing to do with disappointment or whatever, just my idea that the nomination process should be more transparent. Anyway, thanks for your quick reply.
Cheers and good luck with the conference and awards!
Reply
By Patrick on Mar 15, 2008
@tim ok ok, you’re right, I was wining a little bit :) I had a long night yesterday, lets put it that way :)
have a nice weekend.
Reply
By Vincent on Mar 15, 2008
I don’t want to ruin your weekend, Patrick, but I have to agree with Catharina and Tim that this list doesn’t add to the credibility of the award. To say the least.
Techcrunch UK & France, Loogic and Frankwatching are members of the jury, so should never nominate themselves.
Wakoopa is sharing an office with the Next Web, so shouldn’t be nominated.
And the over-representation of Dutch startups is also strange. It’s supposed to be a European award, right?
Reply
By Patrick on Mar 16, 2008
Hey Vincent, you just ruined it :)
No serious, the decisions are made based on the startups, companies and weblogs that were nominated by the public. I agree that it is skewed to Dutch initiatives, but that might have something to do with the next web being in Amsterdam, or it might signal that there is some good stuff coming from the Netherlands… Who knows..
I think categories like Entertainment, Company, Social, web celeb, rookie of the year and best on stage startup all have their value. For best Weblog (as I’ve mentioned before) we had very little submissions leaving us with some (not all, as this weblog is not nominated of course) of the co-hosts to be nominated. BUt still you have to admit that these weblogs are the most influential weblogs in Europe in the startup/technology scene.
For Rookie of the year we’ve checked multiple things, number of articles written about the startup (and who), alexa stats, compete stats, etc.
Should Wakoopa not be nominated because they share offices with some of the jury members while scoring in the top 3 of all mentioned points?
I probably know some people in all of the 235 companies who were nominated by the public…
I’m not saying this not debatable, selecting companies is always a difficult task, but the most important thing is that we would like to celebrate European startups. We want to move out of the shade from the Valley and show that we’re doing some cool stuff here in Europe.
Reply
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Mar 16, 2008
We will add a new category next week titled ‘Most Promising, trustworthy and honest Award Show”. We will be the only nominated company!
Reply
By Hannah on Mar 21, 2008
Vote For Bebo, Its Ace x
Reply
By Hannah on Mar 21, 2008
VOTED BEBO X
Reply
By Taylor donachie on Mar 22, 2008
Bebo is acee :)
soo,i voted bebo :)
taylor x
Reply
By Taylor donachie on Mar 22, 2008
bebo is acee.
so i voted for it. :)
taylor (;
Reply
By Shannonxx on Mar 23, 2008
Bebo all he way..
It rocks!
Reply
By Chelsea on Mar 23, 2008
Bebo.
Bebo.
Bebo.
Bebo.
Bebo.
Bebo.
Bebo.
Bebo.
Bebo.
Reply
By Mike Butcher on Mar 24, 2008
@Catharina – I agree – it doesn’t make sense that TechCrunch UK is nominated and I can tell you that I had nothing to do with this. The Next Web people put TCUK in the category not me (editor, Mike Butcher). Although TCUK is now the biggest tech blog in the UK I doubt it will win anyway. Have fun voting.
Reply
By Emily Ftree on Mar 25, 2008
I LOVE BEBO
BEBOS THE BEST
I LOVEEEEE BEBO
BEBO HAS TO WIN EVERYTHING :)
CHECK OUT MYN
http://Sugar-andspice.bebo.com
LOL
GOOO BEBOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Reply
By MARIENNE on Mar 31, 2008
BEBOO ALL THE WAYYYY :)
http://www.bebo.com/fiilo-chiickx3
Reply
By jacky on Jan 2, 2009
i love bebooooooooo ;)
http://www.roketoyun.net
Reply