It was just brought to my attention that Buzztracker has been nominated /shortlisted for a Webby. This is nice news to start Golden Week with, and it just happens to coincide with a chunk of really down-and-dirty glamourless backend rewriting I had been doing lately. More on the backend later.

For now, if you dig Buzztracker, go and cast your people's choice vote. Thanks!

Update: Just 5 hours ago we were listed in the NetArt category. Now we're gone. I took a partial screen shot (originally for the blog). Here it is to prove we're not insane:

I've emailed the Webby people about this ... Will see what they have to say!

If you'd like to email them too to voice your support the address seems to be: techsupport_pv@webbyawards.com.

Update 2: From the Executive director of the Webby awards:

Hi, Craig:

Thanks for your note. I'm really sorry for the confusion. We were doing some work on our database in the late hours of the night and early this morning and that led to a glitch that temporarily displayed some incorrect information for the NetArt category. We were immediately alerted to this by our system and took steps to fix it. I believe the information was displaying incorrectly for about 5 hours, and the glitch was resolved and pushed live at 930AM EST.

The correct and audited nominees for NetArt are:

1. Color of Sound
http://concretethestudio.com/colo...

2. justcurio.us
http://www.justcurio.us

3. PostSecret
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

These are the three nominees that were announced on April 11th and those results were audited and tabulated by PricewaterhouseCoopers to ensure fairness and accuracy.

Please accept my apologies for the confusion.

David-Michel

I will now humbly bow back to my corner.

Update 3: Some people have been asking why there are only three entries in the NetArt category. I had the same question last night when I saw Buzztracker was removed. Here is the response I got from David-Michel:

Hi, Craig:

[...]

In certain smaller categories, The Academy will sometimes choose to honor less than 5 sites. Blog - Political also has 3 nominees this year.

Best wishes, David-Michel

Does this still mean I can put a "Nominated for Webby for over *five hours*" sticker on Buzztracker?

What's bizarre/funny/sad/implied about all of this is the fact that clearly Buzztracker was close to being shortlisted (unless there were only five entries in the NetArt category). But for some reason they decided not to include it.

Perhaps most telling about how arbitrary awards can be, Buzztracker wasn't even given "Top 20% Official Honoree" status. I won't make any assertions but it's nice to know Buzztracker wasn't overlooked in favor of clearly much more innovative and culturally important sites.

In the words of Ze Frank: "Kill me."