Big names win big in Webby Awards

The Golden Globes may be criticized year-in and year-out for skewing nominations and awards to the hottest celebrities, but what about the Webbys?

For all of the great work uploading and exploding online, the Webby Awards is a corporate entity that traditionally recognizes and honors the star-power in the Internet. It helps winnow out the 99-percent when it costs hundreds of dollars just to submit your online work for consideration for a Webby, and more, still, when corporations or channels with subscribers in the millions rally their bases to sound off as the “People’s Voice.”

So if Jerry Seinfeld, Charlize Theron and Ben Stiller are in your categories, sorry, but you probably should just be thankful to be nominated.

Big names won big again in the 2013 Webby Awards. Scroll through the list and see for yourself, but be mindful of all of the marketing, advertising and egads “viral” categories, and good luck avoiding the Microsoft Internet Explorer button.

Here are winners from the comedy world earning kudos from the Webby Awards:

In Blog – Political, Comedy Central’s Indecision won “people’s voice” (while Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight page on the New York Times takes the Webby).

In Celebrity/Fan, the double win goes to Team Coco for backing Conan O’Brien.

The Onion won in Humor (people’s voice to Cracked.com) — and also in both categories for Best Entertainment (Tablet and all other Devices) and People’s Voice Award for Best Entertainment (Social Content and Marketing)

Best Individual Performance went to Charlize Theron for Funny or Die’s “Charlize Theron Gets Hacked”

Burning Love,the webseries from Paramount Pictures and Ben Stiller created by Ken Marino and ERica Oyama, won the “People’s Voice” for Best Individual (?), as well as the win for Comedy Long Form or Series, and a “Webby Special Achievement” honor. Their citation reads: “By successfully challenging the standards of network television with regard to both production quality and distribution, Burning Love has set a new benchmark for quality content on the Web.” And by successfully challenging TV, they mean, of course, that the webseries is now on TV. On E!

Bad Lip Reading (from 3 Arts), with more than 2 million YouTube subscribers, earned the “People’s Voice” in the Comedy Long Form or Series category.

Funny or Die won for comedy short for “The Wire: The Musical”…

…with people’s voice going to CollegeHumor for “Gay Men will Marry Your Girlfriends.”

The Fine Brothers were a People’s Voice favorite for “Kids React” in the Reality category — see their most recent entry from the weekend regarding Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon.

Crackle.com was a People’s Voice favorite in the Entertainment (Channel) category, and if you don’t know what Crackle.com is, then know that it’s the Sony video channel and the host for Jerry Seinfeld’s series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” Speaking of Jerry Seinfeld, he’s invited to receive a special award for Outstanding Comedic Performance by the Webbys for his efforts, which in their words “demonstrated the continued merging of Hollywood-style entertainment with the Internet.”

In news you may already be using on a regular basis, however, the Webbys also are giving a Lifetime Achievement award to Steve Wilhite. Wilhite invented the GIF file format. Animate this!

Patton Oswalt will host “the star-studded ceremony” (the Webbys’ own words) at watch.webbyawards.com on May 22, 2013.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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