The brains and beauty of Web 2.0

The Webby Awards – which each year recognize websites that embody excellence on the Internet – just celebrated their 12th annual edition. They are the Internet world’s version of the Academy Awards – except shorter (Webby Award winners are allowed only five words for their acceptance speeches) and somewhat less self-important (in 2005 Al Gore brought the house down with his five-worder for Lifetime Achievement: “Please don’t recount this vote”).

This year the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences received 8,000 submissions from 60 countries. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary web users from around the world voted on sites in more than 100 categories that run the gamut from Best Web Writing (won by Wired.com) to Best Visual Design (TED.com) to Best Homepage (Los Angeles Film School). The June ceremonies also cemented the emergence of Web 2.0 – which is, in a nutshell, the idea of using the Internet not simply as a source of news and entertainment but as a platform for creativity, information-sharing and, most importantly, collaboration.

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The concept uniting Web 2.0 firms is that their content is provided by users, usually for free – and it’s an idea that’s starting to demolish the long-standing platforms upon which information is passed and business is done. Vancouver, as it turns out, is part of the advance demolition crew, with local websites such as NowPublic, Flickr and Raincity Studios leading the way to 2.0. This year’s winner of the Community Webby Award was Flickr – founded by Vancouver’s Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield in February 2004 and bought by Yahoo in March 2005 for an undisclosed amount. The photo-sharing site is one of 2.0’s earliest applications, and it now hosts more than two billion pictures. NowPublic, launched by locals Michael Tippett, Leonard Brody and Michael Meyers in 2005, is a pioneer in the world of citizen journalism and last year achieved the largest 2.0 coup to date – signing a deal to sell user-generated social news to the Associated Press. Raincity Studios Inc. is another rising star in the world of building “people-powered communities” – which amounts, says president Kris Krug, to growing the content and raising the clamour of opinion on your website. The reason

Brains are nothing without looks, and web collaboration, however innovative, is nothing without an interface that entices. In websites this means simplicity. The trend, as identified by recent Webby winners, is toward liberal use of white space and away from Flash animation, sunbursts of colour, numerous typefaces and general clutter. Scanning the winners, it’s clear that websites are emerging from their adolescence, with its concomitant penchant for bling and exaggeration, and entering a Banana Republic adulthood of subtlety and understatement. Next to the leading websites of today, the sites of yesteryear look like the ’59 Eldorado out of your father’s black-and-white photo album – all baroque swoops and fins and cone-shaped tail lights. Back then ornateness felt like futurism; today, in websites as well as cars, we treasure the clean and refined look.

Interestingly, the New York Times – which picked up two 2008 Webbys, for Best News and Best Newspaper and over 11 years has a Webby-leading eight trophies – decided to savage the ceremonies in its technology-business blog, Bits. They’re irrelevant, sneered contributor Saul Hansell in his June 11 entry; we may as well be giving out awards for the best uses of paper – “the best supermarket tabloid, the most disingenuous autobiography by a former government official, the best folding of a paper airplane.” (Pity there’s no Webby for “Best Lacerating Sarcasm on the Way to the Podium.”)

But Hansell’s dismissal is clearly misguided: the days of web design being solely the concern of young people with complicated haircuts and ultra-thin laptops are over. The technological landscape is changing quickly, and intelligent businesspeople will see this as a boon, not a threat. As we hurtle into a digital economy, a well-designed website that takes advantage of Web 2.0 innovations such as blogging, wikis, video hosting and community forums will not only get your message to potential customers more efficiently; it will help you create a branded space where those customers can interact.

Oh, and the best part? It will cost you next to nothing. That’s something to celebrate.

John Bucher is digital editor of BCBusinessOnline.ca. Join him for a discussion of technology and new media at The Newsroom Blog .