The History of Mashable Awards
A year and a half after founding Mashable from Scotland in 2005, CEO Pete Cashmore still hadn’t met his staff. They had each been working remotely, sight unseen, yet remained linked by common beliefs.
Cashmore finally met the Mashable team at the first annual Mashable Awards event in January 2008, which also happened to be his first visit to San Francisco.
Now into our fifth awards season, we’re still celebrating that first (unorthodox) Mashable Awards success.
Every year, we call out to our community to recognize the best apps, social networks, startups and memes, but also to predict future innovation. Over the years, participation has grown from 250,000 votes and nominations in 2007 to 1.3 million in 2010.
For the first three years (2007-2009), the Mashable Awards were, in fact, called the Open Web Awards. Cashmore remembers that first trip to San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in 2008. “I was suddenly surrounded by 500 or so people who really loved Mashable and wanted to talk about what we were doing, which was incredibly surprising but also very humbling for me,” he said at the Mashable Connect conference at Disney World earlier this year.
At the time, Mashable was primarily covering startup culture of the tech/web variety. However, after encountering an Open Web Awards crowd so intensely enthusiastic about social media, he redefined Mashable’s vision. “I came away from that event knowing that these social influencers at the center of this social media revolution [were who] I needed to write [for],” Cashmore remembers. “It was about community, and it was about conversations.”
That’s why the Mashable Awards are now a collaborative effort between readers and editorial. “In the early days, our editors didn’t have a role in helping pick the winners,” Cashmore explains. “Now the community and our editors work together to choose the best of the web.”
It was that precise community conversation that kept the Mashable Awards momentum over the years. Mashable’s audience has grown more global, and therefore, better informed about worldwide innovation. COO Adam Hirsch notes that the awards continue to be an invaluable opportunity to expand editorial perspective. “While we might see specific people or products out there that we would assume are the winners,” he says, “because its a public platform and our audience is global, it has helped us discover new people and new tools around the world.”
That unprecedented increase in social media literacy around the world paced Mashable’s community expansion. By the third and fourth annual Mashable Awards, Twitter hashtags were going crazy, Hirsch remembers. Soon, brands got involved, both as sponsors and participants. “It’s been pretty impressive not just to see the involvement from the general public, but from the brands themselves and across their social media channels,” he says.
Although Hirsch describes the awards as less of a “platform for discovery as much as it is for recognition, a hats off to good work,” the Mashable community has consistently been an accurate predictor of what’s next in web culture.
For instance, Cashmore remembers that YouTube won in the awards’ early years. “They didn’t do too badly,” he observes ironically. This year, he predicts the awards will reflect today’s international mobile craze. “We’re seeing an unprecedented mobile boom that shows no signs of stopping.”
The Mashable Awards are now becoming a yearly staple for readers. Hirsch notices, “It’s become wider known, people know that it comes every year now.” They’re excited because they feel empowered, which is what the Mashable mission is all about. Hirsch explains that the awards are meant to “give our audience a voice to tell the media and the world what their best of X’s are.”
So, what’s your best of X? There’s still time…
This year we’ve presented 28 different categories to which you can nominate your picks for best smartphone, must-follow politician on social media, game of the year, etc. Once we close nominations (Nov. 18), we’ll narrow each category down to seven finalists. Then you take the reigns and vote between Nov. 21 and Dec. 16. We’ll announce your winners on Dec. 19, 2011.
What logically follows? Why a party, of course! Mashable has invited you to the Las Vegas MashBash at CES on Jan. 11, 2012 in the Mirage hotel’s smokin’ nightclub, 1OAK. To say we’ve come a long way is an understatement, if you’ll allow us a humble pat on the back.
Step 1
Visit mashable.com/awards.
Click here to view this gallery.
Remember, you may nominate once per day in each category.
The Categories
Social Media
- Best Social Network
- Up-and-Coming Social Media Service
- Must-Follow Actor or Actress on Social Media
- Must-Follow Musician or Band on Social Media
- Must-Follow Athlete on Social Media
- Must-Follow Media Personality on Social Media
- Must-Follow Business Personality on Social Media
- Must-Follow Non-Profit on Social Media
- Must-Follow Politician on Social Media
Tech
- Best Smartphone
- Best Mobile Game
- Most Useful Mobile App
- Most Innovative Mobile App
- Most Useful Tablet-Based App
- Best New Gadget
Business
- Viral Campaign of the Year
- Most Innovative Use of Social Media for Marketing
- Must-Follow Brand on Social Media
- Best Branded Mobile App
- Best Social Good Cause Campaign
- Most Digital Company of the Year
- Breakout Startup of the Year
Entertainment
- Game of the Year
- Viral Video of the Year
- Best Music Service or App
- Best Online Video Streaming Service or App
- Most Social TV Show
- Best Social Movie Campaign
The Winners
Award winners will be announced on Mashable on Monday, Dec. 19. Following the competition, we’ll celebrate our winners at MashBash CES on Jan. 11, 2012, at the 2012 International CES convention at 1OAK, the hot new nightclub at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.
The 2011 Mashable Awards Are Presented by Buddy Media
Buddy Media is the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers, empowering them to build and maintain relationships with their consumers in a connections-based world. The Buddy Media social marketing suite helps brands build powerful connections globally with its scalable, secure architecture and data-driven customer insights from initial point of contact through point of purchase.
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