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"The 2008 Webby Award winners were announced a few scant hours ago.  Given the amazing amount of social media and blogosphere award winners announced (not to mention the sheer volume of nominees and categories in general), it'll probably be 2009 by the time I'm done with this post, but I'm going to take a crack at summarizing all the award winners you'll be interested as an ardent and frequent reader of Mashable.\nThe RegularsAll the sites, services and software you're already familiar with made appearances.\u00A0 Facebook, Digg, Flock and Flickr and Apple all made appearances.\u00A0 Conspicuously absent?\u00A0 Business centric old-schoolers like LinkedIn and Plaxo and Facebook predecessors Friendster and MySpace (not to mention most popular browser evar Firefox).\n Social Networking Webby People's Choice Winner\n\nBest Navigation and Structure Webby Award WinnerBest Visual Design and Function Webby People's Choice WinnerBest Use of Video or Moving Image Webby Award WinnerBest Use of Video or Moving Image People's Choice Winner\n Best Practices Webby People's Choice Winner\nBest Practices Webby Award WinnerCommunity Webby Award WinnerCommunity Webby People's Choice Winner Social Networking Webby Award Winner\nThe New GuysThere were a number of startups that we've covered here at Mashable, but if you're not one to closely follow every story we write you may not yet be aware of to bring home various awards.\nBanking/Bill Paying Webby People's Choice WinnerFinancial Services Webby People's Choice WinnerFrom Sept '07 Coverage:\nMint.com is a new service that will help you track your finances and improve cash flow.\nWith this service, you can insert the data from several financial institutions, including your credit card companies. Mint will keep track of how much debt you have, as well as how much available cash you have. You can add merchant accounts too, so Mint can track your spending and tailor it to the individual stores at which you shop. Spending trends are broken down into restaurants, stores, groceries, etc. A list of your favorite merchants can even be made for at-a-glance viewing of your spending habits.\n\nBanking/Bill Paying Webby Award Winner\nFrom July '07 Coverage:\nLendingClub is the peer lending service exclusive to Facebook users.\nThe company launched in conjunction with the Facebook Platform at the f8 event, as one of the original partners to go live at the Platform's onset. When it comes to peer lending services, LendingClub has gained a significant amount of traffic considering it's only been around since May of this year. Establishing itself as a testament to the radical influence of Facebook applications, LendingClub is one company that has sucessfully leveraged the existing network of Facebook users for peer business purposes.\n Financial Services Webby Award Winner\nFrom March '07 Coverage:\nUK-based Zopa told us they've raised $12.9 million in a series C round led by Bessemer Ventures, bringing the total to $34 million. The social lending company, which began in the UK, is trying to break into the US market.\nGames Webby Award WinnerGames Webby People's Choice Winner\nFrom March '07 coverage:\nKongregate, the social network for gamers, provides an ongoing community around playable Flash and Shockwave web games.\nGuides/Ratings/Reviews Webby Award Winner\nFrom January '06 coverage:\nYelp is a website that allows users to write and share reviews of local businesses. It also has social networking features (adding friends, groups, etc.) to share reviews with a trust network.\n Real Estate Webby Award Winner \nFrom April '07 coverage:\nZillow, the real estate informational site [...] has been growing since its onset, and they've recently added some social networking components to help users further understand the market from first hand accounts of other users.\n\nReal Estate Webby People's Choice Winner\nFrom August '07 coverage:\nTrulia, the real estate search engine acts as a Q&amp;A forum for the community of real estate professionals and others involved or interested in the real estate industry. After two-and-a-half months of monitoring, Trulia has found that some of the most active topics revolve around home buying advice, market conditions and quality of life issues. In addition, Trulia also found that the average response time for a submitted question is 20 minutes, and each question gets an average of 3 responses. 80% of questions are submitted by consumers and 75% of answers are submitted by real estate professionals.\nThe New MediaWhether it's the blogs you love, or the conferences you wish you were rich enough to get into, a lot of the blogs you visit regularly made their appearances in the awards listings. One particularly curious category (to me, at any rate, seemed to be the political blog category.\u00A0 There didn't seem to be any other categories of blogs nominated, and the selection of blogs in the political category were almost entirely liberal in nature.\u00A0 We've talked about the left-leanings of the tech blogosphere here before, but it does seem to be an interesting quirk meant to provide an award for, well, the Huffinton Post.\nBest Navigation and Structure Webby Award WinnerBest Visual Design and Function Webby Award WinnerPodcast Webby Award Winner\nBest Copy/Writing Webby Award Winner\nBlog - Culture Webby Award WinnerBlog - Culture Webby People's Choice WinnerNetArt Webby Award WinnerNetArt Webby People's Choice Winner\n\nPolitical Blog Webby Award WinnerPolitical Blog Webby People's Choice Winner\nHumor Webby Award WinnerPodcast Webby People's Choice Winner\nHumor Webby People's Choice Winner"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/05/05/2008-webby-award-winners/>