Annie Colbert2013-04-02 14:00:11 UTCThe Webby Awards mark 16 years of honoring Internet excellence with a digital skip down memory lane.
The Oscars of the Web teamed up with Internet Explorer to launch the Winners Gallery + Archive, an interactive digital history book documenting nominees of past years. Rather than simply list the winners in text, the project pictures how all the nominees looked the year they battled for the honor.
Ready for a flashback? Below is what You Don't Know Jack looked like in 1997 when it took the top prize in the Games category.
Image courtesy of Webby Awards
Diving into the awards' early days is an explosion of nostalgia for anyone who remembers a web world filled with pixelated GIFs and rampant white space. Screen captures for sites like The Netizen and Migraine Boy could make early web lurkers feel seriously sentimental.
"We definitely thought about [the nostalgia factor] a lot," David-Michel Davies, Executive Director of The Webby Awards told Mashable. "Once we got all the material and data and started seeing it first hand, it really struck us how much has changed in such a short amout of time — to think about all the milestones and huge changes in just five or 10 years."
The archive isn't all 1990s flashbacks, though. Users can navigate through more than a decade of web changes and growth. In 1997, 70 million people used the Internet (or surfed the web, as we'd say back then) and the Webbys handed out 14 awards. By contrast, in 2012, 2.4 billion people connected to the Internet and the Webby Awards expanded to honor 238 winners.
"The Webby Awards mirrored the type of change we've seen in Internet culture and pop culture," Davies said. "When we started, we knew it was plainly obvious that the web would have a major impact on the world. Now we're seeing that change realized. All different parts of the Internet have come together and become the central driving force of change in the world."
The site, created by design firm Area17, includes a search feature that allows users to see how their favorite 'Net stuff has stacked up against the competition.
Image courtesy of Webby Awards
Davies told Mashable that the project aims to please two different types of users. The first: people in the Internet and design industries who can look at the evolution of the web during the past 10 years and find inspiration to generate new ideas that will become the future of our online experience. The second type of people are the general population — the 2.4 billion online — with an interest in Internet culture who will be able to easily navigate the archive on their laptop, tablet, mobile or PC.
Users can even help complete the project. The archive has a crowdsourced element that asks visitors to submit screen grabs and design credits for nominees currently listed without imagery. Someone out there must know the geniuses behind the original Mr. Showbiz, right?
The nominations for the 17th annual Webby Awards will be announced April 9 and the winners on April 20.
Mashable composite. Image via iStockphoto, Edward Mallia
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