Last night, Facebook streamed the Webby Awards live from New York. It was an event where CNN's Felicia Taylor, arrived to talk to the winners.
Here we are at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, where the cameras are flashing, the stars are walking the red carpet and glittery awards are about to be handed out.
And, of course, I dressed the part. But no, this is not the Oscars. This is the Webbies, celebrating the best of the Internet.
One big winner of the night, comedy Web site, Funny or Die, swept the competition, winning nine awards in multiple categories,
including Webby film and video artist of the year.
Well, the Webbies, I mean, let's face it, it's the future. It's now.
All the other dusty awards shows, like the Academy Awards, the Nobel Peace Prizes, they've become a yawn.
And right now, this is the place to be. And with all due respect to Desmond Tutu, Barack Obama, sorry, fellas, we got a Webby.
They decided to honor us with a best drama award. So for me, it's very meaningful, you know?
Adrian Grenier of Entourage fame has launched a new green Web site, SHFT.com,
and came to accept the award along with his business partner.
Simply because we won two of them, we figured we should show up and accept the awards.
I think the Webbies are increasingly becoming important. Obviously, new media is where everything is happening now.
And we were very honored and humbled to win.
I sat down with fashion legend Anna Wintour, who won a Webby for best fashion to find out how Vogue.com stacks up against the competition.
There are a lot of Web sites out there that cover fashion and style and celebrities and culture, all the things that we do at Vogue.com.
But we're, you know, very particular about who we feature and who we choose and who we put up on the Web site.
So, I think all that is coming through to everyone who looks at the Web site. And the numbers are obviously indicating that.
The Internet has seen such tremendous growth, from bloggers [to] social media, in business and in our everyday lives, where words are at a premium.
But at this event, the winners must keep it short. Only five words are allowed in an acceptance speech.
Sometimes geeks can be chic.
The Shft's hit the fan.
Long articles, but short speech.
It's a very influential audience, so the average Webby Award account here, Twitter account represented, has more than 50,000 followers.
The average account in the world has less than, I think, 100 followers, just to give you some sense. So these are really influential people.
And like I said, if you believe that the Internet is really at the core of what's changing the world
and these are the people making all those things, it's a great audience to be talking to.
This is the coveted statue of the night -- the Webby. And certainly for winners, it does mean peer recognition.
But it doesn't necessarily turn into profits for their Web site.