Unfortunately the resources required to handle the load of voting (nearly 1,000,000 votes in 2008) could not be adequately provisioned. Even if the servers and bandwidth required appeared today it would be at least a few weeks before everything could be ready for voting.
This has always been a very, very labor intensive process, and in recent years with our success a very expensive competition to run. It's hard to have unlimited resources provisioned for seven days of voting. In the past we've had to provision expensive servers for several months to prepare for the crush of voting.
We really tried to solve the resource problems with new ideas (such as cloud computing) this year, but ultimately we were not able to make things work to our satisfaction. I'm very proud of the voting platform we built for The Weblog Awards over the years, and the quality voting experience we've been able to deliver. The one thing I will not do is compromise that voting experience.
Rather than run a competition that had a high possibility of technically failing, the more prudent choice seemed to be regroup and consider our alternatives for hosting these awards going forward.
Thank you to those who have supported The Weblog Awards over the years, we appreciate your support, and our sorry we couldn't make things work this year.
]]>Spread the word, and nominate you favorite sites.
Time is running out...
Update: Nominations are closed for all categories except for the following:
Best Celebrity Twitterer, Best Technology Blog, Best Military/Gun Blog, Best Business Blog, Best Medical/Health Issues Blog, Best Pet Blog, Best Literature Blog, Best Travel Blog, Best Gossip Blog, Best Asian Blog, Best Latino/South American Blog, Best Midsize Blog (Authority between 201 and 300), Best Up and Coming Blog (Authority between 51 and 100)
Nominations for these categories will close at some point this week...
]]>The nomination process for The 2009 Weblog Awards began today and will run through November 20, 2009 November 22, 2009.
Click here to see the master list of categories where you can nominate your favorite blogs. Get site badges (with linking code), and learn how you can get involved in this year's festivities.
The schedule for The 2009 Weblog Awards is as follows:
Nominations Nov. 3, 2009 - Nov. 20, 2009
Finalists Announced December 28, 2009
Voting January 4, 2010 - January 11, 2009
Start nominating your favorite sites, and start spreading the word about nominations opening!
]]>All this means we will open nominations later this evening.
There's still some minor housekeeping we're working on (such as the content of the site ads, the Technorati Authority boundaries, etc.), but as soon as that's finished nominations will open.
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