The Best of Blogs

About the BoB Awards

The Rationale

We set out to help the little blogger get some recognition in the blogosphere. We continued to see the A-list bloggers rise in popularity but we knew there were many great bloggers that were not being noticed. We decided that we would help the little blogs get the recognition they deserved. There is a wide variety of blogs across the blogosphere, and we wanted to expose this rich diversity.

So, we created the Best of Blog, or BoB, Awards. Named after the pseudonymous spammer who used to clutter our blogs with advertisements for Viagra and Texas Hold-Em, the BoB Awards go out of their way to recognize the great efforts of those online diarists who blog about the minutiae of their life…and entertain many others in the process.

How It Works: Nominations and Fan Votes

• The BoB Awards open to nominations on December 19, 2005, and close to nominations on January 3, 2006.


• Any blogger or blog reader may nominate a blog by going to the appropriate category on each nomination page and leaving the URL to the blog as a comment.


• After January 3, the panelists assigned to each category will read through all the nominations and pick what they think are the 10 most deserving blogs in that category. Panelist decisions will be based first on blog content and second on user-friendliness; a blog’s visual design will be of only minor consideration.


• On January 10 we will publish the finalists, and provide a form for voting online for the fan’s choice.


• The fans will vote on a blogger and the resulting vote will count as a percentage of the overall vote to be put forth by the jury panel. Popular vote will only be a small portion of the overall decision making process, but it will allow some participation on behalf of the blog reading public.


• All winners will be announced on January 30, 2006.


• The Bob Awards panelists will contact all winners after official announcement. Winners have seven (7) days to respond in order to claim their prize. If the winner does not claim his or her prize, the panelists will reward it to the runner-up.

Rules and Exclusions

• Please nominate personal blogs only. Political blogs, technical blogs, and marketing blogs are excluded from this competition. (“Political” blog here means a blog devoted almost exclusively to politics, where 50% or more of the entries are politically-oriented.)


• Please do not nominate your own blog.


• Panelists are excluded from the BoB Awards. Please do not nominate a blog belonging to one of our panelists.


• A blog that was a winner of a BoB Award in 2004 is not eligible to win a BoB Award in 2005.


• Decisions of the panelists will be final.


• If a blog that is nominated does not want to be considered as a finalist, the blog owner must notify the panel of its desire to be withdrawn prior to January 5, 2005. Once the finalists are chosen, the blog will remain as a finalist throughout the period and will not be withdrawn from the list of finalists.

Consider casting nominations for lesser-known blogs, instead of offering “obvious” picks. While we do not wish to hold a blog’s popularity against it, we also want to keep the focus of this contest on blogs that could benefit from additional traffic. If a blog’s traffic exceeds several thousand unique visitors a day, we will likely not approve it as a finalist.