How do you get linked from popular websites? Hold an online awards ceremony.
Recently, I’ve been seeing a little icon on websites more and more often. Sometimes, when I least suspect it, I’ll be visiting a well-known open source project or a popular web application, and then my eyes will shift to a box that shows prominently on the homepage, linking to the same site.
I’m talking about the upcoming Webware awards, of course!
The button shown above is a common image seen on websites that have been nominated by the website in a total of 10 different categories; in the end, a total of 100 of the ‘best web 2.0 products’ will be announced on June 18, this coming Monday.
This is a great way for Webware to increase its popularity dramatically because I’ve been seeing websites that have been nominated for an award to link to Webware in order to get more votes; examples include TypePad, Drupal, NewsGator, and ConceptShare. Some websites only link by posting about it on their blog, whereas some others make a big deal out of it and add a link to Webware directly from their homepage.
To be fair, Webware is owned by CNET, which has quite a foothold in the web world already, but even if we look past that, it looks as though the Webware 100 is really working out for them, eh?
