March 28th was the first of the Web 2.0 Awards. Its now June and I finally got to taking a closer look at all the sites. What I found most humorous was that most of the sites are still in Beta, and some hadn’t even launched at the time! It will be interesting to keep tabs over the next several months and see which die out, and which become solid businesses.
Below is my review of just the “Retail” awards section:
First Place: Etsy
I’m a big fan of the site and the concept. The layout of the page is beautiful, and gives a very cutting-edge look… Great, except for it requiring Flash. After spending some time on the site, I realized why it had won. A niche ebay, with all the perks of Web 2.0! The Etsy marketplace covers a niche market of only unique handmade items. It lets users shop by by color, place, time and material. Features include tagging by materials used and general keywords. PayPal is integrated as the main payment system. Some additional layout features utilize Flash and remind me of Cooqy, which was created using Laszlo. Anyway, not only is Etsy’s layout very tight, the concept is equally as good. I’m not the only fan though. Pete Cashmore of Mashable seems to like it and Justin Lee posted that he does as well. Nice job, hope it does well.
Second Place: Threadless
The second runner up was Threadless. Another well-designed site. My first impression was that it was bit crowded for my liking, but still nice. It is described as “A collection of tee shirts submitted and rated by the public. Over 60000 designs have been submitted and rated, over 400 have been chosen to be printed and sold on the site.”
The 
site seems to have a fairly big community following, and a lot of quality submissions. For users looking to make a purchase, the site not only shows a preview of the T-Shirt, but also show people wearing the shirt. I think that is huge for the community to have related pictures of real people wearing the gear! Or in the case of this one, a image/drawing of what Michael J. Fox would look like wearing the shirt. I included it because I’m personally a fan of Back to the Future and found it humorous.
Third Place: Wists
The third runner up was wists. Wists is social shopping site similiar in usage and layout to Kaboodle. This type of shopping is definitely an interesting concept, although I haven’t found it all that useful myself. Look for these sites to continue to grow in the future. I do plan to do a post on the emerging trends and technology of social shopping used as a basis for sites like Kaboodle, Wists and recently MyPickList.
As for Wists, I hope they are really busy, because their blog and specifically their blog post about the award is really skimpy! It almost looks like splog.
Honorable Mentions
Reference: http://web2.0wards.org/
Strange that nothing was posted about the Web 2.0 Awards on Mashable nor ProgrammableWeb. Those are my two general sources for Web 2.0 related topics. Oh well!
This whole Web 2.0 Awards project was organized by Kat Ortland of SEOMoz. Read more on her personal blog. I congratulate Kat on a job well done and in covering so much ground! Now here are the…
Changes I would to the Awards
.. ClipFire for 43Deals
If I was Kat I would have choosen ClipFire.com over 43deals.com. They are both a work in progress, but ClipFire is a much cleaner layout, and although could use some enhancements, generally has its act together. 43deals.com is also an innovative idea, but the site seems sloppy, and many irrelevant deals come up.
Note: 43Deals has had a face-lift and cleaned up a lot since I began writing this post a while back. But I still feel ClipFire wins out based on community involvement and general ease-of-use factors.
.. SecretPrices (or even EVrewards) for DealMine
Ok, so this is totally biased. DealMine is rewards based, whereas SecretPrices involves more common discounts such as coupon/rebate and promotion offers. DealMine.com is an interesting idea, but it definitely doesn’t give me the Web 2.0 feel. And the design is far interesting, especially the implementation of the Shopping.com API. I think a nicer choice would have have been to select evreward.com which tells the users where they can find the best cashback options.
Next Year…
Maybe I will submit a site next year, but I wonder what the awards will be called then. Will that be Web 2.1 Awards or Web 3.0? Or Web 2.0.1 RC 2 w/ HotFix 3… Yeah, sorry that’s my Microsoft developer background kicking in.
[tags]Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Awards, Etsy, Threadless, Wists, ClipFire, 43Deals, SEOMoz, PayPal, Shopping.com[/tags]
Comments(1) 
