Announcing The Industry Standard Innovation 100 Awards

Overview
The Industry Standard Innovation 100 Awards -- or the TIS 100 for short -- is a community-driven awards program that showcases the top 100 Internet innovators across 10 categories. There is a multistage process to determine the TIS 100 and the winners for each of the ten categories. Readers, users, and company founders and executives can nominate and vote on the most innovative sites, services, and companies on the Web.

Categories

• Audio & Video (audio, music, movies, video, related tools)
• Commerce (banking, b2b, real estate, travel. Retail is a separate category)
• Community/Social (social networks, online communities)
• Games/Entertainment (online games, or sites focused on gaming and having fun)
• Graphics (2D and 3D graphics-oriented tools and services)
• International (services that target markets outside of the U.S.)
• Lifestyle (digital photography, publishing and media, fashion, etc.)
• Productivity (mapping, office suites, metrics, utilities)
• Retail (online shopping, stores, and services)
• Widgets ("platform" applications, add-ons, and Web widgets; no desktop widgets)

Nominations (June 18 – July 18)

The nominees must be for applications, software, or sites that use the Web or other Internet services as their platform. Users can submit their favorite sites in the listed categories. Founders and CEOs are also welcome to nominate their own services. There is no limit on the number of nominations per user.

All nominees will be entered into consideration via our nomination form. After all nominations are collected, our team at The Standard will compile the data and select the companies, sites, and services in each category that best represent innovators in each of the 10 categories. Community sentiment will carry a great deal of weight, but Industry Standard staff will approve those that make it to the voting round.

In order to be considered for inclusion in the TIS 100, nominees should meet the following criteria:

• Nominees don't have to be wildly trendy or well-known, but must be established websites that offer inspiration and tangible user benefits.
• Inspired use of emerging technologies are considered over mere name recognition.
• Beta sites and applications can take part, but only if they are public betas -- private betas are disallowed.

Voting (August 4 – October 3)
Once the categories have been filled, voting will be opened to the public. Anyone may vote on the candidates. One vote may be cast per category, thus allowing everyone up to ten votes to be cast per person.

Judging
Winners will be chosen by the community with editorial oversight. Winners will be announced on Monday, Oct 20, 2008.

Other rules
The Industry Standard reserves the right to change the dates and other elements of The Industry Standard Innovation 100 Awards at any time.