The fate of the very first Webby winners

Very few websites from the early internet are still functional…except these ones.

Entries for this year’s Webby Awards open September 10 and include new categories for creators and the creator economy! —Kate

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The internet took its first steps the same years I did, and by 1997, we were both—not to brag—already earning awards. In my case, it was for a poem about flowers. Back then, The Webby Awards had just one category: Websites. Unlike my Tumblr or fan fiction, the past Webbys winners are still accessible, via a drop-down menu: In seconds you can be transported to a year when, say, a museum’s website was one of the most exciting and innovative places online. 

The Webbys have since expanded to include apps, advertising campaigns, software, podcasts, games, and more, but as entries come due for this year’s awards, I thought I’d indulge my nostalgia for simpler internet times. Looking at 1997’s winners, I expected most or even all to be inaccessible or forgotten. Instead, I was surprised to see that around half of the websites awarded for their excellence in the ‘90s are still going in 2024. 

The internet that disappears

This is not the story we’re used to hearing about the early days of the internet, and it’s an important one to tell. Having entered uncharted waters, these websites withstood the next 27 years of waves. The internet is more complicated now but—as Brazil was reminded when it was booted off Twitter last weekend—it’s no less unpredictable. Knowing that websites, in fact, can endure on the internet, the question is how? 

Let’s look first at the websites that don’t exist anymore. Family Planet, a family and parenting website, won in the home category, but it was later sold to Disney and redirected to family.com, which now redirects back to Disney. It has been lost to cyberspace through a series of acquisitions and neglect—the more things change, etc. A similar fate befell SonicNet, the winning website for music that was abandoned and relaunched and sold into oblivion. Reuter's Health Information, another winner, is all but absent from any archives, but I can only assume it was absorbed into or axed by Reuters proper.

The trails went cold on websites like Netizen (politics winner), The Gist (television and film winner), and The Gallery of the Absurd (simply: “weird” winner), so if you have any memory of using these, I’d love to hear about it. 

Get ready for the ‘digital dark age’

The rest, however, are still going, some almost exactly as they were in 1997. The Exploratorium website continues as the digital face of the San Francisco museum. TravelMag, a UK travel publication, and Salon, a news and culture website, operate independently and, in Salon’s case at least, employ a robust staff. No linkrot here. But these two are anomalies. They didn’t grow or spin off or get acquired. They accomplished the rare feat of enduring on the internet for being exactly what they are: the first in their fields. 

Others won as the earliest version of themselves and, little did they know, would go on to grow into empires. In sports, a little website called ESPNet SportsZone, the website companion to the ESPN broadcast channel, proved the winner. Now, of course, it’s the homepage of ESPN’s entire TV and digital operation. ESPN Front Row has a great look back at how the website evolved over 20 years. Then there’s a website called Internet Movie Database—IMDb, to you. What started merely as a directory has become an industry resource (IMDb Pro) and a media company of its own. 

The next two may not ring a bell (at least, they didn’t for me), but have found success through acquisitions or adaptations. Not unlike IMDb, Edmunds was a directory for information—in this case, about cars. What began as a print publication in 1966 became a CD-Rom in the early 90s and then a website in 1995. That website is still pursuing its original purpose today, and was valued at $404 million in 2021 when it was purchased by Carmax. 

Finally, the winner in games was “You Don’t Know Jack,” a comedy trivia game from Jellyvision Games that shuttered in 2001. But then! 2008 came along, and the company, rebranded as Jackbox Games, breathed new life into You Don’t Know Jack by adapting it for Facebook and iOS, and eventually streaming and Steam. But you might know Jackbox Games for its more recent hit: Quiplash. 

I wouldn’t say there’s one, surefire way to succeed on the internet, but we can see what these Webby winners and decades-endurers have in common: A simple, clear purpose that aims to make life easier or more entertaining. Some topics, like travel and culture, are timeless, and those websites endured by holding fast to what they knew worked. In other cases, the ideas had to adapt to the times. The movie industry changed, and IMDb made sure it was relevant to each new era (by introducing content) and expanding its foothold (introducing a Pro offering for those in or adjacent to the industry). 

None of these websites innovated for the sake of innovation or abruptly abandoned their original conceit in pursuit of scale. They’re not, to pull a random example from the top of my head, picture-sharing platforms that then started flooding feeds with videos. While homepages may look different and names may have changed, these brands can still be recognized for exactly what they are. Sometimes, they had to fail and start again—but that’s a reminder that what’s lost on the internet doesn’t have to be lost forever.