San Francisco - Fake newscaster Stephen Colbert was named Webby Person of the Year Tuesday in the annual Webby Awards that are often touted as the "Oscars of the Internet."Colbert's portrayal of a pompous right wing news anchor has made his Comedy Central show one of the most popular comedies on television. But the Webby judges said the close integration of the show with his web site, and the search engine manipulations that made him the "greatest living American" according to a Google search also made him the top web personality of the year.
A special achievement award also went to will.i.am, the Black Eyed Peas frontman whose video for Barack Obama, Yes We Can, became a viral hit on the internet.
In the awards for websites, The New York Times' online unit won eight regular Webby Awards in such categories as news, mobile listings and animation. The Onion satire site won seven, while Web sites for Apple Inc. and National Geographic magazine along with a user-confession site, PostSecret, won four awards each.
The Webby Awards have been presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences since 1996, but users also play a part in picking the winners. For each of the categories a winner is chosen by both the Academy and the popular vote, which is cast online.
Photo-sharing site Flickr scooped both gongs in the best community category. In the social networking category Flock, a "social web browser," took the academy's prize while Facebook took the people's vote.
Both prizes in the movie and film category went to The Simpsons Movie website. Annie Lennox's official website won the Webby award for best celebrity and fan site. The BBC picked up three prizes including the popular vote for best news site.
Other awards included The Huffington Post for best political blog, Factcheck.org for best politics site and Wainy Days for best comedy. The prizes for the best weird sites went to Passive-Aggressive Notes (Academy), I Can Has Cheezburger? (Popular Vote).
