Well seeing as if XBiz Awards is having their big awards show coming up I figured I might as well toss around my 2 cents on who I think should win each category and WHY. To see their nominations (click here) and see who is up for nomination.
Before I get started though, I think all awards shows are pretty much lame and very biased and a lot of people voting probably only have good knowledge in about 30% of the categories they are voting on. For example I have no idea who should win half the categories (GLBT, Mobile, Novelty, Retailer, etc..) thus I will not comment on those and only comment on ones where I have a solid opinion WITH a reason for it
So today I will cover only about 4 or 5 categories, and wrap it up in a day or 2 with 4 or 5 more categories.
Web Host of the Year – ISPRIME – Not sure what the criteria is really for this category. There should be some base criteria. Like voting on growth? service? All hosts have their pros and cons and really unless the voter has hosted at every host out there (in EQUAL capacity, meaning a dedicated server at all) it is hard to compare ones service against anothers when you really have no idea how each one is. Anyway, I go with IsPrime in this category.
Up & Coming Web Company – JuggCash (& BrazBucks) – They are not even listed but by far Brazzer owns the biggest up and coming company. Ask any big Traffic generator and they will tell you his stuff converts AND retains like crazy. It’s a shame he was left off the list. A VERY close second is the HushMoney (HoDough.com) team as they got a GREAT product as well. Kink.com has great products but have been around forever so not sure how they got nominated in this category.
Design Company Of The Year – Dickmans Design – They produce many different styles of designs and rarely stick to a cookie cutter format. Not to mention it is usually very high quality work. I really hope Wyldesites doesn’t win. I love the guys work but his portfolio hasn’t been updated on his site since 2005 and not sure what new work is his. So although he is probably the best designer in adult, with no portfolio or presence in the community I don’t think he should win this year.
Content Provider Of The Year – World Wide Content – Always providing new titles for webmasters to buy DVD rights to. I will be honest in that I don’t buy much content anymore but from the list provided here is my other thoughts. Dean Capture – great photographer but is exclusive with Twistys I think so shouldn’t be nominated here as not really a content provider. SexEntertain – could easily win this as they now took over managing FullOnVideo’s feeds and best of all converted them from quicktime to windows media player format which improved the value of the feeds tremendously IMO. TheContentStore – had a good year but limited amount of titles and a problem by offering rights to titles that were sketchy (details here) so I don’t think he should win. The rest are ok, but didn’t do anything super to deserve winning IMO.
Innovative Product of the Year – NONE – From the list, I didn’t see one product that blew me away this year. If i was to vote I would probably say Fleshlight but not sure it is a new product rather just a new product brought online for webmasters to promote.
Stay Tuned for tomorrow or the next day where I will cover a few more categories with my thoughts. I hope you enjoyed them.