SA Blog Awards come of age
2010-08-12 17:29
Cape Town – News24 will be the headline sponsor when the annual SA Blog Awards take place on September 25 in Cape Town.
JP Naude, Cape Town businessman and radio personality, will be taking over as CEO for the awards which are in their fifth year.
"Having News24 on board will help us take the awards to a new level," said Naude. "Last year alone, the event attracted more than 5 000 blog nominations and over 100 000 individual votes.
"With News24’s commitment to showcasing content from the nominated blogs to their audience of more than two million online South Africans, we expect these figures to increase impressively," he said.
"Many South Africans are referring to blogs for updates, opinion and insight into what is happening around them," said News24's head of marketing Karen Dempers.
"We have seen a significant increase in the popularity of user generated content across the News24 network and have watched the number of blogs grow year on year as more South Africans embrace this platform to voice their opinions."
New categories
The awards will feature 25 categories, including the newly introduced SA Tweeter of the Year, Best Company Blog, and Best Fashion Blog.
Only blogs written within South Africa and/or blogs written by South African citizens are considered eligible for the awards.
Nominations can be made on the SA Blog Awards website, and will close on August 27. The top ten nominees in each category will then go into the public vote phase from September 1 to 17.
The results of this vote will then be passed onto the judges who will cast their votes, thereby deciding the category winner.
In addition to News24, other category sponsors this year will be advertising giants Ogilvy Cape Town, kulula.com, Old Mutual, The UCT Graduate School of Business, Evox, Olmeca Tequila, Jameson, Havana Club Rum and Atmosphere Communications.
Naude has also implemented a partnership with Afrigator, one of South Africa's foremost blog statistic measuring companies, whereby it will act as an independent auditor providing accurate and up-to-date information on the nominated blogs to the judges.