RT IN THE FINALS OF ‘OSCARS OF THE INTERNET’ WEBBY AWARDS
MOSCOW, APRIL 11, 2016 — RT has been nominated for a Webby Award, a prestigious international award honoring excellence on the internet, in the ‘Social: News & Information’ category. RT is shortlisted alongside BBC News, ABC News, NBC Nightly News and The New York Times.
RT’s overall social media presence is nominated, which includes the network’s accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, SoundCloud and Coub, as well as the RT Play platform which offers infotainment videos with infographic elements. Users can also vote for RT in the ‘People's Voice Award’ category on the Webby site.
“Being nominated for a Webby is the top level of recognition. This officially makes RT’s social media team one of the world’s best on the digital market,” commented Kirill Karnovich-Valua, head of RT’s online projects. “I’d like to congratulate everybody who made this nomination happen. RT has digital platforms in six languages, being carried by six talented teams, and they all worked very hard with boundless enthusiasm.”
RT is the number one TV news network on YouTube, with a combined 3.3 billion views. RT offers interactive content through the newly-enhanced RT News mobile app, the RT Plugin app, which creates a social network for RT fans and community, and the Periscope live-streaming app. Additionally, RT was one of the first news media organizations to produce current news content in the 360-video (VR) format and to launch a special Facebook page dedicated to its panoramic video content.
“Testing new formats, mastering new platforms, experimenting with new ways of delivering RT content — this has always been a key element of our ‘new media’ strategy,” says Ivor Crotty, head of RT’s social media group. “The digital world changes at supersonic speed, and it’s important to stay on top of the latest trends. But we are very clear about what we are doing and, more importantly, who we are doing it for. So, we share our Webby nomination with our audience.”
The Webby Awards, “the Internet’s highest honor,” according to The New York Times, annually honor the world’s best digital projects: websites, videos, mobile apps and social media campaigns. The jury includes more than 1,000 professionals of the web and media markets, including Twitter founder Biz Stone, Huffington Post co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington, and actor and director Kevin Spacey. The list of winners over the years includes names such as YouTube, Google, the BBC, CNN and Facebook.
A professional jury will announce the winners on April 26, 2016.
