The BOBs — short for Best of the Blogs — were international blog awards created by Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle in 2004. Billed as the world’s largest international weblog competition, the awards ran for twelve editions until 2016, honoring blogs, podcasts, video channels and online activism projects that advanced freedom of information and press freedom worldwide.

The competition started with 7 language categories in 2004 and grew to 14 by 2013: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian. Winners were chosen on two tracks: an international jury of bloggers and experts who met in Berlin, and People’s Choice awards decided by worldwide public voting (more than 100,000 votes were cast in 2005 alone). Since 2005 a special award for bloggers defending free expression was given jointly with Reporters Without Borders; in 2015 it was succeeded by the DW Freedom of Speech Award. Deutsche Welle also maintained Blogopedia, an editorial catalog of more than 18,000 blogs. With the 2013 edition the competition was renamed The Bobs — Best of Online Activism.

Winners year by year

2004 — the first edition

  • Best Weblog (Jury): 18mo Gou Ribao, a Chinese language blog that also took the Chinese category
  • Best Weblog (User): Por um Punhado de Pixels, a Brazilian blog that won the first worldwide public vote
  • Best Weblog in English (Jury): the blog of law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig
  • Best Weblog in German (User): BILDblog, the watchblog fact checking the Bild tabloid

2005

  • Best Weblog (Jury): Más respeto, que soy tu madre, a Spanish language novel blog
  • Best Weblog (User): Tupiniquim (Portuguese)
  • Reporters Without Borders Award: Manal and Alaa’s Bit Bucket, the blog of the Egyptian activist couple
  • Best Weblog in English (Jury): Global Voices, the international citizen media project

See the full 2005 edition archive with all 13 categories, the complete jury and media partners.

2006

  • Best Weblog (Jury): Sunlight Foundation, the US government transparency organization
  • Best Weblog (User): Lisa Neun (German)
  • Reporters Without Borders Award: Iranian blogs Tanine Sokut and Kosoof
  • Best Podcast (Jury): Muzimei Studio by Chinese blogger Muzi Mei

2007

  • Best Weblog (Jury): Fotomania
  • Best Weblog (User): Blog do Tas by Brazilian TV personality Marcelo Tas
  • Best Videoblog (Jury): Alive in Baghdad, video reports on daily life in wartime Iraq
  • Reporters Without Borders Award (User): Egyptian journalist Nora Younis

2008

  • Best Weblog (Jury): Generation Y by Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, who also won the RSF public vote
  • Best Weblog (User): Science Squirrel (Chinese)
  • Reporters Without Borders Award (Jury): Zeng Jinyan’s blog (China) and the Iranian women’s rights campaign 4equality
  • Best Weblog in Chinese (Jury): the blog of rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan

2009/2010 — one combined edition

  • Best Weblog (Jury): Ushahidi, the Kenyan open source crisis mapping platform
  • Best Weblog (User): Egyptian blogger Osama Romoh
  • Reporters Without Borders Award: We are Journalists, by Iranian journalist Zhila Bani-Yaghoub
  • Best Weblog in German (Jury and User): satire site Der Postillon

2011

  • Best Blog (Jury): A Tunisian Girl by Lina Ben Mhenni, who blogged the Tunisian revolution at personal risk
  • Best Social Activism Campaign: We are all Khaled Said, the Facebook page that helped spark Egypt’s January 25 revolution
  • Best Use of Technology for Social Good: Rospil, Alexei Navalny’s anti corruption project
  • Reporters Without Borders Award: Judith Torrea’s blog on cartel violence in Ciudad Juárez

2012

  • Best Blog (Jury and User): Window of Anguish by Iranian journalist Arash Sigarchi
  • Best Use of Technology for Social Good: Harassmap, the Egyptian platform mapping sexual harassment reports
  • Best Social Activism Campaign: Free Razan, for detained Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi
  • Reporters Without Borders Award (User): Invisible Tibet by Tibetan writer Woeser

2013 — renamed Best of Online Activism, expanded to 14 languages

  • Best Blog (Jury): Li Chengpeng, the hugely popular Chinese author and columnist
  • Best Blog (People’s Choice): exiled Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad
  • Best Innovation: FreeWeibo, uncensored search across blocked Sina Weibo content
  • Best Social Activism: 475, the Moroccan campaign against the marry your rapist law

2014

  • Best Blog (Jury): Egyptian photoblogger Mosa’ab Elshamy
  • Best Blog (People’s Choice): Euromaydan, Ukraine’s biggest Facebook community during the Maidan revolution
  • Reporters Without Borders Award: YanukovychLeaks

Full list: The Bobs 2014 winners

2015

  • Social Change (Jury): Mukto Mona, the Bangladeshi secularist blog co founded by Avijit Roy
  • First DW Freedom of Speech Award: Saudi blogger Raif Badawi

Full list: The Bobs 2015 winners

2016 — the final edition

  • Social Change (Jury): Stop Acid Attacks (India)
  • Tech for Good (Jury): Gershad, the Iranian app mapping morality police checkpoints
  • DW Freedom of Speech Award: Sedat Ergin, editor in chief of Turkey’s Hürriyet

Full list: The Bobs 2016 winners

Language editions

Each language category has its own archive page:
English · German · Spanish · French · Portuguese · Russian · Ukrainian · Chinese · Persian · Arabic · Bengali · Turkish · Indonesian · Hindi

Many winning blogs are still publishing today. Our blog directory continues the same mission: helping readers find blogs worth reading.

TheBoBs.com today is an independent blog directory. This page is an editorial archive honoring The BOBs award (2004–2016), which was created and run by Deutsche Welle. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by Deutsche Welle. Original pages are preserved in the Internet Archive.