2011 Best App Ever Awards

Welcome

Another year has passed and here we are ready to kick off the fourth edition of the Best App Ever Awards. In the past year we have seen the iOS App Store balloon to over 500,000 apps, and Android has surged with a huge influx of great apps and is now right behind it. We've got our work cut out for us. How do we go through all those apps to determine the best ones? Looks like it is time to get things moving.

About

The Best App Ever Awards were created to celebrate the best mobile apps and games available, as chosen by our readers. Our goal is to help gather together the very favorite apps of the real users, not just the best-selling ones. This year we are making a big change, including Android applications and games in the mix. For each category there will be winners in iOS (both iPhone and iPad combined) and Android divisions.

Rules

The process for the awards starts with the nomination phase. You are invited to nominate any iOS or Android app in any of the categories. All nominations are subject to editorial data verification. An app may be disqualified from nomination if it does not match a requirement of the category (such as price, genre, platform, etc.). In addition, an app may be moved, at the judges discretion, to a different category if that category is a better fit.

Each user is allowed to nominate any app just once in a category. A user may nominate more than one app in a category and may nominate a single app in multiple categories.

Once all nominations are totaled and verified, we'll take the top 10 nominated apps for each platform in each category. In total we will have up to 10 nominations for each platform in each category. Once the final nominees are set, the site will open for voting. Voters can cast their ballot for a single app in each category division (one vote for an iOS app and one for Android per category).

Best App Ever - Special Award - In addition, the 10 apps that get the most nominations on iOS and the 10 apps that get the most nominations on Android across all categories will compete for the prestigious Best App Ever Award. A single app will be crowned the Best App Ever based on user votes.

There will be one winner selected for each division in each category (two winners per category, one for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, and one for Android).

Each user as determined by IP address, will be allowed one vote per category.

There are no fees for nomination, voting, or awards from the Best App Ever Awards. The Best App Ever Awards Committee reserves the right to disqualify any nomination or vote it reasonably determines to be fraudulent, violates the rules, or is submitted by bots or other computer generated voting application. These awards are produced by 148Apps.com.

Timeline

Through 12/31/2011 :: Nominations Accepted in all individual categories

1/3/2012 :: Top 10 Nominees for Each Category/Platform and Best App Ever Announced

1/3/2012 - 1/25/2012 :: Voting for all categories and Best App Ever open

1/26/2012 - 1/28/2012 :: Winners Announced (exact date coming)

Developer Involvement

Application developers are encouraged to direct their users to the site to nominate/vote for their app in the categories the developer wants to focus on. The easiest way to do this is to nominate the app themselves and then grab one of the links for nomination from the page on that nomination or voting page.

Other promotions we have seen in the past include Facebook, Twitter, and email blasts. Even in-app news and pop-ups asking people to vote and nominate. While we encourage all of this we ask that no real goods or virtual goods incentive be given to the users for them to vote as we want to keep the vote as natural as possible. Any violations of these guidelines may result in the app nominations being zeroed out.

Short History

The Best App Ever Awards were first conceived after the iTunes App Store opened in July 2008. At that point, we knew there would be a need to develop a site that could help people find the very best apps, not just the biggest sellers. We ask that you please participate in the Best App Ever Awards to help us honor the best, not just the best-selling.

Take a look at the previous winners in the 2008 Best App Ever Awards, 2009 Best App Ever Awards, or the 2010 Best App Ever Awards.

Thanks

Thanks to Steve Jobs and Apple for revolutionizing the mobile world with the iPhone and the iTunes App Store. Thanks to TechCrunch -- we took lots of inspiration on how this site would work from their Crunchies 2008 awards. A special thanks to Patrick Jordan of iPad Insight for help setting up and testing the 2010 and 2011 awards.

And most importantly, thanks to you for helping grow the Best App Ever awards to what it has become today.

Contact

If you need any further clarification on the 2011 Best App Ever Awards, please contact us at bestappever@148apps.com.