RT Among Nominees of Int’l Internet Excellence Webby Awards

RT broadcaster is among the contestants of the final round of the Webby Awards, an international award honoring excellence on the Internet, the channel’s press service said Monday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – RT will compete in the News & Information category neck and neck against BBC News, NBC News & Nightly News, ABC News and The New York Times.

"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," Kirill Karnovich-Valua, head of RT’s online projects, was quoted as saying on the television channel’s website.

RT’s digital projects, in particular the channel’s accounts on the Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Soundcloud and Coub platforms as well as the RT Play platform have been nominated by the Webby Awards.

The total number of views of RT's YouTube account exceeded 3.3 billion, according to the press service. RT provides interactive content with an optimized RT News mobile app, the RT Plugin app that creates a social network for the audience, as well as the Periscope live-streaming app. In addition, RT was one of the first media outlets in the world that began to produce news content in a 360-video (VR) format and to launch a special page on Facebook for panoramic video. RT Ruptly Stringer Mobile app allows anyone with a smartphone to instantly send a video from the scene to the editorial office.

"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," Ivor Crotty, head of RT’s social media group, stressed.

The Webby Award winners will be announced by professional jury on April 26, 2016.