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RELEASE: 09-098

NASA WINS TWO WEBBY AWARDS FOR INTERNET EXCELLENCE

WASHINGTON -- NASA has received two Webby awards for excellence on the
Internet. NASA's main Web site, http://www.nasa.gov, won the People's
Voice award for best government Web site. The Cassini mission Web
site, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov, received a Webby award for best
science site.

The People's Voice award is the second for NASA's Web site, which also
won in 2003. More than 500,000 people cast votes this year.

"We're extremely happy to be honored by the Internet community this
way," said Brian Dunbar, the content manager for http://www.nasa.gov
at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We've always tried to focus the
site on giving the public what they're looking for in an engaging and
compelling way. Combined with some of the highest
customer-satisfaction ratings in the government, this award tells us
we're on the right track."

Judges from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences,
which sponsors the Webbys, selected the Cassini site for the top
honor in the science category.

"The Cassini Web site is the door to the science and technology of the
mission to Saturn, contained in hundreds of thousands of pages," said
Alice Wessen, manager of Cassini public engagement at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The site houses all the
latest news, science findings and images Cassini returns as it orbits
Saturn. The public can see every picture within eight hours after
it's beamed down from the spacecraft."

NASA's Web site, which received 120 million visits in 2008, offers the
public the latest news, mission coverage and multimedia from the
agency's scientific research, technology development and exploration
efforts. Visitors can surf thousands of images from throughout the
universe, watch live video from the International Space Station or
read more than a dozen blogs written by agency employees.

In the last year, the NASA Web team has expanded its presence into
social media, creating an official NASA channel on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/nasatelevision, multiple Twitter feeds led by
@NASA, and mission pages on Facebook and MySpace. Since NASA
astronaut Mike Massimino began twittering via @Astro_Mike on April 3,
he has gained more than 175,000 followers. NASA was recognized in
February with a Shorty award for its @marsphoenix Twitter presence,
which was written in the "voice" of the spacecraft. For a list of
NASA missions providing updates on social media Web sites, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/collaborate.