In fact Alphaville was named winner of two Webbys – the judges’ award and the ‘People’s Voice’, both in the Best Business Blog category.

Paul Murphy, editor, said:

It is a real thrill to win both Webby honours in our category and we’re grateful to all those who voted for FT Alphaville, and left such kind comments.

Those comments were publicly available prior to judging, and demonstrated the incredible strength of feeling in Alphaville’s devoted audience, a notoriously hard-nosed and hard-to-please demographic. Alphaville attracted more comments than all the other nominees combined.

I went to collect the award in New York with Paul and Alphaville’s editorial team:

Considered the “Oscars of the internet”, the Webbys are the leading awards honouring excellence online, across websites, interactive advertising, mobile and online film and video. The awards, established and decided by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, are now in their 12th year.

The latest awards received a record 9,500 entries from more than 60 countries and winners will be honoured at two ceremonies in June, held in New York.

Founded in 1996, the awards are also known for a five-word limit on acceptance speeches. Past headline-grabbing speechmakers include Al Gore (“Please don’t recount this vote”), Beastie Boys (“Can anyone fix my computer?”), and Prince (“Everything you think is true”). At the moment the Alphaville readers seem undecided on the best line for the team to deliver when they collect the gong but the suggestions are pouring in.

Despite having a London focus, Alphaville has become world renowned in the financial community for sharp analysis and insight, lightning fast reactions and breaking major stories first. Viewers have come to know that if it’s not covered on Alphaville, it’s just not worth knowing.

Never afraid of controversy, the blog has been the subject of a High Court injunction brought by Northern Rock, and has even faced legal challenges over the use of the word ‘portacabin’. Whether you like what you read or not, it’s undeniable that FT Alphaville is essential reading for anyone working in financial markets.

We’ve always had our sights set on a Webby for FT Alphaville so we’re absolutely thrilled that the site has won both awards. It’s a great endorsement of both the fantastic content and the live blogging platform we developed for it.

Assanka is delighted to announce that FT Alphaville has won Best Business Blog at the prestigious 2007 EPpy awards in Miami, Florida. FT Alphaville is developed, maintained and hosted by Assanka for the Financial Times, and features up to the second, cutting edge business journalism from a dedicated editorial team based in London and Tokyo.

Just seven months old, Alphaville appeared at the awards for the first time, facing stiff competition from the two respected BusinessWeek blogs “Hot Property” and “Brand New Day”. With a growing audience increasingly participating on the site and technology that reaches out to visitors through a daily email and live chat, Alphaville wowed the judges and took the title.

Assanka is proud to be associated with Alphaville and we look forward to introducing further innovative features in the months to come. As it stands Alphaville is a great example of using technology to generate and deliver relevant, high-quality information to readers faster and fresher than ever before. The next generation of Alphaville features will build on this success and cement the site’s reputation as the investor’s first choice for market news and opinion. In a world where every second counts, Alphaville always has the story.

Assanka director Robert Shilston comments:

“FT Alphaville’s recent success is brilliant news for everyone – it confirms our belief that the future of journalism is in the real-time delivery of stories, not the daily press cycle we’ve been used to in the past. Assanka’s technology ensures that the FT Alphaville site is always up-to-date, without needing visitors to refresh their screen, and Markets Live takes this to the extreme — a live chat on the blog — and we know the public like it. We’re delighted that our technology has helped the FT with their recent award”

Having recovered from a few celebratory glasses of champagne on the flight back to London, Alphaville’s editor Paul Murphy is enthused by the partnership:

“We’ve cracked the mould with Alphaville and as a key partner Assanka is vital to the success. We value their insight and with a complex site like Alphaville it’s critical that we have partners willing to go that bit further to keep the wheels on the track.”

Other winners included BBC News Online, ESPN, The New York Times and CNN. Since 1996, the EPpy Awards has honored the best new media services from the newspaper industry. Each year, an independent panel of industry experts selects the top examples of interactive services in a variety of categories. The awards are co-sponsored by E&P and Mediaweek magazines.

With many more ways to trade and new markets opening all the time, investors and other finance professionals are increasingly profiting from short-term positions that do not allow time for digesting news on a 24 hour publishing cycle.

‘Today’ is old news

Markets move by the second, not by the day, and technology can provide the ability to bring real-time publishing to real-time business news. With world class, razor sharp insight and cutting edge technology, The Financial Times and Assanka have created Alphaville: the world’s first live publishing platform for markets news and commentary.

The Financial Times is known globally as one of the world’s leading business newspapers, recognised internationally for it’s authority, integrity and accuracy. Through FT.com, the world’s most popular business website, the formiddable strength of FT’s editorial team finds a global audience on the web.

Combining the technological expertise of Assanka’s Web 2.0 team and a dedicated FT editorial team headed by development editor Paul Murphy, Alphaville represents the cutting edge of real-time market reporting.

As fast as it gets

The Alphaville day starts at around 3am London time, when reporters in FT’s Hong Kong office start compiling the stories that will matter to London’s business community today. By 5:45am, these stories are online and visible on Alphaville’s front page, and at a few minutes to six everything that’s been published so far is sent out to thousands of Blackberries and other handheld devices across the capital, along with many desktop subscribers. The 6AM Cut kick-starts traffic to Alphaville as the City wakes up and the London Alphaville team takes over publishing content.

As traders and investors arrive at work and log on to Alphaville, the team are busy publishing breaking stories and preparing for the daily Markets Live broadcast. Every time a new post is made, it slides unprompted onto the screens of all current users, making Alphaville a genuinely live website – there’s never any need to refresh to get new content. At 11am, it’s on air for Markets Live, a unique markets commentary service streaming real-time text chat to the online audience. Viewers can comment on the unfolding chat as it happens, and their comments are flashed onto the screens of the journalists allowing instant reaction and engagement with the audience.

At midday, the daily report on Credit Default Swaps appears, the first regular report on this rapidly emerging market, and as the afternoon progresses other specialist content includes reports on the movements of key people and positions at the main banks and listed companies.

When the day is over, around 25 posts will have been made by a busy team, and these will continue to be searchable both from Alphaville and FT.com, but at 3am the front page is cleared ready for another day to begin. Murphy’s team are creating content for Alphaville throughout the day, and he’s unequivocal about the experience:

“Frankly it’s fantastic. Some back-office stuff can be clunky, but Alphaville is a dream to use. When you’re a journalist used to an eight hour deadline and suddenly you have to deal with a fifteen second publishing cycle, the last thing you want to worry about is the kit not working. On that score we certainly have no complaints – it’s exactly what we asked for”

Features for no-nonsense users

Like most blogs Alphaville offers RSS feed syndication, on the front page, categories and comments on any post. However, Alphaville supports its time-poor users with extra features designed to get users to the information they want as quickly as possible. All posts are expandable to view the whole content without clicking through. Users can log in and post comments using their existing FT.com user account, avoiding the need to register separately for Alphaville. New content is streamed to the browser automatically so there is no need to refresh. A tag cloud represents the companies whose names are making the news today, and allows instant one-click searches for related stories. It all adds up to a slick experience for users and a powerful tool for the editorial team.

Reflecting on the project and the relationship FT have with Assanka, Paul Murphy is happy to have worked with us:

“We couldn’t be happier with Alphaville, or the service that we get from Assanka. It was rather nice to see an IT project delilvered on time, to budget and to spec. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending their services”