In his opening monologue, he talked about how great Pandora is, how Apple should stop updating iTunes "for two days", unreliable Google Maps time estimates, the New York Times accepting an award from the Internet, Facebook privacy, and more.

Watch the video below (hat tip to Silicon Alley Insider):

Special Achievement Awards included: 

- Webby Lifetime Achievement: Vinton Cerf
- Webby Person of the Year: Roger Ebert
- Best Actress: Amy Poehler
- Film & Video Artist of the Year: OK Go
- Webby Agency of the Year: BBDO
- Webby Breakout of the Year: ChatRoulette
- Webby Artist of the Year: PS22 Chorus

A full list of Webby Award nominees and winners can be found here.

Colbert received the award for the innovative way he has used the Internet to interact with fans of  "The Colbert Report." Some of his stunts include encouraging fans to Google bomb to make him the top search result for the phrase "greatest living American" and challenging the "truthiness" of Wikipedia.

In his presidential campaign, the "One Million Strong for Stephen T. Colbert" Facebook group brought in more than 78 members per minute in its first week.

Other winners in the 12th Annual Webby Awards, known as the "Oscars of the Internet" include Black Eyed Peas’ frontman, songwriter will.i.am who won for "Artist of the Year," and French filmmaker Michel Gondry received the title of "Video Person of the Year."

The Webby awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-person judging academy. The winners will be honored at ceremonies on June 9th and 10th in New York, and in keeping with Webby tradition they will be limited to five-word acceptance speeches.

Other Webby Award winners include, NYTimes.com, The Onion, PostSecret, National Geographic, Apple.com, Flickr, FactCheck.org, BBC, Ted.com and ESPN.com.
 

Ask Mobile Spins A Webby Award

Ask Mobile swept up a pair of awards from this year’s Webbys. Ask took both the Webby and the People’s Voice awards for the mobile service it launched in October 2006.

“It feels pretty good to be recognized by our peers and by the folks who use Ask Mobile as well,” Brendan Hallett, Ask Mobile’s product manager, said in his euphoric blog post about the win.

Ask Mobile withstood challenges from Yahoo’s potent Mobile Web, which is now equipped with oneSearch, a search approach similar to Ask’s ‘information at your fingertips’ philosophy; Weather.com, Century 21, and Market Annex’s Travelosa were also nominated in the category.

Ask’s design choice for its mobile product, as Hallett noted and Gary Price, Ask’s director for online info resources, told WebProNews in January, minimized the number of clicks a person needs to get to the information they need. Gary called it “simple, clean, and effective,” and most importantly, easy to understand by new users.

That also meant not having a search box on the main Ask Mobile page. It’s a click away from there. By placing it a level below the main menu, people are encouraged to navigate directly to the most popular features available, which generally satisfy a mobile user’s needs.

We anticipate Ask will have its Ask City service available via mobile at some point this year. Gary mentioned it in January, and we’re guessing a summer release could happen, in order to take advantage of traveling vacationers who may need a little help from their mobiles.

LonelyGirl, Flickr Take Webby Honors

Who’s not on the list is Google, but lets not focus on who dropped the ball most this year, after winning half a dozen last year.

If you’re a David Bowie fan, then you probably already know he sits alongside musician Beck, Internet inventor and evangelist Vint Cerf, Arianna Huffington, "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening and Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson to choose the centennial winners.

Bowie, it just so happens, receives the Webby Lifetime Achievement award, commemorating all those years he was mercifully not making music and, instead, founding Web companies. Bowie launched BowieNet ISP in 1998, followed by UltraStar and BowieArt.

EBay and company president Meg Whitman also received the Lifetime Achievement award "on behalf of the 233 million registered buyers and sellers" on the site. YouTube cofounders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, each the other’s better half, took the Webby Person of the Year award for "transforming the media landscape and reshaping everything from politics to pop culture.

Just like at the Academy Awards, there is a Best Actor and Best Actress Award. "Ninja" from "Ask a Ninja" took the best actor nod, and Jessica Lee Rose, a.k.a. "lonelygirl15" takes home the best actress award.

Interestingly and correctly, David Michel-Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards, thinks one day we’ll look on these early winners the same way we remember Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Cops.

"The winners will go down in history as the first stars in a medium that has already radically altered the media and entertainment landscape," said Michel-Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. "From major networks to independent filmmakers, the diversity of the winners also reflects the Internet’s democratic roots, as well as its star-making power."

Speaking of the Internet’s democratic roots, one of the funnier twists of this year’s awards came in the Activism category, as grassroots Net Neutrality site SaveTheInternet.com received the "People’s Voice Award." The majority of 400,000 voters chose SaveTheInternet.com over Apple’s Green Peace page (the celebrity panel’s choice).

The People’s Voice must have sounded like nails on a chalkboard to Verizon, a sponsor of the Webby Awards, and vehement Net Neutrality opponent. Maybe next year the vote will go to DontSqueezeYourCustomers.org.

A few sites shined with multiple awards. Yahoo’s Flickr and Adobe took home 5 Webbies each; HowStuffWorks won 4; graphic designer Jonathan Yuen grabbed 3; the BBC carried 3 across the Pond; and LinkedIn hooked up for 2.
 

Other winners (Webby/People’s Voice):

1. Best Home/Welcome Page: Sony.com/NYTimes.com
2. Best Navigation/Structure: IKEA/IKEA
3. Best Use of Video/Moving Image: Jonathan Yuen/Adobe CS2.3 – The Creative Mind
4. Best Visual Design – Function: Flickr/Flickr
5. Broadband: Blip.tv/Blip.tv
6. Guides/Ratings/Reviews: Yelp.com/CNet.com
7. Humor: The Onion/The Onion
8. Services: LinkdIn/Gifts.com
9. Travel: Wikitravel/TripAdvisor

All the award winners are restricted to five-word speeches, and anyone who’s stuck for an idea can always fall back on “thank you all very much.” The Webby Awards website listed some of the Special Achievement award winners in a statement.

Newly controversial MySpace founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe will receive the Webby Breakout of the Year award. That’s sure to delight Scott Karp at the Publishing 2.0 blog.

The Gorillaz have been dubbed Webby’s Artist of the Year, while Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The World is Flat: A Brief History of The 21st Century, snares the Webby Person of the Year award.

Dr. Robert Kahn, co-inventor of TCP/IP, picks up the award that Gore received last year, the Lifetime Achievement Award. Maybe his speech will be “keep on sending those packets.”

The Webby tradition has been to limit acceptance speeches to five words. We’ll be very impressed to see what the Webby Entrepreneur of the Year, the loquacious Mark Cuban, can accomplish in five words.

A full list of the 69 winners of the Webby Awards, as well as the People’s Choice selections and all of the nominees, may be viewed online.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.