Iran Web Festival Slated for Feb. 16

The fourth edition of Iran Web Festival will begin in a few weeks with several websites and e-commerce companies vying for the prize of best website or app of the year.

Organizers of the event said on their Telegram Messenger channel that the event will be held on February 16.

The festival website began accepting applications from competitors earlier in December 2016. Anyone owning a website, a web-based software or mobile phone application in Iran can take part.

This year’s top categories include online business directories, personal and corporate websites, directory and news websites, online services and mobile-based applications.

Sub-categories include blogs, ticketing websites, food ordering, fashion and beauty sites and video sharing among others.

The event is sponsored by online ordering website Chilivery, according to the site. In addition, media sponsors include Financial Tribune, eghtedsadnews.com, way2pay.ir and local web news agency WEBNA.

Moreover, Financial Tribune’s recently updated website has entered the news section of the site. 

Winners will be chosen by online voting and then verified by a panel of experts before prizes are given out.  

Every year local applications and websites take part in the festival to compete for a bigger share of the emerging Internet-based services market and win the coveted prize of being one the best online services in the country of 80 million.

The annual gathering is organized by the Iranian Guild for Internet-Based Businesses and sponsored by the e-Commerce Development Center affiliated to the Ministry of Industries, Mines, and Trade.

Accordingly, last year 3,689 mobile apps, 13,138 websites and over 103,854 exhibiters attended the festival.

  From Apps to Bots

Two main speakers of last year’s event were Jaques Van Niekerk, CEO of Acceleration, a UK-based tech firm, and Farshad Nowshadi of Saman Bank.

The previous year’s event surpassed any previous internet-related show with many more startup companies and investors from home and abroad looking for the next big thing.

Last year, ‘apps’ was the most spoken term during the event, while this year the growth of ‘bots’ -- online based interactive artificial intelligence  -- could take precedence.

According to the event website, several websites including on charity managed to win good website awards including, Mahak Charity for Children, electronics maker Farasoo, 24tech.net, a technology news website and divar.ir a local sales listing site.

Shayan Shalileh, founder and managing director of Anetwork (an online advertising network) introduced the web festival in 2009.

At that time it focused only on websites. Other organizers of the event, Milad Ahrampoush, and Mohsen Barati created the Iran App Festival in 2014. The two events were later merged.