The Financial Times and the BBC have reason to celebrate after they both won Webby Awards – considered by many as the Oscars of online publishing.

With nominations in over 70 categories FT.com’s Alphaville blog and the BBC News site were amongst a crowded field of winners as they picked up gongs earlier this week.

The Webbys are selected by a group made up of web, business and celebrity figures selected by the awarding body, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, with the people’s voice awards voted on by web-using members of the public.

Alphaville won the best business blog category, also picking up the people’s voice award in that category.

BBC News was the people’s voice winner in the news category (it also won the main award in the radio category) with the main prize going to NYTimes.com – one of a total of six awards for the publication.

Two of those successes came in the online newspaper section where NYTimes.com won both the main award and the people’s voice award, in the process beating of competition from Guardian.co.uk, Independent.co.uk, the Wall Street Journal Online and Variety.com.