Heading towards its 14^th year, the Webby Awards has slowly but surely become a respected ceremony, with its mandatory five-word limit on speeches often cited as the main way it stands out from similar occasions (see Al Gore’s: “Please don’t recount this vote”, as an example), and nominations for this year have just been announced.

Galifianakis gets his nomination in the catchily titled Comedy: Longform or Series category.

The long list of nominees sees good news for the New York Times, The Onion, Hulu, Foursquare, Stephen Hawking, the BBC and star of ‘The Hangover’ Zach Galifianakis. A mixed bag then. Prizes, decided by judges including Martha Stewart and David Bowie, will be handed out June 14 on the final day of Internet Week in New York.

While judges will decide most of the Webby Awards winners, according to the official awards site, millions of people around the world will also help decide who takes home a Webby by voting in The Webby People’s Voice Awards. Fans have until April 29th to vote here.

The event, and those five word speeches will once again be broadcast on the Webby Awards YouTube channel, which attracted “a major global audience last year”, according to organisers.

Twitter is nominated for Best Practices, Best Social Networking Website, Foursquare is up for Best Mobile Social Networking Platform, Texts from Last Night  is in the running for Best Mobile Entertainment, and one other interesting nominee is Rage (Best Online Film & Video Drama), a movie starring Jude Law, Eddie Izzard, and Judi Dench that became the first feature film to premiere on mobile phones.

Galifianakis gets his nomination in the Comedy: Longform or Series category for ‘Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis’, his talk show that has featured such guests as Charlize Theron, Conan O’Brien and Ben Stiller; Funny or Die’s ‘Protect Insurance Companies PSA’ with Will Ferrell and Jon Hamm is also up for an award.

The New York Times led the field with 15 nominations, followed by the BBC with nine and College Humor and The Onion with six each.

Elsewhere, in what is surely to be one of the most closely watched races, Lindsay Lohan, nominated for Funny or Die’s (rather too smug for our liking) ‘Lindsay Lohan’s eHarmony Profile’, is up against ‘David After Dentist’ the amateur flip cam phenomenon, for Best Viral Video. Though fellow nominee, the Muppets’ version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, may walk away with the award in that particular category.

See the full list of nominations here. Who do you think deserves an award?