[3][1][2][5] The IW3C2 was founded by Joseph Hardin and Robert Cailliau at a meeting held in Boston, United States, on 14 August 1994 to prepare for the upcoming Second International World Wide Web Conference in Chicago.

[3] The following are current (April 2016) ex officio members and the conference with which they are affiliated: The IW3C2 officers consist of a chairperson, a vice-chair (chairperson-elect), a secretary, a treasurer, and other appointees.

[3] This annual award, presented at the WWW conference, is made possible by a generous contribution from the organizers of WWW2014 (Seoul Korea).

The first award, announced at WWW2015 (Florence Italy), recognized Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google.

[6] The recipients of the WWW2016 award are LinkIn scientist Dr. Badrul Sarwar and University of Minnesota professors George Karypis, Joseph Konstan, and John Riedl (posthumous) for their work in item-item collaborative filtering.