Facebook and Bing Get Crunchie

Entrepreneurs, investors, startups, and techies alike gathered in San Francisco on Friday, January 8^th at the 3^rd Annual Crunchies Awards – a competition and award ceremony that recognizes and celebrates the most compelling internet and technology innovations and startups of the year. Web users cast over 500,000 votes for the 109 finalists, all vying for top billing in one of 18 categories, including Best Bootstrapped Startup, Best Time Sink Application, Best New Gadget, Founder of the Year, and Best New Startup or Product of 2009.

Amid heavy competition, Facebook took top prize for the 3^rd year in a row for “Best Overall Startup or Product in 2009”, while Microsoft’s Bing took first place for “Best New Startup or Product in 2009”. Other winners included Farmville, Animoto, Barnes & Noble nook, Tinychat, and Google Docs.  Check out the full list of awards and their winners below.

And the winners are…

Best Technology Achievement: Google Chrome OS – an open-source operating system created for people who spend most of their time on the web, aiming to get you online in just a few seconds.  Fast, lightweight, and with a minimal user interface, Google Chrome is designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.

Best Internet Application: Dropbox – a software product that enables you to access and share your files from any computer, easily and securely.

Best Social App: Farmville – a popular social game that allows users to farm with their friends, accumulating points and moving up levels. FarmVille was created by Zynga as a Facebook application, now with a standalone that interfaces with Facebook.

Best Bootstrapped Startup: Tinychat – a dead-simple audio and video web communication platform that is web-based and free to use. Tinychat provides disposable conference rooms for up to 400 people and up to 12 live audio video streams, with no signup required.

Best Mobile Application: Foursquare – a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. Foursquare aims to build things to not only help you keep up with the places your friends go, but that encourage you to discover new places and challenge you to explore your neighborhood in new ways.

Best International: Spotify – a lightweight software application that the user downloads and installs, enabling on-demand streaming music.  Because music is social, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists.

Best Time Sink Application: DailyBooth – DailyBooth lets users document and share their lives with others through pictures and real time updates.

Best Design: Animoto – a web application that automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy.

Best Enterprise: Google Docs/Office – free web-based application that allows users to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online, share and collaborate in real time, and store and organize projects.

Best CleanTech: Sun Run – a home solar service company dedicated to making solar power affordable and accessible for everyone. SunRun offers the nation’s first “home solar as a monthly service.” With their premium solar solutions, homeowners in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts can enjoy affordable solar power without the ongoing maintenance worries or high upfront costs.

Best New Gadget: Barnes & Noble nook – an electronic book reader produced by Barnes & Noble, providing  access to over one million eBooks, eNewspapers, and eMagazines in two different ways, depending on where you are. It uses the same 3G wireless technology that your cell phone uses. But it also automatically detects Wi-Fi hotspots and will switch to use Wi-Fi’s faster connection. With either connection, users can download eBooks wirelessly in seconds.

Best Tech PR: OutCast Communications – Founded by Caryn Marooney and Margit Wennmachers in 1997, OutCast Communications has become one of the premier technology PR agencies in the United States.  Their client list includes: AdMob, Amazon.com, Autodesk, EMC, Facebook, Hara, Intuit, Jawbone, kaChing, Mozilla, Mozy, NVIDIA, Omniture, Playdome, RSA, salesforce.com,  VMware, Yahoo!, Xerox, and Zimbra.

Best Angel: Ron Conway (SV Angel) – Named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2006, Ron Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail.

Best VC Firm: Accel Partners – a global venture capital firm with offices located in Silicon Valley, London, and India. They typically make multi-stage investments in internet technology companies. With over $6 billion under management, Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful category-defining companies including: Actuate, Alfresco, AdMob, AMCC, Arrowpoint, Baidu, BBN, Brightcove, ComScore, Etsy, Facebook, Focus Media, Foundry Networks, Gameforge, GlamMedia, Imperva, Infinera, Interwoven, JBoss, Kayak, Macromedia, metroPCS, Mu Sigma, Polycom/PictureTel, Portal Software, QlikTech, Real Networks, Redback Networks, Riverbed, Sohu.com, UUNet, Veritas, Walmart.com, Webroot, XenSource, and Zimbra.

Founder of the Year: Aaron Patzer (Mint) – both the visionary and technical mind behind Mint, the first free, automatic and secure way to manage and save money online. He designed Mint to meet his own needs and those of people like him who value the immediacy of the Web, simplicity, and their free time. With 10 patents filed or pending, Aaron brings strong innovation skills to Mint. Prior to founding Mint, Aaron was an architect and technical lead for the San Jose division of Nascentric. Before Nascentric, Aaron worked for IBM and founded two web development and online marketing companies: PWeb and International. Aaron holds an MSEE from Princeton University and a BS in computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering from Duke University.

CEO Of The Year: Mark Pincus (Zynga) Weighing in at 150 lbs, is Mark Pincus, frenetic visionary of Zynga. His DNA is one strand entrepreneur and one strand competitive gamer. Mark founded Tribe.net, one of the first social networks in 2003. Prior to Tribe, he was the founder and CEO of SupportSoft. Prior to SupportSoft, Mark co-founded Freeloader, the first consumer push information service.

Best New Startup Or Product Of 2009: Bing (Microsoft) – a decision (search) engine from Microsoft officially announced on May 28, 2009. It combines technology from the Farecast and Powerset acquisitions, as well as new algorithms and a more colorful page design, to attempt to understand the context behind the search, which Microsoft claims gives users better results.

Best Overall Startup Or Product Of 2009: Facebook – the world’s largest social network, with over 350 million users.  Founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

The 2009 Crunchies was co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm, and Venture Beat.  To watch the 2009 Crunchies in action, you can view an archived version of the live stream here.

Source: TechCrunch.com
Source: Wikipedia.org

Adam Toren

Adam Toren

Adam Toren is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, investor and co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com. He is co-author, with his brother Matthew, of Kidpreneurs and Small Business, BIG Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right (Wiley). He’s based in Phoenix, Ariz.