A great evening was had by all tonight as some of the leading startups gathered for the first annual Crunchies, a joint production between Read/Write Web, VentureBeat, GigaOm and TechCrunch.
The ceremony went (mostly) smoothly with a couple of surprises amongst the results. For a full list of nominees, visit the Crunchies 2007 portal here.
Best Overall: Facebook
Facebook revolutionized the idea of what social networking could be.
Best technology innovation / achievement: Earthmine
Earthmine picks up where Google Earth leaves off, bringing deep semantic data to 3D panoramas of the real world. Earthmine’s system can keep track of the objects found in the real world and attribute information to each of them, such as latitude, longitude, elevation, and other attributes.
Best Clean Tech Startup: Tesla Motors
Tesla’s green sports car has captured the imagination of a public who had come to expect electric cars to be dull are boring. Due to be released this year, the company has pre-orders from some of the biggest names in Entertainment and Technology.
Best video startup: Hulu
Hulu put television online. Their broadcasting system was modeled on the success of social video sites and drawn the praise of its previous critics.
Best user-generated content site: Digg
Digg’s simple voting system defined the emerging social media revolution. Getting “dugg” quickly became a badge of honor and established a coveted place in the geek lexicon.
Best mobile start-up: Twitter
Twitter, the new addictive microblogging platform. It wasn’t until after the South by Southwest conference that people realized the value of the incredibly simple microblogging platform.
Best International startup: Netvibes
Based in London, Tariq Karim and Freddy Mini’s Netvibes has made waves in the U.S. as a top personalized web portal.
Best consumer startup: Meebo
Meebo made instant messaging ubiquitous by bringing it online. They then developed it into a platform where anyone could add chat to their applications.
Best enterprise startup: Zoho
Zoho’s comprehensive online suite of 14 business applications ranging from document editing to CRM continues to lead the way in the move away from desktop computing to working in the cloud.
Best design: SmugMug
SmugMug is professional photo site. SmugMug’s attention to detail and design can command as much as $150 per year from their users.
Best new gadget/ device: Apple iPhone. See the Apple acceptance speech here.
Best business model: Zazzle
Looking for a Star Wars hat or memorable mug? Zazzle is an on-demand factory of consumer goods for top brands. It also lets consumers become producers by uploading their own images onto that T-shirt, mug, or mousepad. . Consumers can also receive a commission on products that they sell and design themselves
Best bootstrapped startup: Techmeme.
Founded and developed solely by Gabe Rivera, Techmeme serves as the front page of the tech blogosphere. The site’s advanced algorithms identify the day’s top stories by making sense of conversations across the web’s best blogs.
Best Startup Founder: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Does this really need any explanation? At 23 Mark has built one of the world’s leading online destinations that has recently been valued at $15 billion. A remarkable achievement for anyone, let alone someone at the still relatively young 23. A well deserved award.
Best Startup CEO: Toni Schneider (Automattic)
Schnieder has lead the company from its roots as a open source alternative to Movable Type into a multi-million dollar enterprise that saves the world from blog spam and offers a free hosted blogging solution that competes with Google’s Blogger.
Best new startup: iMedix
iMedix combines search and social networking to change the way people find health information online. Users are encouraged to help each other by sharing health experiences and links from around the web.
Most likely to succeed: Automattic (WordPress)
The open source blogging platform that powers the long tale and turned into a multi-million dollar spam fighting and hosted blogging service.
Best use of viral marketing: StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon’s service lets users bookmark and discover new sites they love. With only a $1.5 million investment in 2005, StumbleUpon gew to over 4 million Stumblers and was bought by eBay in 2007 for $75 million
Best time sink site: Kongregate
CEO Jim Greer describes Kongregate as XBox live for casual games. This site hosts some of the webs most addictive casual games. Remember Desktop Tower Defense? Moreover, the games are not only played by users, but also created by them in exchange for a share of advertising revenue and other rewards.
Most likely to make the world a better place: DonorsChose
DonorsChoose.org is dedicated to connecting classrooms in need with individuals who want to help.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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