At the 2008 Crunchies award ceremony, held at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco Friday evening, Facebook won the "Best Overall" award. The Crunchies, hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm, VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider, recognizes top entrepreneurs for their achievements in the last year. About 170,000 companies were nominated for awards, such as "Best bootstrapped startup" to "Best CEO," which went to Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. 

When accepting his award, Mark Zuckerberg humbly shared some enlightening words of wisdom explaining, "Despite how dark the times are now, we’ll be able to build something great and be the next beacon of light."

It was reassuring and motivating - a contrast to the more sobering and cynical opening liner of the event.

“It’s good to see so many of you turning out tonight, even after all the recent layoffs," said Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch writer and co-host, who kicked off the evening.  

The crowd seemed to take the sarcasm in stride, responding with nervous laughter, as if to say that everyone is operating under nuclear-winter conditions. For better or worse, however, they'd get through it.

The theme of the evening was, not surprisingly, the economic downturn. Interviews with top technology figures including Marissa Mayer of Google began with subjects involving the recession.  The Richter Scales, a hilarious acappella act sang advice on how to make it through the hard times.  Their ingenious idea: start  up new porn sites poking fun at the sponsors of The Crunchies, with Web site names, such as "Silicon Valley Inside Her," and "Giga Moan."

The rest of the entertainment included a live performance by The Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra, whose main instrument, the iPhone Ocarina app, covered Led Zeppelin’s, “Stairway to Heaven." 1938 Media produced a humorous set of intermission videos, one of which poked fun at blogger superstar Robert Scoble by portraying him as an annoying hand puppet.

Here's a list of the categories and winners:

Best Application Or Service - Google Reader

Best Technology Innovation/Achievement – Windows Live Mesh 

Best Design – Cooliris

Best Bootstrapped Startup – Github

Most Likely to make the World a Better Place – GoodGuide 

Best Enterprise - Amazon Web Services

Best International – eBuddy

Best Clean Tech – Project Frog

Best New Device or Gadget – iPhone 3G

Best Time Sink Site or Application – Tap Tap Revenge

Best Mobile Startup – Evernote

Best Mobile App – Imeem

Best Startup Founder – Jack Dorsey, Twitter

Best Startup CEO – Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Best New Startup of 2008 - FriendFeed

Best Overall - Facebook