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
