Comedian John Oliver may joke that SnapChat is designed for sending penis pictures, but the company is destined for a lot more.

SnapChat, an app that lets people share fleeting images, has closed $13.5 million in its first round of funding led by Benchmark Capital.

Oliver joked about the popularity of “sexting” while hosting the Crunchies, an awards ceremony that honors achievements in the tech world. SnapChat won the award for “Fastest rising startup” and is heralded as an example of the startup Holy Grail:  viral growth. A report in the New York Times states that the app sends more than 60 million messages a day and has millions of users.

The popular mobile social photo sharing service, based out of Los Angeles,  enables people to share a photo with another person or group of people who can only be viewed for a very short time (a few seconds). The person you send that photo responds with one of their own, which is also only available for a few seconds — hence the name “SnapChat.”

Photo sharing is one of the obsessions of our generation. Whether it is baby pictures on Facebook, a hipster coffee shop on Instagram, roasted chicken with bread on Foodspotting, room decor on Pinterest, or that day’s vintage-inspired ensemble on a fashion blog, taking and posting images is almost second nature. Sometimes, it feels like if no-one documents the moment on the internet, it doesn’t exist.

However, not every photo needs to live forever, which is where SnapChat comes in.

People can send images to their friends that may not merit (or be appropriate) for public, permanent display. A majority of the users are between 13 and 25, and wary of embarrassing content coming back to haunt them later in life. The story of the job-seeker denied a dream job due to a unflattering Facebook photo is something of a modern urban legend.

Speaking of Facebook, SnapChat founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy claim that Mark Zuckerberg met with them in December, just before launching its own self-destructing messaging app Poke. The competition has not seemed to diminish SnapChat’s success. The company is now valued at $60 to $70 million.

Rumors arose in December that SnapChat was raising an $8 million round at a $50 million valuation from Benchmark’s Matt Cohler. The rumors were half true, as rumors tend to be.

In fact, it was Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky who spearheaded the financing after hearing about SnapChat from his teenage daughter. Benchmark is also an investor in Instagram, the world-famous photo sharing app that Facebook bought for $1 billion in 2012.

After returns like that, it is no surprise that the firm is going down the rose-lined photo sharing path again.

The Crunchies Awards are always a year-end highlight. They highlight the very best in technology innovation each year, and tonight we had the pleasure of bestowing that weird little money trophy out to your tech favorites.

We also got to watch John Oliver of The Daily Show fame make fun of Silicon Valley.

He started out giving the presenters advice on how to best deliver an acceptance speech: “Say thank you and leave.” He proceeded to tell us that his favorite technology innovation is the t-shirt cannon. Unfotunately, however, we had no t-shirt cannon representation at this year’s Crunchies, but we did have some fabulous companies. So, on to the winners!

Best Technology Achievement: Mars Curiosity

The little rover that could made it to Mars and captured our hearts on Twitter. We were honored to host Bobak Ferdowsi, otherwise known as NASA’s mohawk man who informed us that Curiosity is actually a lady! JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA refers to all of its rovers as girls. Work that Crunchie Award, space-dust-collecting-girlfriend!

Best Collaborative Consumption: Airbnb

Airbnb is the Airbnb for, well, itself. The company that connects people with houses to people who who want to skip the hotel experience has grown into a force in the collaborative consumption industry. When it comes to letting people use their own crap to make money, they’re tops.

Best E-commerce Application: Fab

Fab really is just that. The company is aiming to make people flock to its inventory in the same way they flock to a magazine. And it seems to be working. Keep showing us how awesome our lives could be, Fab, we’re that close to buying a faux bear-skin rug from you.

Best Mobile Application: Google Maps

Thank you, Google Maps. You’ve helped us find our hotels on vacations, coffee shops on first dates, and even helped us get to the nearest bus station when either of those went horribly wrong.

Fastest Rising Startup: SnapChat

Whoops, did you see that hilarious congratulations picture of me shotgunning a beer while flipping the bird? Not anymore! Snapchat lets us send self-destructing photo and video messages for those all those times we just can’t help but embarrass ourselves.

Best Content Discovery Application: Pinterest

Pinterest could have just as easily won the biggest time suck award. People spend hours on end looking at wedding paraphernalia, recipes, or fashion, but those little rectangular pins really do help us find beautiful things in the vast, vast Internet.

Best Design: Paper by 53

53′s app Paper gives the digital back that wonderful paper feel. But while their gorgeous design brings out the artist in all of us, they haven’t been able to capture that great paper smell. Maybe they can start sending out paper-scent air fresheners with each app download in 2013.

Best Bootstrapped Startup: Techmeme

If you read this site, you probably know Techmeme. It’s the website we all flock to for our daily dose of what’s popping on the tech leaderboards. But though its webpages are filled with news about investors every day, the company remains self-funded. Well done, guys.

Sexiest Enterprise Startup: Box

“This is an amazing honor, I feel like Snapchat right now,” said Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, perfectly summarizing his company’s competitive advantage: a witty co-founder with a Twitter account. Of course, we kid. Box is much more than that. It competes directly with big cloud storage names like Dropbox and Google Drive, but maintains its scrappy integrity and, as you can see, sense of humor.

Best International Startup: Soundcloud

You want to share some music with your buddies, Soundcloud gives you a legit way to go about. It’s like a YouTube for sound and while it may be great for sending awesome music out into the world, you might want to check out John Oliver’s weekly The Bugle. We’ll let you discover that for yourself.

Best Education Startup: Codecademy

Codecademy wants to bring the sometimes elusive world of coding to everyone. Like any language, code is difficult to learn, but the company walks you through the process with the hopes that anyone can learn in their spare time. To drive this point home, Codecademy sent up a customer to accept the award. She announced that she’d quit her job after starting Codecademy classes in 2011 and was looking for a new one being, guess what? A programmer. Congrats on your success, Codecademy!

Best Hardware Startup – Makerbot

Next year we’re just going to print out awards for everyone. Why? Because 3-D printing makes it possible! It’s an awesome world when you can just press File-Print on a dishwasher repair piece or a missing chess piece and suddenly have it in your hands. Makerbot is bringing manufacturing home in this way, and we are glad to watch the printing revolution happen before our eyes!

Best Time Sink: Buzzfeed

Cats, cats, cats, dogs, 15 Best Ways to Clean Your Toilet Without Having to Clean Your Toilet, babies, cats, congrats.

Biggest Social Impact: Reddit

Believe it or not, Reddit is filled with more than just weird fan fiction, Imgur links, and great communities — it’s also filled with incredibly generous folks who are willing to gather together to give for a cause.

And Reddit says it has only two people to thank: the users and President Obama for coming to the site.

Best Angel Investor: Chris Dixon

Chris Dixon is an investor with Andreessen-Horowitz who invests in some awesome early-stage startups. He’s passed checks along to Skupe, Hipmunk, Kickstarter, and a number of other successful startups. Keep pointing us in the right direction, Chris, we like what you’re doing!

VC of the Year: Peter Thiel

Founder’s Fund managing director Peter Thiel has helped spawn a generation of entrepreneurs, and he continues to shape Silicon Valley’s future with smart, analytical investments that prove his ability time and again. He was an early investor in Facebook, and this year he helped grow Palantir into billion dollar data analysis giant.

Founder of the Year: Kevin Systrom

The surprise deal of the year was Facebook’s nearly billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram (subsequently revised to about $700 billion, given changes in Facebook’s valuation). That undoubtedly made Systrom one of the happiest founders. He’s also one of the cleverest, building Instagram from a simple photo-sharing app into one of the hottest new social networks.

CEO of the Year: Mark Zuckerberg

There really wasn’t any serious competition: With a successful (if controversial) IPO and a billion active users, Facebook owned 2012. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has shown a rare ability to transition from entrepreneurial founder to the leader of a large public company, translation vision into action and creating a uniquely developer-centric culture that has taken Facebook to the heights of social networking. Just 28 years old, Zuckerberg has already shown leadership far beyond his age. Just imagine what he’ll do with the next 10 years.

Best new startup of 2012: Coursera

More than 2.5 million people have taken university courses — from some of the world’s top educational institutions — through Coursera’s online education platform. That’s pretty impressive for a company that has been around less than a year.

Best overall startup: Github

A massive code repository and tool for helping coders share their work and collaborate on projects, Github has grown to become an indispensable part of the tech ecosystem. Its Crunchie reflects just how much of a difference it has made, from open-source projects to enterprise development and beyond.

And the nominees were…

Who were the winners above going up against? Here are the nominees in each category.

Best Technology Achievement

Felix Baumgartner’s Jump
Google Glass
Mars Curiosity
SpaceX docks with International Space Station
Tesla Supercharger Network

Best Collaborative Consumption Service

Airbnb
Get It Now/Postmates
Lyft
TaskRabbit
Uber

Best E-Commerce Application

Fab
Hotel Tonight
Karma/Facebook Gifts
Warby Parker
Zulily

Best Mobile Application

Evernote
Google Maps
Grindr
Instagram
Square

Fastest Rising Startup

Exec
Lyft
Pinterest
Snapchat
Stripe

Best Content Discovery Application

Flipboard
Instapaper
Pinterest
Prismatic
Tumblr

Best Design

Facebook Timeline
Medium
Paper by FiftyThree
Square
Svbtle

Best Bootstrapped Startup

FreshBooks
Instapaper
Nimbus
Techmeme
Upverter

Sexiest Enterprise Startup

Asana
Box
Cloudera
Plexxi
Zendesk

Best International Startup

Hailo
Rovio
Soundcloud
Spotify
Xiaomi

Best Education Startup

Codecademy
Coursera
Edmodo
Khan Academy
Udacity

Best Hardware Startup

Lit Motors
Lockitron
Makerbot
Nest
Raspberry Pi

Best Time Sink

Angry Birds Star Wars
Buzzfeed
Letterpress
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Biggest Social Impact

Donors Choose
Indiegogo
Kickstarter
Kiva
Reddit

Angel of the Year

Michael Arrington
Chris Dixon
Paul Graham
David Lee
Chris Sacca

VC of the Year

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Jim Goetz
Michael Moritz
Peter Thiel

Founder of the Year

Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia (Airbnb)
Kevin and Julia Hartz (Eventbrite)
Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla)
Kevin Systrom (Instagram)
Nir Zuk (Palo Alto Networks)

CEO of the Year

Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Marissa Mayer (Yahoo!)
Larry Page (Google)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Best New Startup of 2012

Coursera
Crowdtilt
Lyft
Snapchat
Waze

Best Overall Startup of 2012

Fab
Github
Instagram
Palantir
Square

Crunchies image via TechCrunch/Flickr

Daily Show correspondent John Oliver will host the Crunchies this year, bringing his strain of silliness and satiric wit to the awards ceremony that honors achievements in the technology community. Oliver is known for his exaggerated Britishness as well as his deadpan delivery that makes people feel uncomfortable and laugh at the same time. He won two Emmy awards for comedy writing, and his own Comedy Central series, John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show, just aired its third season.

Oliver has a knack for finding hilarity in unlikely places. Let’s see how he does with collaborative consumption services, angel investors, and the enterprise. You can find this year’s finalists here. To vote, head over to the 2012 Crunchies voting page and tell us which is your favorite in each category.

The Crunchies, a joint production with our friends at TechCrunch and GigaOm, take place on Thursday, Jan. 31, from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco. You can purchase tickets here.

And now, the moment you all have been waiting for: VentureBeat, GigaOm, and TechCrunch are pleased to announce the finalists for the 2012 Crunchies awards.

We combed through thousands of your submissions, considered your votes, and put them together with our editors’ expertise to come up with this list. The companies, technologies, and achievements on this list are the cream of the crop — the most innovative, impactful, and world-beating ideas to come out of the tech world.

Check out our finalists in all 20 categories below. And congratulations to every one of them for making it to this exclusive list.

Now we need you to vote on the finalists! Head over to the 2012 Crunchies voting page and tell us which is your favorite in each category.

The Crunchies, a joint production with our friends at TechCrunch and GigaOm, take place on Thursday, Jan. 31, from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco. You can purchase tickets here.

Best Technology Achievement

Felix Baumgartner’s Jump
Google Glass
Mars Curiosity
SpaceX docks with International Space Station
Tesla Supercharger Network

Best Collaborative Consumption Service

Airbnb
Get It Now/Postmates
Lyft
TaskRabbit
Uber

Best E-Commerce Application

Fab
Hotel Tonight
Karma/Facebook Gifts
Warby Parker
Zulily

Best Mobile Application

Evernote
Google Maps
Grindr
Instagram
Square

Fastest Rising Startup

Exec
Lyft
Pinterest
Snapchat
Stripe

Best Content Discovery Application

Flipboard
Instapaper
Pinterest
Prismatic
Tumblr

Best Design

Facebook Timeline
Medium
Paper by FiftyThree
Square
Svbtle

Best Bootstrapped Startup

FreshBooks
Instapaper
Nimbus
Techmeme
Upverter

Sexiest Enterprise Startup

Asana
Box
Cloudera
Plexxi
Zendesk

Best International Startup

Hailo
Rovio
Soundcloud
Spotify
Xiaomi

Best Education Startup

Codecademy
Coursera
Edmodo
Khan Academy
Udacity

Best Hardware Startup

Lit Motors
Lockitron
Makerbot
Nest
Raspberry Pi

Best Time Sink

Angry Birds Star Wars
Buzzfeed
Letterpress
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Biggest Social Impact

Donors Choose
Indiegogo
Kickstarter
Kiva
Reddit

Angel of the Year

Michael Arrington
Chris Dixon
Paul Graham
David Lee
Chris Sacca

VC of the Year

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Jim Goetz
Michael Moritz
Peter Thiel

Founder of the Year

Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia (Airbnb)
Kevin and Julia Hartz (Eventbrite)
Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla)
Kevin Systrom (Instagram)
Nir Zuk (Palo Alto Networks)

CEO of the Year

Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Marissa Mayer (Yahoo!)
Larry Page (Google)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Best New Startup of 2012

Coursera
Crowdtilt
Lyft
Snapchat
Waze

Best Overall Startup of 2012

Fab
Github
Instagram
Palantir
Square

Your Favorites

Which ones deserve to win? Go to the 2012 Crunchies voting page and tell us which is your favorite in each category. Do it now!

Buy your Crunchies tickets through Eventbrite and get ready for a star-studded, glamorous evening in San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, January 31, 2013.

This is the 6th year that VentureBeat has co-hosted these awards, along with GigaOm and TechCrunch. Over the years, the awards have grown to attract thousands of nominations and hundreds of attendees each year. It’s a chance for us to celebrate and honor the best the tech industry has to offer.

It’s not too late to nominate your favorite startup for the awards. Nominations close on December 6, 2012, so get your entries in before then!

Once all the nominations are in, judges from the three hosting publications will narrow the entrants down to five finalists in each of 20 different categories. We’ll post the finalists, and you’ll have a chance to vote on your favorites throughout January.

We’ll unveil the winners on January 31, 2013, at the awards ceremony.

So get your Crunchies nominations in now. Want to know more? Check the official Crunchies rules.

And we hope to see you in San Francisco!

More info:

The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Tickets are on sale here. Be sure to act fast!

Nominations are open now.
Nominations close: Thursday, December 6th at 11:59pm PST
Finalists announced: early January

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact sponsors@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

List of Categories:

Best Technology Achievement (2011: Siri)
Best Collaborative Consumption Service (New for 2012)
Best E-Commerce Application (New for 2012)
Best Mobile Application (2011: Evernote)
Fastest Rising Startup (New for 2012)
Best Content Discovery Application (New for 2012)
Best Design (2011: Path 2.0)
Best Bootstrapped Startup (2011: Imgur)
Sexiest Enterprise Startup (New for 2012)
Best International Startup (2011: Peixe Urbano)
Best Education Startup (New for 2012)
Best Hardware Startup (New for 2012)
Best Time Sink (2011: Words With Friends)
Biggest Social Impact (2011: Twitter)
Angel of the Year (2011: Reid Hoffman)
VC of the Year (2011: Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz)
Founder of the Year (2011: Jack Dorsey)
CEO of the Year (2011: Jeff Weiner)
Best New Startup of 2012 (2011: Pinterest)
Best Overall Startup of 2012 (2011: Dropbox)

Tickets go on sale today for the 6th Annual Crunchies Awards, which celebrate innovation, entrepreneurship, and the most promising tech startups.

Buy your Crunchies tickets through Eventbrite and get ready for a star-studded, glamorous evening in San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, January 31, 2013.

This is the 6th year that VentureBeat has co-hosted these awards, along with GigaOm and TechCrunch. Over the years, the awards have grown to attract thousands of nominations and hundreds of attendees each year. It’s a chance for us to celebrate and honor the best the tech industry has to offer.

It’s not too late to nominate your favorite startup for the awards. Nominations close on December 6, 2012, so get your entries in before then!

Once all the nominations are in, judges from the three hosting publications will narrow the entrants down to five finalists in each of 20 different categories. We’ll post the finalists, and you’ll have a chance to vote on your favorites throughout January.

We’ll unveil the winners on January 31, 2013, at the awards ceremony.

So get your Crunchies nominations in now. Want to know more? Check the official Crunchies rules.

And we hope to see you in San Francisco!

More info:

The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Tickets are on sale here. Be sure to act fast!

Nominations are open now.
Nominations close: Thursday, December 6th at 11:59pm PST
Finalists announced: early January

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contactsponsors@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

List of Categories:

Best Technology Achievement (2011: Siri)
Best Collaborative Consumption Service (New for 2012)
Best E-Commerce Application (New for 2012)
Best Mobile Application (2011: Evernote)
Fastest Rising Startup (New for 2012)
Best Content Discovery Application (New for 2012)
Best Design (2011: Path 2.0)
Best Bootstrapped Startup (2011: Imgur)
Sexiest Enterprise Startup (New for 2012)
Best International Startup (2011: Peixe Urbano)
Best Education Startup (New for 2012)
Best Hardware Startup (New for 2012)
Best Time Sink (2011: Words With Friends)
Biggest Social Impact (2011: Twitter)
Angel of the Year (2011: Reid Hoffman)
VC of the Year (2011: Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz)
Founder of the Year (2011: Jack Dorsey)
CEO of the Year (2011: Jeff Weiner)
Best New Startup of 2012 (2011: Pinterest)
Best Overall Startup of 2012 (2011: Dropbox)

Startups, start your engines! We are now accepting nominations for the 6th Annual Crunchies Awards, which celebrate technology innovation, entrepreneurship, and startups.

This is the 6th year that VentureBeat has co-hosted these awards, along with GigaOm and TechCrunch. Over the years, they’ve become quite a big deal, attracting thousands of nominations and hundreds of attendees at the actual event.

Like last year, this year’s awards ceremony and party will be held in Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. It happens on Thursday, January 31, 2013. It’s a gala occasion that celebrates the best that the startup world has to offer.

Between now and then, the awards will go through several stages.

Nominations open: November 1, 2012
Nominations close: December 6, 2012

Once all the nominations are in, judges from the three hosting publications will narrow the entrants down to five finalists in each categories. We’ll post the finalists, and you’ll have a chance to vote on your favorites.

Finalists posted, voting begins: January 3, 2013
Voting closes: January 24, 2013

We’ll announce the winners on January 31, 2013, at the awards ceremony.

So get your Crunchies nominations in now. Want to know more? Check the official Crunchies rules.

The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards are co-hosted by GigaOm, TechCrunch and VentureBeat. Check out TechCrunch’s post about the nominations, and read GigaOm’s nominations post too.

Here are this year’s award categories, along with the names of last year’s winners:

1. Best Technology Achievement (2011: Siri)
2. Best Collaborative Consumption Service (New for 2012)
3. Best E-Commerce Application (New for 2012)
4. Best Mobile Application (2011: Evernote)
5. Fastest Rising Startup (New for 2012)
6. Best Content Discovery Application (New for 2012)
7. Best Design (2011: Path 2.0)
8. Best Bootstrapped Startup (2011: Imgur)
9. Sexiest Enterprise Startup (New for 2012)
10. Best International Startup (2011: Peixe Urbano)
11. Best Education Startup (New for 2012)
12. Best Hardware Startup (New for 2012)
13. Best Time Sink (2011: Words With Friends)
14. Biggest Social Impact (2011: Twitter)
15. Angel of the Year (2011: Reid Hoffman)
16. VC of the Year (2011: Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz)
17. Founder of the Year (2011: Jack Dorsey)
18. CEO of the Year (2011: Jeff Weiner)
19. Best New Startup of 2012 (2011: Pinterest)
20. Best Overall Startup of 2012 (2011: Dropbox)

Good luck, and may the best startups win!

Top photo: Co-hosts of the 5th annual Crunchies Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch), Om Malik (GigaOm), and Matt Marshall (VentureBeat). Photo credit: TechCrunch

Pinterest lets people spotlight products and pictures they like and was launched in private beta in March 2010. It was nominated in the 2011 category because it saw incredible growth in traffic last year. The site attracted nearly 11 million unique visitors in mid-December and is now one of the top 10 social networking sites on the web.

On top of that, a study by Shareaholic came out yesterday that indicates Pinterest is driving massive amounts of referral traffic to other sites as well. According to the study’s findings, which are based on data from more than 200,000 publishers, Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. Pretty compelling stuff, if you ask us.

Asked why Pinterest remained under-the-radar for so long, co-founder Ben Silbermann (pictured) told TechCrunch: “The whole team really just wanted to build a product that we really loved and that we hoped other people would really love. That’s pretty much what we do.”

Silbermann also elaborated on what elements could be driving so much growth to his site: “Pinterest is a visual site, and a lot of people are visual by nature,” Silbermann said. “But at its core, Pinterest is a site that connects people who are passionate about the same things. In the same way that people who use Facebook are excited to connect with people they care about, people on Pinterest are excited to be inspired by people with similar tastes.”

As expected, Silbermann would not disclose how many members or “pins” the site had accumulated thus far.

You can view a screen grab from Pinterest’s home page today below:

Crunchies photo: Heather Kelly/VentureBeat

Image credit: Pinterest screenshot

Ah, the Crunchies Awards; the glitz, the glamour, the tech innovation. This awards show gathers the best and brightest startups and tech companies from 2011 to celebrate their achievements and amazing technology.

VentureBeat, GigaOm, and TechCrunch hosted the event, which took place Tuesday night at the glamorous Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. The event was filled with tech celebrities and entertaining personalities, including host Harris Wittels, a “Parks and Recreation” alum and #humblebrag curator, and San Francisco’s mayor Ed Lee, who spoke about his tech jobs initiative for the City of San Francisco.

Click the image above if you want to watch the video of the whole event, and scroll down if you want to check out VentureBeat’s front-row-seat photos.

The votes have been tallied, the judges have spoken, and without further ado, here are the 2011 Crunchies Award winners!

Best Technology Achievement (2010 winner: Google Self Driving Cars)
Lytro
NFC
OnLive
Siri
Tesla Flat Pack Battery

Apple’s popular voice recognition personal assistant took the 2011 Best Technology Achievement Crunchies award.

Best Social Application (2010 winner: DailyBooth)
Facebook Timeline
Instagram
Google+
The New New Twitter
Path 2.0

Google’s breakout social network snagged the award in the Best Social Application category.

Best Shopping Application (2010 winner: Groupon)
Birchbox
Fab
Gilt Groupe
Lot 18
Warby Parker

Best Mobile Application (2010 winner: Google Mobile Maps for Android)
Evernote
Flipboard
Pandora
Spotify
Square
Task Rabbit

Best Location Application (New category for 2011)
Airbnb
Foursquare
Grindr
RunKeeper
Uber

Best Tablet Application (2010 winner: Flipboard)
djay
Eventbrite At the Door
Fotopedia
GarageBand
Netflix
StumbleUpon

Best Design (2010 winner: gogobot)
Gojee
Orchestra
Path 2.0
Pinterest
Quora

Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010 winner: addmired)
Github
Imgur
Instapaper
One Sheet
Tap Tap Tap (Camera+)

Best Cloud Service (New category for 2011)
Asana
Box
CloudFlare
Dropbox
Okta
Twilio

Best International Startup (2010 winner: Viki)
Badoo
Klarna
Peixe Urbano
Rovio
SoundCloud
Wonga

“Groupon for Brazil” Peixe Urbano took the Best International Startup Crunchies award.

Best Clean Tech Startup (2010 winner: SolarCity)
Alta Energy
Array Power
EcoATM
Eco Motors
Hara

Best New Device (2010 winner: iPad)
Galaxy Nexus
iPad 2
iPhone 4S
Kindle Fire
Nest

The coolest thermostat created thus far, Nest, nabbed the Best New Device Crunchies award.

Best Time Sink (2010 winner: Cityville)
Modern Warfare 3
Quora
Skyrim
Turntable.fm
Words With Friends

Zynga’s addictive word game won the Best Time Sink Crunchies award.

Biggest Social Impact (New category for 2011)
Charity: Water
Khan Academy
Kickstarter
Practice Fusion
Twitter

Angel of the Year (2010 winner: Paul Graham)
Ron Conway
Paul Graham
Reid Hoffman
Keith Rabois
Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi
Kevin Rose

VC of the Year (2010 winner: Yuri Milner)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Vinod Khosla
Aileen Lee
Yuri Milner
David Sze

Founder of the Year (2010 winner: Mark Pincus)
Leah Busque (Task Rabbit)
Brian Chesky (Airbnb)
Jack Dorsey (Square, Twitter)
Susan Feldman & Ali Pincus (One Kings Lane)
Drew Houston (Dropbox)

CEO of the Year (2010 winner: Andrew Mason)
Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Daniel Ek (Spotify)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Mark Pincus (Zynga)
Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn)

Best New Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Quora)
Codeacademy
Fab
Nest
Pinterest
Turntable.fm

Best Overall Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Twitter)
Dropbox
Instagram
Gilt Groupe
Spotify
Square
Tumblr

Check out our photo gallery below for pictures of the event and the winners.

Crunchies photos: Heather Kelly/VentureBeat

Harris Wittels, “Parks and Recreation” writer and all-around funny guy, will take the stage as the host of the 2011 Crunchies Awards next Tuesday night, January 31. VentureBeat, GigaOm, and TechCrunch are hosting the event, awarding the best tech innovation of 2011.

The event is chock-full of tech celebrities, including Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Kevin Rose (Digg), Marissa Mayer (Google), Kevin Systrom (Instagram), venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, and angel investor Ron Conway, many of whom will be presenting awards.

Tickets for the event are still available if you’d like to attend, but they’re going fast. There is also still time to vote for what company you think should win best startup, app, or device of the year. Are you an Evernote fan? Want to see the Kindle Fire win for best new device? Or maybe you have a soft spot for the new startup Pinterest? You have until midnight on Sunday, January 29 to cast your vote.

Following the ceremony, winners and guests will celebrate at the after-party. Get ready for a fully hosted bar, hors d’oeuvres, a casino game room, and so much more fun.

Wittels is well known for his Twitter handle @Humblebrag, where he retweets boastful and humble tweets. As apart of his hosting performance for the Crunchies, he plans to read out a few tweets he finds. Want to get a shout out? Tweet your best humblebrags between now and the start of the show with the #crunchies and #humblebrag hashtags. Who knows, your 140 character message might get chosen.

Tickets for Silicon Valley’s hottest annual event are on sale now.

That’s right, you can now buy the first, extremely limited batch of tickets to the Crunchies, which are coming up January 31, 2012.

Crunchies tickets go on sale at 10am today. We’re only making a few available in this batch, so act fast if you want to attend!

The Crunchies have been co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat every year since their inception in 2007 to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups. This year, the awards will be held in glamorous Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco (pictured here, with a lovely Henry Moore sculpture in the foreground), and we hear there will be a swell after-party.

Also, today is your last chance to get nominations in: We’re accepting them until December 13th, at 11:59pm PT.

There are 20 categories, including Best Startup, Best Mobile App, Best Design, and Best Technology Achievement. Last year, Twitter took the award for the Best Overall Startup, and you can check out the full list of 2010 winners.

In January, we’ll announce the finalists and call for a second round of voting.

Get your nominations in now.

And go buy your Crunchies tickets already!

The Crunchies have been co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat every year since their inception in 2007. This year, the awards will be held in glamorous Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, and we hear there will be a swell after-party. Stay tuned for details on how to get tickets.

We’ll be accepting nominations until midnight Pacific time tomorrow (December 13th, at 11:59pm PT, to be exact).

There are 20 categories, including Best Startup, Best Mobile App, Best Design, and Best Technology Achievement. Last year, Twitter took the award for the Best Overall Startup, and you can check out the full list of 2010 winners.

We’ve already received more than 280,000 nominations. (Whoa.) You can nominate someone else’s product or startup, or nominate your own, and then campaign for your favorites on Twitter and Facebook.

In January, we’ll announce the finalists and call for a second round of voting.

Get your nominations in now.

This annual celebration of startups and technology will be held on January 31, and it’s moving to the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, a gorgeous venue that seats over 2,000 people, so there will be twice the capacity of previous shows. Tickets will be released in batches, starting in early December.

Polling has just opened, so be sure nominate your favorite startups, founders, and investors across 20 categories. The nomination deadline is midnight Pacific time on December 13 and finalists will be announced in early January 2012.

Check out the rules here, and see the Crunchies categories (along with last year’s winners) below:

• Best Technology Achievement (2010: Google Self Driving Cars)
• Best Social Application (2010: DailyBooth)
• Best Shopping Application (2010: Groupon)
• Best Mobile Application (2010: Google Mobile Maps for Android)
• Best Local Application (new for 2011)
• Best Tablet Application (2010: Flipboard)
• Best Design (2010: gogobot)
• Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010: Addmired)
• Best Cloud Service (new for 2011)
• Best International Startup (2010: Viki)
• Best Clean Tech Startup (2010: SolarCity)
• Best New Device (2010: ipad)
• Best Time Sink (2010: Cityville)
• Biggest Social Impact (new for 2011)
• Angel of the Year (2010: Paul Graham)
• VC of the Year (2010: Yuri Milner)
• Founder of the Year (2010: Mark Pincus)
• CEO of the Year (2010: Andrew Mason)
• Best New Startup of 2010 (2010: Quora)
• Best Overall Startup of 2010 (2010: Twitter)

[Photo Credit: TechCrunch]

But the real winners tonight were a nice batch up startups that really did shine in 2010. Whether they turned down a $6 billion offer from search giant Google or just raised around $1.5 billion in funding, the best of the best got a chance to strut their stuff at the award ceremony, which was c0-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch.

Twitter managed to clinch the title of Best Overall Product of 2010 over upstart social deals service Groupon, despite its CEO being selected as the best CEO of the year. Zynga managed to hold onto its notoriety of being the best time sink of all time over Angry Birds, one of the most popular game apps on the Android Marketplace and Apple App Store. And Y Combinator’s own Paul Graham said it was at least a little impressive that startups funded by his firm were still able to qualify as the best bootstrapped startups in this year’s Crunchies.

Here is the list of winners and runners-up in each respective category:

Best Internet Application: Pandora (Runner Up: Rdio)

Best Social Application: Dailybooth (Runner Up: Twitter)

Best Social Commerce Application: Groupon (Runner Up: ShopKick)

Best Mobile Application: Google Mobile Maps (Runner Up: Instagram)

Best Location Based Service: Foursquare (Runner up: Facebook Places)

Best New Device: iPad (Runner Up: XBox Kinect)

Best Technology Achievement: Google’s self-driving cars (Runner Up: Qwiki)

Best Touch Interface: Flipboard (Runner up: Fotopedia)

Best Designs: Gogobot (Runner Up: About.me)

Best Bootsrapped Startup: Addmired (Runner Up: Instapaper)

Best Enterprise Startup: Buddy Media (Runner Up: Millenial Media)

Best Cleantech Startup: SolarCity (Runner Up: Kopernik)

Best Time Sink Application: CityVille (Runner Up: Angry Birds)

Angel of the Year: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham (Runner Up: SV Fund’s Ron Conway)

Venture Capitalist of the Year: Yuri Milner of DST (Runner Up: Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures)

Founder of the Year: Zynga’s Mark Pincus (Runner Up: Square’s Jack Dorsey)

CEO of the Year: Groupon’s Andrew Mason (Runner Up: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg)

Best New Startup or Product of 2010: Quora (Runner Up: Square)

Best Overall Product of 2010: Twitter (Runner Up: Groupon)

Didn’t manage to snag a ticket to the Crunchies? Not in San Francisco? Or only going to the after-party? Well, you can still follow along here, thanks to live video from Ustream.

The Crunchies are the annual startup awards co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat. Readers of all three sites voted first to nominate their favorite companies, and then for the best choice among nominees. You can see the full list of finalists here.

The ceremonies will start at 7:30pm Pacific time. The awards will be given out by the staff of the host blogs, and there should be some startup all-stars on stage too.

http://www.ustream.tv/flash/viewer.swf

Following last month’s open nomination period, we’ve narrowed down each of the award categories to five or six finalists. The voting for the ultimate winners starts right now and ends at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on January 19. Everyone is allowed to vote once per category per day. Cast your votes here.

We’re also releasing our third wave of tickets for the awards ceremony, which will be held on the evening of January 21 at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco. Tickets cost $75 and include both the ceremony and the afterparty in the Exploratorium. They’ll go on-sale here starting at 1pm Pacific time — as with previous ticket releases, we expect these to sell out very quickly.

Here are the finalists. If you’re one of them, you can encourage your fans to vote by creating a badge for your website.

Best Internet Application
ChartBeat
Greplin
Pandora
Rdio
Ujam

Best Social App
Cityville
Dailybooth
Foursquare
GroupMe
Twitter

Best Social Commerce App
Blippy
Groupon
Jetsetter
LivingSocial
One King’s Lane
ShopKick

Best Mobile App
Bump
Chomp
Google Mobile Maps for Android
Hashable
Instagram

Best Location Based Service
Facebook Places
Foursquare
Gowalla
SimpleGeo
Uber

Best New Device
Boxee Box
Google Chrome Notebook
iPad
iPhone 4
Kno
Xbox Kinect

Best Technology Achievement
Blekko
Google Self-driving cars
Hunch
Palantir
Qwiki
Word Lens

Best Design
1000memories
about.me
Airbnb
Flipboard
Gogobot
Qwiki

Best Touch Interface
Flipboard
Fotopedia Heritage iPad app
Osmos
Pulse
Sencha Touch
Swype

Best Bootstrapped Startup
Addmired (iMob)
Beluga
Easel Learning
Fast Society
Instapaper
Techmeme

Best Enterprise
37 Signals
Buddy Media
CloudApp
Indinero
Millennial Media
Salesforce

Best International
Crivo
PCH International
Soluto
Viki
VNL
Wonga

Best Clean Tech
Coolerado
Kopernik
MicroGreen
Purealytics
Smith Electric Vehicles
Solar City

Best Time Sink Application
Angry Birds
Cityville
Netflix streaming
Quora
StumbleUpon

Angel of the Year
Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
Ron Conway, SV Angel
Michael Dearing, Harrison Metal Capital
Chris Dixon, Founder Collective
Mike Maples, Floodgate
Paul Graham, Y Combinator

VC of the Year (individual)
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital
Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Yuri Milner, DST
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures

Founder of the Year
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks
Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
Jack Dorsey, Square
Kevin and Julia Hartz, Eventbrite
David Karp, Tumblr
Mark Pincus, Zynga

CEO of the Year
Dick Costolo, Twitter
Reed Hastings, Netflix
Drew Houston, Dropbox
Andrew Mason, Groupon
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Best New Startup or Product of 2010
Flipboard
GroupMe
Instagram
Quora
Square
Uber

Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010
Facebook
Groupon
Quora
Twitter
Zynga

If you’re interested in being one of the event sponsors, please contact Jeanne Logozzo.

The first set of tickets sold out in 90 minutes, so if you want one, you should move fast. Again, the ceremony will be held on the evening of January 21 at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco. Tickets cost $75 and include both the ceremony (which is always packed with big names from the tech world) and the afterparty at the Exploratorium next door.

Buy your tickets here.

If you’re too slow today, there will be two more chances to buy tickets in January. (That’s what I said last time, but today’s release is apparently a last-minute decision in response to all the ticket requests).

Meanwhile, you really, truly, are running out of time to nominate your favorite startups and entrepreneurs for the Crunchies. You can nominate once per category per day, but the nominations close at 11:59pm Pacific time on December 24. Submit your nominations here.

The ceremony will be held on January 21 in San Francisco, starting at 7:30pm. We’re moving the venue to the Palace of Fine Arts Theater. Tickets cost $75 and include a pass to the afterparty at the Exploratorium next door. And it won’t just be tech bloggers in attendance. The stars of the tech world usually show — at past ceremonies we’ve brought big names like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Marissa Mayer on-stage.

You can buy your tickets here.

The tickets go fast, but if you’re too slow today, it’s not your last chance. We’ll do two more releases before the event. In the meantime, you can still nominate your favorite companies, products, entrepreneurs, and investors. Nominations close on Dec. 24.

The first batch of tickets won’t go on sale until Dec. 15, but we’re opening the doors to nominations today. You can submit one nomination per category per day between now and Dec. 24 at the Crunchies nomination website. Here are the award categories:

• Best Internet Application
• Best Social App
• Best Social Commerce App
• Best Mobile Application
• Best Location Based Service
• Best New Device
• Best Technology Achievement
• Best Design
• Best Touch Interface
• Best Bootstrapped Startup
• Best Enterprise
• Best International
• Best CleanTech
• Best Time Sink Application
• Angel of the Year
• Venture Capitalist of the Year (Individual)
• Founder Of The Year
• CEO Of The Year
• Best New Startup Or Product Of 2010
• Best Overall Startup Or Product Of 2010

We’ll announce the finalists on Jan. 4.

This is the second year of the tech-startup awards ceremony. It’s where the 15 best startups, founders and executives are awarded by the community based on outstanding performance. While the ceremony — to be held Jan. 9 at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco — does focus mainly on startups, we’ve also allowed nominations for larger companies for particularly innovative projects that impact technology in a significant way.

If you are a startup or individual in the finals, you can get a badge to promote votes here. Voting ends at the end of the day on Jan. 5.

Voting rules: We will count one vote per person per category per day. Voting ends Monday, Jan. 5 at midnight PST, and winners will be announced live at the ceremony.

We have also released 200 additional tickets for the Crunchies Awards Ceremony and After Party. We will release one more round of tickets after New Years and then the ceremony will be sold out.

With the economic downturn setting in, there may be fewer business successes to celebrate in the foreseeable future. So it’s more important than ever to recognize companies and leaders of excellence.

VentureBeat co-hosts the awards with TechCrunch, GigaOm and Silicon Alley Insider.

We announced the opening of the Crunchies nomination process a few weeks ago. You’ll see there are awards for everything from “Best Technology Achievement” (you’ll see that finalists for this category include a diverse group, from Swype to Google Chrome) to “Best Startup Founder” (finalists include folks like Robet Kalin of Etsy, and Evan Williams of Twitter).

This year’s Crunchies would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors.

Thank you to ceremony and after-party co-hosts Microsoft, MySpace and Founders Fund; award benefactors CRV and Mayfield; streaming partner Ustream; after-party game-room partner Garage Games; ticketing partner Amiando; photo host PicApps; hosting partner Media Temple; wine partner Cannonball wines; and event patron Institutional Venture Partners. Please contact heather@techcrunch.com or jlogo@earthlink.net if you’re interested to learn more about creative (and very reasonably priced) sponsorship opportunities.

Pictured here is Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook, who won the award for best overall website and best founder. Mark’s award was well deserved. And it was your votes that counted.

You can watch a video of the event that Mogulus recorded here, or there’s a quick and good summary of the event by the AFP today.

The highlight of the show, according to most people I talked with, was the acceptance speech by Fake Steve Jobs of the award for best device. (See video below the fold.) We had a lot of fun upstairs at the after party too (some photos here).

Lots of photos here of the event, held at the Herbst Theatre in SF, which seats close to 1,000 people. Congrats to all the winners and the nominees (scroll down). Thanks to the co-hosts, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb and Techcrunch. They are competitors, but also friends. Mike did a great job as emcee. It was especially a treat to see Om up and about.

And, of course, thanks for the 2007 Crunchies sponsors, who underwrote the event and made it possible: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Founders Fund, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, OurStage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our program sponsors, including Ask, Framr (an ecommerce start-up offering custom picture framing, launching tonight), Lotus Vodka, Intel Capital, Lehman Brothers, Meevee, RealTimeMatrix’s Vortex, Searchles, our official live streaming partner of the night Mogulus, our official ticketing sponsor Amiando, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

Together GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, TechCrunch and VentureBeat have devised the Crunchies as a way to recognize the year’s most creative business and tech accomplishments of start-ups and the people behind them.

We’ve created twenty award categories.

We want your input. We invite you, the community, to submit your favorite companies and products for consideration.

Read the the official rules and fine print. Nominations will be open through midnight PST Wednesday, December 12. Finalist voting will open Thursday, December 13 and run for approximately one month before the awards ceremony on Friday, January 18 in San Francisco. Make sure to grab a badge to put on your site to encourage readers to nominate you.

The final award winners will be determined based on the popular votes received through website voting. The award winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony to be held Friday, January 18 in San Francisco. Stay tuned for further details.