The Crunchies kick us into 2010

The LEWIS San Francisco and San Jose offices were in full force at The Crunchies on Friday (for the uninitiated, this is an annual tech start-up awards show, hosted by three of the biggest tech blogs around: GigaOM, TechCrunch and VentureBeat). Once a year, these three blogging giants join forces to celebrate the brightest stars in the start-up word, with awards, alcohol and er, awkward juggling acts.

LEWIS was the proud sponsor of the ‘Embargo-Free Beer Bar’, a cheeky reference to TechCrunch’s disdain for the PR profession in general. Perhaps we can all break bread and move on now Michael? Some of us are actually pretty good at our jobs, you know…

Hosted at the Herbst Theater in downtown SF, and with a banging after party at City Hall (sidenote – one of the most beautiful buildings in California, not so much after the night’s reveling I’m sure); this year’s Crunchies were a great reminder of reasons to be optimistic again. Sure, everyone was still a little battle-scarred emerging from the wreckage of 2009, but spirits were high, helped no doubt by the free ones on offer from Grey Goose.

The tech blog-reading public voted for the winners, and it showed, with many categories winning 2010's award for ‘statement of the obvious’. Facebook was voted best overall start-up or product of 2009, for the third year running, prompting several humorous asides about not being eligible for a start-up award once a movie is being made about you. Quite. And what about the branded Facebook Connect Vitamin Water that somehow made it into a shot of Mark Zuckerberg proudly holding his Crunchie award aloft! Pesky product placement.

Other big winners included Microsoft and Google (yes, these were start-up awards, really), for Bing, Chrome OS and Google Docs/Office. Google’s Vic Gundotra had the audience in a small frenzy when he announced live on stage, Oprah style, that there were 10 winning tickets for a Nexus One phone under some people’s chairs. Hmm, I wish Google had really gone Oprah-style and given one to every person in the audience!

But, even though the night’s winners were a clear indication of public voting preferences, they still served as a pretty good indicator of where 2009 took us, and where 2010 might be headed.

Big trends included online collaboration and the cloud, mobile and location-based apps and services (NOT a surprise that FourSquare won in this category, given the Twittering buzz it’s gained over the last few months), streaming music (yes, we’re still waiting for the Spotify US launch, but Pandora got some lovin’ too), and of course, social gaming, with FarmVille and parent company, Zynga, winning some of the loudest plaudits of the night. You really can't beat their crop of pumpkins.

All in all, it was a great night to be in the tech start-up world. Biggest surprise of the night for me was Twitter winning… nothing. Seems like even the mighty Ashton Kutcher couldn’t help Twitter topple the Zuck’s crown.

The embargo-free beer flowed all night at the after party. LEWIS’ small gesture for the people who put ‘friend’ in our lexicon of verbs and taught us how to over-share ;)

Here’s to a brighter, more innovative and decidedly more cheerful 2010. Here's the LEWIS crowd kicking us off! (Photo credit: Devin Tillery, available at the Crunchies 2009 Flickr stream).

Comments

[Jon Miller]

Good lord I have purple teeth. Great post LT, and thanks for posting this picture