For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App, the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like TaskRabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.

There are some pretty good match-ups this year. Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline for Best Social App, along with the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0). The Kindle Fire is competing with the iPad 2 for Best New Device. And Pinterest, Turntable.fm, Nest, Fab, and Codecademy are all vying for Best New Startup (even though two of those were complete pivots). LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is up for Angel of the Year. His seed investment in Zynga is worth 160 times what he paid for it. But AngelList founders Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi are also finalists in the category for helping to democratize angel investing, along with Conway, Rabois, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, and Kevin Rose (who has a killer portfolio that includes Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga, and Square). Who will win?

Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote. The rules state that you may vote once per day, per award category, until voting closes on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:59pm PST. There are 20 award categories open for voting, recognizing the top accomplishments across a variety of fields and roles. If you are one of the finalists, create a badge and get your community excited about this honor and get them to vote for you. Winners will be announced on January 31, live at the Crunchies.

In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can.

Here are your Finalists:

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

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

Best Shopping Application (2010 winner: Groupon)
Birchbox
Fab
Gilt Groupe
Lot18
Warby Parker

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

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
Onesheet
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

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

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

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

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 (AngelList)
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)
Codecademy
Fab
Nest
Pinterest
Turntable.fm

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

5th Annual Crunchies Awards
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

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.

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 Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne@techcrunch.com.

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

I know that all of you have been waiting on pins and needles… refreshing the TechCrunch home page multiple times each day to see when the next batch of Crunchies tickets will be on sale. Well, today is the day! The second batch of tickets for the 5th Annual Crunchies Awards are available now. 250 tickets have been released for the annual event honoring the best achievements in tech brought to you by GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch for general admission purchase. The first batch sold out in less than two hours, so purchase your tickets now, lest you have to wait for the next release in January.

The Crunchies has a bigger, grander home this year at the Davies Symphony Hall with the after party to immediately follow at the same venue. The Davies is home to the world renowned San Francisco Symphony, now its 100th year.  The Davies Symphony Hall is one of the world’s most modern and beautiful acoustic venues.  In addition to the San Francisco Symphony’s infamous musical premieres, the Davies has hosted benefit concerts and readings with Sting, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Jack Nicholson, Annette Benning, Bruce Willis and Sean Penn.  The Davies Symphony Hall has sweeping views of San Francisco City Hall and the War Memorial Opera House. The curved, floor to ceiling glass lobby makes a gorgeous setting for the 5th Annual Crunchies. If you would like to learn more about the Crunchies, you can check out all of last year’s Crunchies Awards happenings here.

Tickets will sell out quickly.  Don’t delay in getting your seat for the hottest party to kick off the new year in tech. If you miss your chance to get your tickets today, we’ll release another batch of tickets in January. Stay tuned for future ticket release announcements.

After the past few weeks of spirited debates, all of the nominations are in and the votes are being tabulated. We will announce the finalists in early January and open voting for the Crunchies awards.

The 5th Annual Crunchies Awards

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

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.

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 Jeanne Logozzo.

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

Tickets are on sale here. Be sure to act fast and get them now!

Image credit: Orange Photography

Update: Tickets are now sold out. Stay tuned for our next batch of tickets to go on sale before the holidays.

It’s time!  The first batch of tickets for the 5th Annual Crunchies Awards are available now. 200 tickets have been released for the annual event honoring the best achievements in tech brought to you by GIgaOm, VentureBeat and Techcrunch for general admission purchase. The Crunchies has a bigger, grander home this year at the Davies Symphony Hall with the after party to immediately follow at the same venue. Last year the Crunchies brought together Dick Costolo, Andrew Mason, Marissa Mayer, Yuri Milner and Mark Pincus, to name a few. You can check out all of last year’s Crunchies Awards happenings here.

This year promises to be even more irreverent, festive and fun.  Stay tuned for surprise announcements! Tickets will sell out quickly.  Don’t delay in getting your seat for the hottest party to kick off the new year in tech. If you miss your chance to get your tickets today, we’ll release another batch of tickets before the holidays. Stay tuned for future ticket release announcements.

More than 300,000 nominations are in. Today is your last chance to nominate those deserving startups, tenacious entrepreneurs and clairvoyant investors. Nominations close at 11:59pm PT tonight.  Your vote may be the difference that makes your favorite a finalist. All finalists will be announced in early January and ready take the main stage at the Davies on January 31st.

The 5th Annual Crunchies Awards

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

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.

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 Jeanne Logozzo.

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

Tickets are on sale here. Be sure to act fast and get them now!

Image credit: Orange Photography

As open nominations for the 5th annual Crunchies awards enters its final week (nominate here until Dec 13), it’s time to figure out which are the best startups and products of 2011. The Crunchies, which we co-host along with GigaOm and VentureBeat, has 20 categories spanning from Best Mobile App to Best VC. We’ve introduced some new categories this year such as Best Tablet App, Best Shopping App, and Biggest Social Impact. But the most anticipated awards, the ones we save for last, are Best Overall Startup and Best New Startup of 2011.

Last year, Twitter won Best Overall and Quora won Best New Startup. Who will win this year? There are plenty of amazing startups to choose from. In the Best Overall category strong contenders include Airbnb, Dropbox and Square. They each grew like crazy this year and raised tons of money. Best New Startup is a tougher category. We allow startups that either were founded or launched during the year. Some names to think about here include Pinterest, Turntable.fm, Nest, Codecademy, Getaround, and Warby Parker.

Who do you think deserves to be named the best startup of the year? Nominate them on the Crunchies voting site and make your case in the comments below.

The 5th Annual Crunchies Awards

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

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 will be released in batches starting early December. Davies Symphony Hall can seat over 2,000 attendees, double the size of previous Crunchies Awards.

Nominations open: Friday, November 18th
Nominations close: Tuesday, December 13th 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 Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne [at] techcrunch [dot] com.

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

Photo Credit: Susan Hobbs

It’s that time of year again when we start taking nominations for the fifth annual Crunchies Awards, the annual celebration of startups and technology. Once again we are co-hosting the awards with GigaOm and VentureBeat. We are moving to a new, bigger location—the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, which can seat over 2,000 people. The event will take place on January 31, 2012.

But who will be there? Well, that’s where you come in. Nominate the most deserving startups, founders, and investors across 20 categories from Best New Startup to Best Mobile App. We are taking nominations until midnight PT on December 13, 2011. You can nominate one company or person per category per day, but otherwise can nominate as much as you want. (You can read all the rules here).

Who do you think will make it this year? Square, Spotify, Dropbox, Airbnb, Pinterest? Who is the best angel investor? Who is the best CEO? What is the most impressive technology achievement of the year (Siri or something else)? You tell us.Put your own nominations in now. Details and full list of categories (with last year’s winners) are below:

The 5th Annual Crunchies Awards

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

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 will be released in batches starting early December. Davies Symphony Hall can seat over 2,000 attendees, double the size of previous Crunchies Awards.

Nominations open: Friday, November 18th
Nominations close: Tuesday, December 13th 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 Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne@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 (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 2011)

Best Tablet Application (2010: flipboard)

Best Design (2010: gogobot)

Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010: addmired)

Best Cloud Service (new 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 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)

Check out the event coverage from each of the partners of the 5th Annual Crunchies: GigaOm, Venture Beat and TechCrunch.