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Mobile apps Snapchat, Tinder and Candy Crush win Crunchies tech awards

Saqib Shah
February 11, 2014

The tech industry’s big Oscars-style awards event the Crunchies took place in San Francisco last night and the big mobile winners included Snapchat, Tinder and Candy Crush Saga.

The ephemeral photo app Snapchat, which is rumoured to be valued at over $3 billion ( £1.8 billion), managed to nab the Best Mobile App award despite losing 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers to hackers last month.

Location-based matchmaking app Tinder won the Best New Startup award after taking the  online dating world by storm.

Tinder is beloved by the millennial crowd as it dispenses with all the questions associated with online dating sites, instead cutting to the chase with a photo-centric service provided in a ‘hot or not’ style app.

Candy Crush Saga won the Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (time sink) award due to the addictive nature of the game, which has now been downloaded more than 500 million times and reportedly played more than 150 billion times.

The event also saw its fair share of drama as a small group of anti-tech activists gathered outside the Davies Symphony Hall, where the awards were being held, to protest the gentrification of San Francisco by tech companies.

Crunchies host and former Daily Show presenter John Oliver joked about the controversy, asking the attendees how they had managed to gentrify a city that had already been gentrified three times over.

The full list of winners can be viewed below:

Best technology achievement: Bitcoin

Best collaborative consumption service:  Airbnb

Best e-commerce application: Wanelo

Best Mobile Application: Snapchat

Fastest Rising Startup: Upworthy

Best Health Startup: One Medical

Best Design: Pencil by FiftyThree  

Best Bootstrapped Startup: Imgur

Sexiest Enterprise Startup: Zendesk

Best International Startup: Waze

Best Education Startup: Duolingo

Best Hardware Startup: Oculus

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (time sink): Candy Crush

Biggest Social Impact: Edward Snowden

Angel of the Year: Chris Sacca

VC of the Year: Peter Fenton

Founder of the Year: Drew Houston & Arash Ferdowsi

CEO of the Year: Dick Costolo

Best New Startup: Tinder

Best Overall Startup: Kickstarter

Source: VentureBeat

About the Author

Saqib Shah

Tech/gaming journalist for What Mobile magazine and website. Interests include film, digital media and foreign affairs.

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