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This evening at the Crunchies, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason took home the coveted CEO of the Year award. But we couldn’t let him leave the stage without taking the opportunity to ask him a few questions about the red-hot company.

Our own Michael Arrington kicked things off by asking about Groupon’s press release for its recent funding round, when it “Raised, Like, A Billion Dollars“. Groupon and Mason have long had a very amusing and irreverent sense of humor. But how long can they keep that up before it causes a deal to fall through, or something else undesirable to happen?

Mason replied that he’s taking the Arnold Schwarzenegger approach to leadership. That is, he’s taking the first part of his career and doing everything stupid he can think of, so people have no expectations for him down the line (then again, he did just win CEO of the Year, so he’s not setting the bar too low).

Michael followed up by asking if Groupon had selected Morgan Stanley to lead the company’s IPO. Mason responded, “We are talking to bankers about the possibility of going public…. We have not made any decisions about whether to go public or who to do it with”.

Finally, Michael asked about Groupon’s revenue — could it do $4 billion this year?  To which Mason responded, “Which one’s the revenue?”

This year’s fourth annual Crunchies Awards have just concluded, and we’re happy to say that it was an overwhelming success. For those who weren’t at the event or watching our livestream, we’ve included the list of nominees and winners below. Our most sincere congratulations to the winners and to all of the nominees as well. It was an incredibly tight race for many of the categories, and it’s safe to say that everyone on this list is at the top of their field.

We’d like to take a moment to point out Twitter’s win for “Best Overall Startup Or Product”, the first time the company has won a Crunchie in this category. Twitter has become an indispensable part of social communication and a key ingredient in the fabric of the web. And congratulations to Groupon’s Andrew Mason, who won for CEO of the Year; Mark Pincus, who took Best Founder of the Year, and Quora, which took Best New Startup in 2010.

Best Internet Application
Chartbeat
Greplin
Pandora (winner)
Rdio (runnerup)
Ujam

Best Social App
Cityville
Dailybooth (winner)
Foursquare
GroupMe
Twitter (runnerup)

Best Social Commerce App
Blippy
Groupon (winner)
Jetsetter
LivingSocial
One Kings Lane
ShopKick (runnerup)

Best Mobile App
Bump
Chomp
Google Mobile Maps for Android (winner)
Hashable
Instagram (runnerup)

Best Location Based Service
Facebook Places (runnerup)
Foursquare (winner)
Gowalla
SimpleGeo
Uber

Best New Device
Boxee Box
Google Chrome Notebook
iPad (winner)
iPhone 4
Kno
Xbox Kinect (runnerup)

Best Technology Achievement
Blekko
Google Self-driving Cars (winner)
Hunch
Palantir
Qwiki (runnerup)
Word Lens

Best Design
1000memories
about.me (runnerup)
Airbnb
Flipboard
Gogobot (winner)
Qwiki

Best Touch Interface
Flipboard (winner)
Fotopedia Heritage iPad app (runnerup)
Osmos
Pulse News Reader
Sencha Touch
Swype

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

Best Enterprise
37 Signals
Buddy Media (winner)
CloudApp
inDinero
Millennial Media (runnerup)
Salesforce

Best International
Crivo
PCH International
Soluto (runnerup)
ViKi (winner)
VNL
Wonga

Best Clean Tech
Coolerado
Kopernik (runnerup)
MicroGreen
Puralytics
Smith Electric Vehicles
SolarCity (winner)

Best Time Sink Application
Angry Birds (runnerup)
Cityville (winner)
Netflix streaming
Quora
StumbleUpon

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

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

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

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

Best New Startup or Product of 2010
Flipboard
GroupMe
Instagram
Quora (winner)
Square (runnerup)
Uber

Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010
Facebook
Groupon (runnerup)
Quora
Twitter (winner)
Zynga

And a special thanks to our sponsors, including Tagged, Microsoft, MailChimp, SecondMarket, Red Bull and Ustream.

We’ve given one away before, and we are doing it again.

Earlier in the month we asked our Facebook fans a question we were curious about. We asked, “Choosing from all of the cool gadgets we write about, if you had the chance to win one, which one would you want?” We had hundreds of fans chime in and the number one thing people wanted was an Apple iPad. We thought since Apple had such a tremendous quarter, an iPad is the number one thing our fans want, and the iPad just won a 2010 Crunchies Award for Best Device, why not give one away?

We will be giving an iPad to one lucky reader at random. At a retail value of $499, this is one giveaway you surely don’t want to miss.

If you want a chance at getting your hands on an iPad, just follow these steps to enter.

Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

Then do one of the following:

– Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below explaining why this iPad has to be yours

The contest starts right now and ends tomorrow, January 22nd at 7:30pm PST.

Like previous giveaways, please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner this weekend with more details. Anyone in the world is eligible, as long as you can receive delivered packages. We’ll also throw in some TechCrunch swag for fun.

Tonight at our Crunchies Awards in San Francisco, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo took the stage with our own Michael Arrington. The topic of discussion? Well, it was sort of all over the place — more of a fun conversation.

Mike asked Costolo what he thought about the recent news that Eric Schmidt was being replaced as CEO of Google by co-founder Larry Page. You’d think Costolo would have some insight about the news simply because he himself just took over as CEO of Twitter, replacing Ev Williams, a co-founder (who also stayed with the company).

“Eric is on a bit different of a plane than me. I mean in the Gulfstream sense, not the other sense,” Costolo joked. “I think he’ll be fine,” he continued to laughs. “I think it’s going to work out for him.”

Mike quickly pivoted. “So far Twitter has been too cool for revenue. Is this the year there might be revenue?,” he asked. “There must and shall be revenue,” Costolo said with a laugh. He quickly corrected himself — “There already is revenue. There will be more revenue,” he said. “The next year, more still!,” he joked.

“We are focused on it,” Costolo continued saying that they have many products built for that purpose now. “That’s not one of the things I worry about,” he continued.

Naturally, Mike followed up with “So what do you worry about?” “International growth,” Costolo quickly replied. “You have to scale lanuages, regional support, data centers. Organizing all of that is a challenge,” he continued. “And not many [companies] have had to do that before,” Costolo said noting that it’s not like there’s a book on how do it.

Costolo also said that he was a Twitter user before all “the cool kids” signed up at SXSW in 2007. When Mike asked if Costolo knew then that this would be a good company, Costolo admitted that he did not. “I didn’t really get it.” That said, he still angel invested in it.

“Do you get it now?,” Mike quipped. Costolo laughed. “It continues to evolve.”

You can continue to watch the show live here.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! We’re live at The Crunchies Awards at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Once again we’ve partnered with fellow blogs VentureBeat and GigaOm to celebrate the best technology achievements of 2010. Those of you at home or backstage like myself can watch them on the livestream above, and chat about them here.

The show starts at 7:30 pm, or shortly.

Everyone loves Legos. There is no debate. In fact, there may only be one thing better than Legos: customized Legos. And a new web service aims to provide those to all.

Brickify is a website that allows you to put in the URL to any image on the web and it will output a “brickified” image. Yes, it’s an image just like the one you just put in — but made of bricks. “Bricks” are the generic and non-trademarked term for Legos, but make no mistake, we’re talking Legos here.

Once you get the brickified image, you can alter it on the site by changing around colors. And once you have what you want, you can download inventory you need to build an actual version of the images with Legos. And they’ll even give you the schematics to build it. Yep, awesome.

“Turning a picture into a brick pattern isn’t the kind of problem we solve every day, but HTML5 technologies made it relatively easy. We use the canvas to load the user’s image and process the pixels in the image into bricks,” Carsonified founder Ryan Carson says. Carsonified’s Think Vitamin team built the site.

“We also use the canvas to tile brick images together to form an isometric view of the final production. JQuery helps out with basic manipulation in the UI, and we use Sammy.js and Underscore.js to glue everything together,” he continues.

That’s all well and good. But let’s be honest, the key is Legos.

Bill Gross is up to something. The CEO of PostUp, who previously founded (and sold) Overture, answers.com, and a number of other companies, has just acquired his second Twitter client in as many weeks. On January 5 PostUp acquired EchoFon, and today the company has announced that it’s acquired UberTwiter, which makes Twitter clients for iPhone and BlackBerry.

In addition to the acquisition, PostUp has another piece of news: it’s changing its name to UberMedia. This is the third name for the company, which was originally called TweetUp, but changed its name last summer to PostUp as it added support for Facebook and LinkedIn.

So what is UberMedia’s strategy here? The company now has a new homepage, which includes the following description:

UberMedia is the leading independent developer of applications and web-based services that make it easier for users to find, follow and communicate with others on Twitter and other social media platforms. The company is focused on driving innovation in user experiences across a range of online and mobile platforms. UberMedia also provides advertisers and brands with new ways to engage and communicate with consumers via Twitter through its family of apps.

In other words, it wants to offer a variety of third party services that are complimentary — and in some cases, directly competitive — with what Twitter offers.

George Zachary of CRV was our guest on Ask a VC today, and not only did he answer reader questions bluntly, he indulged us with his craziest story from his days working with Internet icon Jim Clark on Shutterfly.

The whole episode is below, or feel free to tune into just the answers to these questions:

What sort of materials do you look for when initially being approached by an entrepreneur with an idea? A prototype? A business plan?

Since you put out your call to entrepreneurs for an app discovery business plan on Facebook, any takers? Do you think app discovery is a big issue and large market opportunity?

What are the future prospects for merchants and publishers using a white label platform like chompon and tippr to develop their own deals?

There are rumors Apple and Google are working on “social” projects. Any idea what their angle or focus will be compared to the 800 ton gorilla Facebook? Any predictions?

Do you foresee any change in user activity (regardless of websites or mobile) in view of changing demographics and employee productivity requirements being ratcheted up (i.e., employers don’t want employees playing around in Internet all day)?

Do you still review screenplays?

What are some exciting upcoming startups that you have come across recently?

What’s the craziest story you can tell us about jim clark?

One of the criticisms of Apple’s App Store (and application stores in general) is how it is commonplace for a popular app or game to have dozens of clones. These can be sifted through due to their low popularity and shoddy icons, and on the off chance you prefer an ad-supported knock-off over a 99 cent app, they’re a good alternative. But not every clone is flattery and bandwagon-jumping; some are outright theft. Case in point, an iOS game entitled The Blocks Cometh, which is a straight lift, graphics and all, of a Flash game of the same name by developer Halfbot.

The iOS app has been approved and is available to buy now, though of course you shouldn’t buy it (Halfbot is working on an actual iOS port). A week ago, Apple was notified that the game was clearly made entirely from stolen IP, which isn’t surprising, as the rest of the offending developer’s games seem to be knock-offs as well. But a week later, Apple has yet to pull the app or give any kind of substantial response.

Continue reading…

The Crunchies Statue. Sure, everyone wants it. But so many people ask us, “Why the hell is it a monkey?” (Hint.)

Still, no one was quite as confused by it as our new intern. Lucky for us a documentary crew was in that day to catch the footage. Watch below.

Today, Facebook announced that it raised a total of $1.5 billion in its latest round, giving the company a valuation of $50 billion. But it also disclosed something else: when it will likely go public.

Buried at the bottom of its press release, it sets a date for when it expects to start filing public financial reports:

Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

While Facebook could decide to report financial publicly without actually going public, once it goes through the trouble of financial reporting and the increased scrutiny that brings, there will be little remaining reasons to remain private. So the clock is now ticking. Expect a Facebook IPO by April, 2012.

With increasing SEC concerns about private trading of Facebook stock on places like SecondMarket and pooled funds like Goldman’s which are engineered to skirt SEC disclosure rules, putting a timetable on when financial disclosures will be forthcoming is probably a good idea.

Photo credit: Flickr/ kobiz7

Today, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based maker of electric vehicles and batteries, CODA Holdings, appointed auto industry veteran Phil Murtaugh as chief executive officer.

On a conference call, CODA’s interim CEO Steven “Mac” Heller described Murtaugh as someone who believes “the automotive industry can innovate rapidly and be more responsible as a global citizen,” and is deeply experienced in building American auto businesses in Asia. Earlier this month, the company raised a $76 million bringing its equity funding to about $200 million, sparking IPO rumors.

Murtaugh previously worked as chairman and chief executive officer of GM China. Over a decade, he grew GM’s presence there from fifteen employees in its Shanghai operations to 15,000 employees throughout the country, increasing the unit’s revenue from $300 million to more than $7 billion. In brief, Murtaugh discussed CODA’s plans in Asia, and how he will leverage his experience on behalf of the younger car company:

“We have a joint venture with one of the three largest battery manufacturers in China [Lishen Power Battery of Tianjin, China, whose principal shareholder is CNOOC, or China National Offshore Oil Company]. The joint venture is called LIO [Energy Systems]. They will manufacture the battery systems for [our] vehicles. We also have contract assembly agreements to assemble the [battery packs]…

A vast majority of CODA manufacturing will be in China. That fits nicely with experiences I’ve had [there] for the last 15 years. I understand China’s manufacturers and culture. My experience will help us deal with those situations. We’re going to introduce our vehicle into China’s domestic market as well as in the U.S.”

Through its battery system joint venture, currently CODA is a large-scale producer of power battery systems for the transportation and utility industries. Murtaugh touched upon CODA’s retail sales outlook for its vehicles in the U.S., as well.

“We haven’t announced our plans. But what I can tell you is this…We won’t start our retail sales through a traditional dealer network. It will involve setting up company-owned sales outlets. They will be in high visibility areas with lots of [foot] traffic where people will be able to walk in or make an appointment [online] to test drive vehicles. [Customers will be able to] configure their vehicles, and place orders online. This will be a no-haggle buying experience. That’s shown to be very, very successful with other [car] brands.”

With Murtaugh’s appointment, Miles L. Rubin, CODA’s founder and co-chairman becomes a chairman emeritus, remains a company director and the company’s largest shareholder. Heller, CODA Holdings interim CEO and a co-chairman, will move into the role of executive chairman.

Facebook has officially announced that it has just raised $1.5 billion in funding at a $50 billion valuation, according to a release issued today (we’ve embedded the release below).

As stated in the release, the investment was broken into two parts. Goldman Sachs participated in the first round (via an offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund), which totaled $1 billion. In December, DST and Goldman separately invested another $500 million into the social network. Both rounds gave Facebook a $50 billion valuation, says the company. This brings Facebook’s total funding to a staggering $2.336 billion.

It’s interesting to note that Facebook didn’t take the full $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs in the first part of the investment. As stated in the release:

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

One has to wonder if the fact that Goldman excluded U.S. investors from the round had to do with Facebook not raising the full $1.5 billion (which would push the total investment to a whopping $2 billion).

Another interesting tidbit from the release is this: Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

Clearly, it looks like Facebook plans to IPO no later than April 2012.

So what will Facebook do with this massive amount of cash? The company says it has no set plans but vaguely stated that it will be “investing to build and expand its operations.”

The Goldman investment was first reported by New York Times’ Dealbook.

So much for that slow Friday news day.

Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion

Facebook Receives $1 Billion from Goldman Sachs Overseas Offering; Digital Sky Technologies and Goldman Sachs Also Recently Made $500 Million Direct Investment

Investment Values Facebook at $50 Billion

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook today announced it has raised U.S.$1.5 billion at a valuation of approximately $50 billion.

The transaction consisted of two parts. Today, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock. In December, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and funds managed by Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook Class A common stock at the same valuation.

“Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing,” said David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer. “With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead.”

The investment generated a significant number of questions from interested parties and Facebook has addressed the most common ones below.

Why did Facebook raise this money?

DST and Goldman Sachs approached Facebook to express their interest in making an investment, and Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholders.

Why did Facebook choose to raise $1 billion in the overseas offering?

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

What are Facebook’s plans for the proceeds of this transaction?

There are no immediate plans for these funds. Facebook will continue investing to build and expand its operations.

Does this investment mean that Facebook will have more than 500 shareholders?

Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

MyNines, an aggregator of private sales sites, is relaunching today with a number of new features and a more streamlined user experience.

Launched in March of 2010, MyNines aims to help consumers sort through the daily flash sales sites. MyNines aggregates products from various online sample sale sites and allows shoppers to find them all in one location. Users can search and filter by designer, category, highest discounts, as well as deals ending soonest, most viewed items, deals under $100, and newly listed. MyNines currently aggregates from over 80 sites, including eBay’s Fashion Vault.

With the relaunch, MyNines has rolled out a complete redesign of the site and a new feature called “Boutiques,” which includes sets of products from various sample sale sites curated by stylists, fashion bloggers and celebrities (this is very similar to Google’s Boutiques.com).

One of the most useful additions to MyNines is the sample sales calendar, which will aggregate the sale events from pretty much every sample into a calendar format to see which designers are featuring their sales on flash sale sites each day. You can also subscribe to the Sample Sales Calendar via Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple iCal and you can set sale reminders for specific sales and MyNines will email you when those sales start.

While MyNines does aggregate actual products from a massive number of flash sales sites, some of the biggest players in the space, like Gilt Groupe, have not signed in to be included in the site’s feeds (although Gilt’s sales are included in the Sample Sale Calendar). The site’s founder, Apar Kothari, seems optimistic, however; that eventually all private sales sites will sign on to give MyNines a feed of their daily sales. Kothari adds that MyNines will soon start rolling out more personalized shopping features and will suggest certain sales and items to members based on what sales they click on.

PopJam CEO Alex Tew, the guy behind the internet phenomenon Million Dollar Homepage, has now gone the opposite extreme. Along with developer Ben Dowling, he has created Do Nothing For 2 Minutes, a site whose purpose is pretty self-explanatory.

While MDH was a celebration in online excess, DNF2M is a zen treatise on computing and a challenge. Can you sit in front of your computer and not touch your mouse or keyboard for a measly two minutes? It’s actually not as easy as it sounds, especially if you work in a web-intensive field.

Says Tew on the inspiration behind the site, which brought in 20,000 uniques 8 hours after launch.

“I had been thinking how we spend every waking minute of the day with access to an unlimited supply of information, to the point of information overload. i also read somewhere that there is evidence that our brains are being re-wired by the internet, because we get a little dopamine kick every time we check our e-mail or Twitter or Facebook and there’s a new update. So we’re all developing a bit of ADD. which is probably not great in terms of being productive.”

Tew also holds that the key difference in the way we interact online between when he built MDH in 2005 is that the “viral has gone viral” (infinite loop!), “Ideas spread even faster because of social media. Whereas before, the distribution power lay more with the news media and blogs back in 2005. If I had done MDH today, I might have made $1m in 4 weeks rather than 4 months.”

CrunchBase Information

Alex Tew

Information provided by CrunchBase