What Are Your Favorite Photos and Videos of 2009? #openwebawards

Credit:

The growth of multimedia content continues apace on the web, and 2009 is a year in which we saw Flickr's 4 billionth photo and YouTube reach an astonishing 1 billion video views per day. The combined number of views for September's top 10 most watched web series topped 93 million -- and that's just 10 of the thousands of web series from amateur and increasingly professional sources alike.

From dancing babies to fails to Facebook songs, YouTube keeps us entertained. It's also an agent for social change, a great tool for business, for journalists, and even for the U.S. President.

This year saw the Google-owned video site pass the 120 million viewer mark in the U.S., play a role in documenting the Iran election crisis, and increasingly court professional content from television shows to movies to major label music artists. It's been working on better monetizing its videos and giving back to video publishers, with revenue sharing and exposure boosts for Promoted Videos. And it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

In the realm of photos, Flickr still reigns as one of the most popular social destinations for sharing images online. This year it added Twitter integration, launched a great iPhone app, added people tagging and launched a cool new galleries feature. We're glad to see one of the classic pioneer services that ushered in the age of the social web still growing and innovating. And there's easily room enough for its deep data and tagging photo storage model alongside popular Twitter photo-sharing site Twitpic's more quick and on-the-fly approach to image sharing on the web.

The continued growth of web series this year has also been remarkable. From shows like The Guild going into their third season and continuing a major sponsorship deal with Microsoft and Sprint, to amateur DIY phenomenons like Auto-Tune the News debuting to viral popularity, to major media outlets jumping into the game with their own original series, it's never been a better time to be an online video producer -- or audience!

Vote for your favorites

Credit:

We'd like to know your choices for Best Flickr Photographer, Best YouTube Channel or Personality, Funniest YouTube Channel, YouTube Video of the Year, Best Online Video Web Series, Flickr Photo of the Year, and TwitPic of the Year in this year's Open Web Awards.

The nominating process is simple, just visit the Open Web Awards site, sign in with Twitter or Facebook, and tell us your favorites. Nominations will remain open until 11:59 PM, ET on Sunday, November 15th.