Lockerz founder Kathy Savitt accepts her "Flashie" at the third annual TechFlash Newsmaker Awards at EMP Thursday night. (Photo by Stephen Brashear)

More photos from TechFlash Flashies event

Kathy Savitt, a former Amazon.com public-relations executive who started her own company and raised $36 million this year, narrowly beat her former boss, Jeff Bezos, to win TechFlash Newsmaker of the Year for 2011.

Readers of TechFlash.com chose Savitt, who has spent years in both the retail and tech industries, for some clear reasons — namely, how she took her new company, Lockerz, and made headlines everywhere from local blogs to The New York Times to Wired UK. They picked her over a crowd of big names that included Paul Allen and Nathan Myhrvold, in addition to Bezos.

Savitt and other winners in the 2011 TechFlash Newsmaker Awards, or Flashies, were honored Thursday night at the EMP Sky Church, at the Seattle Center.

Bezos, not to be outdone, was a force behind the other big award of the night: Story of the Year. The release of the Kindle Fire took that category after making news with the popularity of the new tablet device and the implications it has raised for industries including publishing and filmmaking.

The Savitt win was more surprising, given that many people have likely not even heard of her startup yet.

Lockerz, a social networking and commerce website, rewards users for watching videos, sharing photos and viewing what their friends have shared, then lets them spend those rewards on everything from clothing to concert tickets. It’s aimed at “Generation Z” — largely teenagers.

The young company has not only raked in cash from notable venture capitalists such as Silicon Valley’s Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. It has attracted investment from concert promoter Live Nation and struck a deal this year with EMI Music, one of the nation’s largest recording companies, to feature EMI’s music videos, recorded live performances, and interviews.

Sir Mix-a-Lot, presenting Best App of the Year at The Flashies, can't believe his own "Baby Got Back" app didn't nab a nomination.

Savitt, a Cornell University graduate, started her first company, the MWW/Savitt public-relations firm, in the 1990s, before she turned 30. After selling the business, she joined Amazon, where she worked for four years before leaving to become chief marketing officer at American Eagle Outfitters. She founded Lockerz in 2009 and has raised some $66 million for the company.

Here is a complete list of 2011 Flashies winners, as voted by TechFlash readers:

Tech Platform of the Year: Windows Phone Mango, the smartphone operating system.

Venture Capital Deal of the Year: Financing of $21 million for Bainbridge Island-based Avalara, which makes software for managing sales-tax collections.

Mobile App of the Year: Group Health Mobile, a smartphone app for patients, co-developed with Slalom Consulting, of Seattle.

Newcomer of the Year: ChoozOn, a Bellevue-based deals website.

Big Deal of the Year: Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype for $8.5 billion.

Gaming Development of the Year: ZipLine, a Mercer Island mobile-game company, raising more than $1 million and naming a former Microsoft Game Studios executive to its board.

Todd Hooper of Zipline celebrates the Flashie for Gaming Development of the Year. (Photo by Stephen Brashear)

“Philanthroville” Do-Gooder of the Year (sponsored by the United Way of King County): R2integrated, an internet marketing and technology firm that participated in United Way’s Annual Day of Giving and also had one employee donate more than $1,000.

Newsmaker of the Year: Kathy Savitt of Lockerz.

Innovation of the Year: UW researchers’ use of the “FoldIt” online game to help solve a mystery in the AIDS-research world.

Youth of the Year: A team from Interlake High School and the International School in Bellevue (also known as WASABI Robotics), which won an international robotics competition featuring 10,000 middle school, high school and university teams from 16 countries.

Story of the Year: Amazon.com’s release of the Kindle Fire.

Thanks to sponsors BDO, r2integrated, Seattle University, and United Way for helping make this year’s Flashies awards program possible.