The first ever YouTube Music Awards were held over the weekend in New York City. The internet and real world combined as Google had the live event streamed through YouTube, and the winners were selected solely by the viewers. Shares, likes, retweets, comments, views, +1s, the whole kit-and-caboodle of social sharing and liking mechanisms equated to votes for the nominees in each category.

Nominations were not limited to the usual suspects, as internet superstars emerged from behind the computer screen for this event which celebrate ‘the stage for everyone,’ YouTube. This first of its kind event was the first truly mobile awards show, as no TV was necessary and you could cast your votes through a few taps on your smartphone.

At the peak, approximately 200,000 viewers tuned into the show and the numbers dropped as the event went on obviously, not the typical massive numbers of broadcasted events such as the MTV Music Awards. At times the stream froze/lagged and the unscripted nature of the event wasn’t well received by everyone, though it seemed to attempt to resemble the organized chaos that we know and love in YouTube. We give kudos to Google for trying something different, per usual, in the pretty well defined award show space. The interactivity of it all generated a lot of buzz, and it will be interesting to see what is changed and finessed for next year’s event.