A year ago, Picnik had a little over a million monthly visits. Last week, we had one million visits in one day. Exceeding all our wildest expectations, our 1400% increase in traffic this year translates to 25% more happy Picnikers each and every month!

Since this time last year, we launched the Free side of Picnik with our ad-supported features, professional printing services through our partners at Qoop, professional fonts from FontShop, added the Picnik Basket with the Layering, multi-file uploading, and collage capabilities, Collages and Fancy Collage, a whole slew of fabulously popular touch-up tools like Shine-Be-Gone and Eye Color, the Sandbox tab’s Pixelbender effects, launched with Adobe Flash 10, teamed up with new API partners like Myspace, SmugMug and Photobox, integrated Paypal into our payment options, plus new Effects like Panography, Puzzle, and Advanced Editing tools like Curves, Levels, and the Clone tool.

But it wasn’t just a lot of traffic and releases! The year was happily punctuated with awards and award shows and press mentions and publications! In June we won the Stevie Award and Webby Award, and were listed as one of TIME Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2008 and Facebook for Dummies‘ 10 greatest Facebook apps. In July we were mentioned in Macworld and were International Design Magazine’s 54th Annual Design Review “Best In Show” for the Interactive category! In August we were an OMMA Awards Finalist, September brought the 2008 Web Marketing Association’s Web Award, October the TIS 100 and W3 Silver Award, and November the Pixel Award for the Geek Category.

Not too shabby!

Picnik has won the Third Annual Pixel Awards in the Geek Category! Out of thousands of submissions from industry leaders, and five semi-finalists chosen by judges, we won this award because you voted for us! Thank you!

Thrillingly, this award represents our introduction to the wonderful world of swag, because we’re getting presents with our prize! We are so Hollywood.

We’d also like to congratulate Featured Picniker #2 Vinci Galang, whose picture “non colpevole” the Pixel awards folks decided to feature as a sample of Picniked awesomeness.

We were thrilled to hear last night that we’ve taken first place in the graphics category of the first annual Industry Standard Innovation 100 Awards! Along with such winners as Hulu, Mint, Kongregate, and Etsy, winning the TIS 100 award means we were nominated and then voted for by the community: readers, users, founders and executives from across the technology industry, and we’d like to thank all of you!

And today we heard we also won a silver medal in the W3 Award for the “Best Structure and Navigation for a Web Site”! Awesome.

And although it’s not an award as such (that is, it won’t be adding to the hardware on Jonathan’s filing cabinet), we’re thrilled to see Picnik included in Smashing Magazine’s list of Creative User Interfaces in Modern Web Design, “observing the finer aspects of creative and appealing user interface design”, and says:

From the smooth registration form (observe how password and email confirmation fields are hidden until you need them, reducing the perception of complexity) to the actual “in-the-basket” look and feel of this Flash application, Picnik is a joy to use inside and out.

We’ve got another award coming to adorn that trophy case we still really need to get (walking by Jonathan’s filing cabinet these days is like taking your life into your own hands), this time from the Web Marketing Association, presenting us with a 2008 WebAward for “outstanding achievement in website development” and Best Photography Website! Hurrah! Quoting from the judges’ comments:

“Not only does the application work better than expected and certainly as well as promised, the overall site design is pleasant, well laid out, and thoughtful. Everything was easy to find, easy to read, and simple to use… Having judged many web sites this year I have not run across any I like more than this and that do what a web site should do better. Even the other two sites that I gave a 10 to are not this good. I am afraid the bar has just been raised on layout, design, and functionality…well done!”

And that’s not all! Last week we got a lovely trophy from Horizon Interactive, awarding us the bronze medal for best use of Flash.

And that’s not all! We had our biggest weekend ever this past weekend! We never get tired of hearing ourselves say that. Thanks to everyone for the recognition and thanks for using Picnik!

Our solid gold (not really but it’s heavy enough to be) Stevie Award was delivered today, swathed in black satin. Presented to Jonathan in New York last week and then shipped to us to save his back, it’s now standing next to our 2007 Macworld Editor’s Choice (aka “Eddy”) statue on Jonathan’s filing cabinet. What with the Eddy, being an official honoree of the Webby Award this year, now Stevie, and even being included in TIME magazine’s list of the 50 Best Websites of 2008, we’re really beginning to need a trophy case in here.

Our intrepid Jonathan set off for the East Coast on Wednesday, and early on his agenda was a little meet-and-greet at the Marriot Marquis Hotel in the heart of Times Square… for the 6th Annual American Business Awards!

The ABAs, or the “Stevies”, were presented in over 40 categories, with over 2,600 submissions from companies of all shapes and sizes, and Team Picnik won *our* Stevie Award for Overall Design. So once again, back pats all ’round!

Team Picnik members have been sitting a little straighter at our desks this week, because we won the 2008 Interactive Media Award! Yes, we’re “Best in Class” in the photography category. Back pats all ’round.