Mashable, the social media news blog covering cool new websites and social networks has launched its 3rd annual Open Web Awards: Social Media Edition where some of the most followed, famous or entertaining leaders and companies in the social media space can get recognized for their hard work and innovative thinking.

The Open Web Awards are Mashable’s international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology and achievements in social media. Nominating is once per day, per category with a midnight PST reset (ie: each day you can nominate selections once for each of the categories).

Nominations opened October 14, 2009 and will run until November 15, 2009. There are over 40 nomination categories which fall under the heading of; Brand/Startup/Company/Agency, Facebook specific, Media, Mobile, People, Photos and Video and Twitter specific.

There will only be one voting round this year as opposed to previous years. The voting round will begin on November 18, 2009 and will continue until December 13, 2009. Only the top five nominations with the highest number of votes will advance into the voting round.

Along with partner MOTOBLUR, the contest website allows participants to vote for their favourites through a simple application using Twitter profiles and will automatically update your personal feed to announce who you have voted for.

The process is quite simple and fun to watch as it produces a news feed showing the latest nominations. To vote you can click the link: http://mashable.com/owa/categories. The more times you vote the better your odds. Winners will be announced on December 15, 2009 and I hope to see our name on that list.