By Rob Starr, Content Manager, Big4.com

A Toronto-based company which has created the world’s largest community for readers and writers, has been awarded the 2012 Innovator of the Year Award. Co-founded by Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen, Wattpad provides a free way for people to read fiction and share creative writing on any type of web and mobile device.

Wattpad has grown to 10 million unique users in 2012, who spend about 2.4 billion minutes per month on average with the service (70% from mobile devices), with 8 million stories shared. “We saw an opportunity to fundamentally re-invent the way the publishing industry has traditionally worked, making it easier to share and exchange content between storywriters and readers,” says Allen Lau, Co-founder of Wattpad.

Runners up for the Innovator of the Year Award include Brossard, Quebec-based Acquisio, an online provider of Performance Media Platform, which marketers can use to buy, track, manage and report on media across all channels through a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Toronto-based Infusion was also a runner-up. The company’s Personif platform is a cloud-based video solution that takes video streaming to the next level and allows companies to develop and provide unique marketing content through co-generated and interactive experiences with its customers