On November 19th 2009, at The Paley Center for Media’s International Council Event, ThinkSocial will be recognizing three outstanding examples of innovation, featuring – an individual, an initiative and a collaboration between institutions, which together represent powerful models for how social media can be used to address global problems.

Background to the Awards:

Over the past year the new communications platforms and applications collectively known as social media have taken center stage in the United States and the world’s democratic discourse and civic life. Much as the rise of broadcast media transformed our public, political, cultural and social institutions and practices – the use of social media is creating new turning points across a wide range of human activity.

Now is a perfect time to recognize and encourage those individuals, initiatives, and institutions which are demonstrating truly innovative and courageous leadership in the use of social media for public purposes.

Through this website we have already begun to highlight important social media work through interviews with leaders such as Craig Newmark and Jimmy Wales and though case studies of initiatives such as charity: water on our fast growing blog site www.think-social.org ; and we have hosted events and created rich media around conversations with leaders such as Jacquelyn Novogratz of the Acumen Fund.