The Changes

Change Everything keeps on astonishing me.

First, it was the amazing clothing drive for the homeless of Vancouver's downtown east side that self-organized on the site during a late 2006 cold snap.

Then it was the saga of EnviroWoman, a Change Everything member who decided to forego plastic for a year and blogged about it on the site. It made it to the big time, even garnering a mention on The Guardian's UK web site.

And now Change Everything is a finalist for the social networking Webby, one of the most prestigious Internet awards out there. Its competition: huge communities like Bebo and, oh yes, a little site you may have heard of named Facebook.

Exactly what is going on here? What puts a 3,000-member community into the same league as a 70-million-member behemoth like Facebook?

I've been talking about it with Alex. And here are five reasons we think Change Everything should win that Webby:

1. It's a community committed to social change. As someone who scours the Internet Movie Database obsessively, I'm the last person to complain that so much of the web is devoted to the trivial and inconsequential. But when a site weighs in with a substantive mission and becomes a real success, it encourages others to follow suit, pursuing real-world results – and for those of us convinced of the social web's potential as a tool for social change, that's powerful stuff.

ChangeEverything is eligible to win a Webby People’s Voice Award - which is where you come in. Sure, Facebook is a huge social network that everyone’s heard of - but why read status updates when you can change the world with your community involvement and blogging?

A little while ago I nominated our online community ChangeEverything.ca for the 2008 Webby Awards - the Internet Industry's most respected symbol of success (kind of like the Academy Awards for the internet). Last week I got word that we have been selected as one of 5 finalists in our category (social networking).

This is a huge honour and a very big deal. The other four nominees in our category are some of the biggest developments in social networking of the last year or two (Facebook for example)

The two awards we are up for are considered the most sought after awards in the Internet Industry with over 10,000 entries from over 60 countries being submitted this year alone. The list of judges who selected us as a finalist and will select the winner include

ChangeEverything.ca has been named as one of the 'Official Honorees' in the 11th Annual Webby Awards. Of the more than 8,000 entries submitted to the 11th Annual Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an 'Official Honoree'. This honour signifies an outstanding caliber of work. This is a huge and very exciting for us!

"As a result of the superior quantity and quality of sites entered, the 11th Annual Webby Awards recognized sites and teams that demonstrated a standard of excellence."

check out all of the 'official honorees'