Last week, one of our babies, HootSuite, won a prestigious Canadian New Media Award for Best Social Media Application — exactly one year and two days after we launched. We were up against some stiff competition: a collaboration between Rip: A Remix Manifesto and Open Source Cinema which allowed users to edit and remix the now famous NFB film, and KWAD9 and their interactive content portal for French Canadian youth.

Two days later, ReadWriteWeb declared HootSuite as one of the Top 10 International Products of 2009. HootSuite received recognition as a “Twitter app [that] does it all.” Prior to this, ReadWriteWeb named HootSuite as one of their Top 10 apps for small business success.

HootSuite is also a finalist in Mashable’s Open Web Awards for the category of Best Twitter App. We are thrilled with the support we have received from the tech world, and we encourage you to continue voting for HootSuite.

Thank you to fans of Invoke and to the HootSuite community for your recognition, your continued feedback, and inspiring our vision to create the best social media dashboard possible.

Yesterday evening, the partners at Invoke accepted the award for best application for Hootsuite (@hootsuite) at the 1st Annual Shorty Awards. More than 50, 000 public nominations and votes were tweeted to determine the winners. Hootsuite was one of the 26 winners of the evening (a full list can be viewed here).

The awards ceremony was streamed live last night from the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. You can still check out Hootsuite’s 140 character acceptance speech here (it’s around the 1:25:45 mark).

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn) hosted the awards ceremony. Our hometown boys David Tedman (@d1337), Dario Meli (@quikness) and Ryan Holmes (@invoker) spent the evening chatting and mingling with the Twitterati, and doing their thing, from backstage to the press room.

The guys hung out with MC Hammer @MCHammer (who apparently was a big fan of Dario’s hat), Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee, and @Greenmoms, the green women bloggers.

They had the chance to speak with @Matman, the extraterrestrial of WellcomeMat, and @bettydraper, The Real Mrs. Donald Draper.

Big thanks to everyone who participated!

Posted by Jenn Lowther

The winners for the annual Advertising Age Davey awards have just been announced. Invoke was nominated for 3 awards and won 2 for the memelabs Wells Fargo Someday Stories campaign. Invoke won Silver in the Branded Content: Video/Films/Movie category and Silver in the Not-for-profit category. This award follows up the New Media BC’s People’s Choice 2008 Popvox Award for Best User Generated Content or Crowdsourced Content Site for memelabs that Invoke won this past April.

The Wells Fargo Someday Stories Campaign launched in May 2008, as an essay based contest generating over 10,000 submissions from across the United States. The theme of the essay was to share their ‘Someday Story’ – how they would use the $100,000. The campaign has been a phenomenal success with over 10,000 entrants, over 90,000 votes cast for the finalists, and over 500,000 unique page views.

The 5 finalist stories from the over 10,000 submitted were chosen by a panel of judges: Danny from Colorado wants to be physiotherapist; Erin from Arizona wants to open a used bookstore; Evelyn from MA wants to help her daughters magazine expand; Mary From Colorado wants to help her Mom open a hospice; and Tiffany from Nevada wants to become a doctor. Each of the 5 finalist have already won $10,000 to help get their dream started.

In conjunction with the 5 finalists, the contest also supported 3 charities that were chosen by Wells Fargo. During the run of the campaign, when people voted for their favorite video submission, they also got to choose from one of the three charities. The charities that were selected were the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Junior Achievement, and Habitat for Humanity. The first place charity will receive $250,000, second place will receive $150,000 and third place will receive $50,000.

The campaign is in the final stages of voting with the winners being declared on November 17th. In total, Wells Fargo will be giving away $550,000.

Invoke is extremely proud to win this modest award, especially due to the nature of the campaign. We love? supporting non-profits and you can expect many exciting projects similar to this to be announced in the future.

Posted by Jenn Lowther

Last week was an absolutely crazy busy week in Vancouver for Social Media and technology. The week started off with TechVibe’s Startup Career Fair and ended with the PopVox People’s Choice Awards – with VIGS/Vidfest Opening Ceremony, Launch Party 4, Cossette Convergence 2008, and VidFest in between. I will have a post on these events soon, but I want to tell everyone about our exciting news from the Awards.

Invoke was nominated for the New Media BC’s People’s Choice 2008 Award for Best User Generated Content or Crowdsourced Content Site for memelabs.com. Nadia and I had an incredible time at the Awards Ceremony and Gala. We were extremely honoured to be nominated for this award and ecstatic that we won.

Photo Credit: Dustin Sacks SillySoft Games

Invoke was up against some excellent competition and want to congratulate the following teams for the excellent work they have done. We were honoured to be competing against you.

• BussPass: Travels in Urbanity
• Changeeverything.ca
• Dare to be Digital: The Online Learning Challenge
• NowPublic.com
• Planetwide Media: Speed Racer Comic Book
• Protagonize: Story Writing Community
• Strutta
• Zeros 2 Heros: The Peoples Publisher

Invoke would also like to congratulate all of the other nominees and winners at the awards.

• Best Digital Animated Short: PSYOP, for Coca-Cola “Happiness Factory, the Movieâ€?
• Best Digital VFX: Ubisoft, for Assassin’s Creed
• Best Game (Console/PC): Metanet Software and Slick Entertainment, for N+ on Xbox 360 / XBLA
• Best Game (Casual): Acronym Games, for Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
• Best Mobile (Game): The Saints, for NavBall
• Best Mobile (Application): CellMap Inc, for CellMap
• Best Digital Campaign: Rainmaker Entertainment and Zeros2Heroes Media, for A ReBoot ReLaunch
• Best Digital Score: Clicktoy Interactive Inc., for The Meadow
• Best Do-Gooder site (Social Change Initiative): smashLAB, for DesignCanChange.org
• Homegrown Award (Best BC-based Venture): smashLAB, for MakeFive.com

The evening was a smashing success and is an event Nadia and I will remember for quite some time.