To celebrate, Wetpaint to host inaugural Golden Paint Can Awards to honor the best sites in the Wetpaint network

July 9, 2008 -- Wetpaint, the leader in social publishing, today announced it has surpassed a significant milestone: over one million free social websites have been started on the Wetpaint platform. Since the company's June 2006 launch, Wetpaint users in 177 countries have created nearly eight million pages of socially published content on subjects ranging from Scottish football to the 2008 United States elections to Anatomy 101 and more. The one-millionth site on the network was started by a soon-to-be 50-year-old organizing his destination birthday celebration with family and friends in Key West, Florida. Sites such as this are representative of the more than 2,500 sites created daily on the Wetpaint network. Free of charge and with best-in-class editing features and social networking capabilities, Wetpaint has discovered the formula to inspire and empower everyday Internet users to publish together online -- to the tune of over half a billion collective contributions.

"The one-million site milestone is just the starting point for Wetpaint and the social publishing trend," said Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. "The way people use websites is changing. More every day, they want to interact on the websites they visit, creating, collecting, and organizing content online. We're honored that overwhelmingly they choose Wetpaint to do so."

The 2008 Golden Paint Can Awards:
To commemorate the one-million site milestone and celebrate the best websites and contributors across the Wetpaint network, Wetpaint is also announcing the first annual "Golden Paint Can Awards". The awards features a roundup of the 70 best sites nominated across 15 categories, including "Heart & Soul -- Best Cause Site," "Mating, Dating & Relating -- Best Romance Site," and "Weird and Wonderful -- Best Site That Defies Description."

Wetpaint will determine award winners in three ways: judge's choice, community voting, and statistical data. Participating judges include Sam Decker of Bazaarvoice, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, Matt Harding of wherethehellismatt.com, Lee LeFever of CommonCraft, the editorial staff of BuddyTV, and other notable online personalities. Voting begins today and concludes at midnight EDT on Tuesday, July 22, 2008. Wetpaint will announce winners the next day, Wednesday, July 23.
To view the Golden Paint Can Awards website and vote for your favorite Wetpaint sites, visit http://goldenpaintcanawards.wetpaint.com. To create your own free Wetpaint website, visit www.wetpaint.com.