Live from the Netsquared conference in San Jose, CA: 21 non-profit finalists are competing to win $50,000 in prize money for the most innovative use of social media for social good.

Here’s an interesting one:

Tom from Knowmore.org, which gives ratings for corporations and organizations based on their social responsibility

My take: Beautiful. The underlying technology is cool: Wikimedia-powered database of companies’ and organizations’ social responsibility levels. That means everyday citizens are esponsible for writing the articles. Knowmore’s staff translates those articles into a ranking.

But the Firefox extension could take it to the next level. Just like Compete.com gives you an at-a-glance ranking (however flawed) of a given website’s traffic, this Firefox extension could instantly help you decide whether you want to patronize a given company. Example: You’re Googling snow shoes to purchase. You can instantly choose between a company that’s socially responsible and one that’s not. Could be game-changing. Not only be empowering consumers, but also for shaming offending companies into cleaning up their act.