After celebrating its 30th anniversary earlier this year, the Webby Awards is making it easier for winners, nominees and other honored individuals to make sure they’re properly credited for their work.
The IMDB-like Global Webby Credits Registry allows creators, developers, producers, writers and actors to claim verified profiles documenting their contributions. Though the Webbys have long included these names at the bottom of project pages, the profiles bring together a career’s worth of recognized work regardless of whether the people behind these projects move between different companies.
“The people behind great creative work on the internet have never been harder to find, and they’ve never mattered more,” Webby Group executive director Jesse Feister said in a statement. “The Global Webby Credits Registry puts 30 years of Webby recognition in the hands of the more than 150,000 individuals who earned it, and the thousands who will earn it in the years ahead, giving them verified credentials to build reputation in the AI era.”
As AI becomes a bigger tool in both the discovery of information and the generation of creative work, the Webbys argue these verified credits provide a better way to ensure people are recognized for what they’ve made.
“AI is changing how we discover information, including information about people and their work. Search results are increasingly summarized by AI, and as the technology evolves, we expect more of the ways people discover and evaluate creative professionals to be mediated by AI tools,” Feister tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That makes credible, independent records of people’s work more important than ever. A credit on an award-winning project is a meaningful professional credential, but only if that credit is documented somewhere it can be found and trusted. And as AI makes it easier than ever to produce creative work, having a credible record of what you’ve actually contributed to becomes more important, too.”
A number of Webby-recognized individuals, like Shonda Rhimes and Adam Scott, have already published their own verified profiles as founding members. The launch of the Webbys’ credits platform is also being supported by companies that have won Webbys in the past, including PBS, iHeartMedia and R/GA.
“Behind every great PBS digital experience is a team of talented people bringing our mission to life,” PBS’ vice president, multiplatform marketing and content, Amy Wigler, said in a statement. “The Webby Credits Registry gives those individuals recognition that stays with them throughout their careers. We’re excited to help celebrate their contributions and make their work more visible.”
To claim a profile, eligible individuals can search the Webby Credits database for projects they contributed to, claim the credits associated with their work, verify their identity through LinkedIn and publish their profile. As new work is recognized, the people behind those projects can claim their credits as well.
