Did You Vote in the Shorty Awards?
by Bill Ives
This is another “it had to happen but the apocalypse must be near” moment. I learned about the Shorty Awards that honors the best producers of short (140 characters or less, on Twitter) content in 2008. There are many categories (e.g., sports, news, food, personal photography weird). Mari Smith, who writes the Why Facebook blog, was pushing her candidacy and urging her readers to vote for her. It is too late for the initial tally as the initial round of voting ended midnight December 31. Had I known I would have voted for our own Paula Thornton.
However, as TechCrunch writes the “five Tweeters with the most nominations in each category will take part in a final round between January 5th and 14th. An awards ceremony will be held in New York in late January, where the winners of the “most important categories” (the site doesn’t say what qualifies as important) will be able to deliver acceptance speeches in person or via video in 140 characters or less.”
How do they say this with a straight face? What is next? Perhaps the Oscars should adopt this principle to avoid overly long acceptance speeches, as our attention spans get shorter. At least they need to have a speech that can be summarized on Twitter
