(Updated to reflect that Pawluxury came in No. 1 in Business)
As a journalist for more than a dozen years, I’ve always appreciated a good headline. In fact, it’s an art form. Few people have the talent to take content and create “context” with a clever headline. But when it’s done correctly, it can draw readers in by the millions. Fark, the news aggregation site for funny content, has been promoting this art form for the last decade. Hence, it’s booming traffic. In fact, the site’s been on Jeopardy as a category twice in the past several years.
Now, Twitter has also taken short-form speak to a broad audience. While Twitter hasn’t been a category on Jeopardy, it does have its own Awards ceremony. It’s called: The Shorty Awards.
It’s designed to honor those whose Tweets can impact or influence topics and issues that fall into such categories like business, advertising, apps, education, finance, food and humor.
Last night, 26 winners were celebrated for their Tweets, but mostly for their ability to get the most votes. Impressively, more than 50,000 votes were cast! The winners were offered $1,000 grants to travel to New York to attend the ceremony. The event also drew MC Hammer, famous musician, co-founder of DanceJam and prolific Twitterer with more than 55,000 followers.
Now, anyone who’s watched Awards ceremonies know that often the acceptance speeches can get drawn out, particularly if a winner uses the opportunity to wax poetic about some political cause.
The Shorty Awards, however, limits acceptance speeches to 140-character speeches!
To this end, the Shorty Awards makes the acceptance speeches something worth listening to. While I didn’t attend the event, I can imagine that the the speeches were more important than those who received them.
The Shorty Awards was brought to you by Sawhorse Media production.
Here are some of the winners. Look, Guy Kawasaki, Internet pundit, and Twitter-holic, was nominated in the business category. But as he said, “I came in second next to a dog.” Pawluxury came in No. 1, beating out Kawasaki.
And, here’s the Twitter thread on the event.
