'Honouring the best producers of short (140 characters or less) real-time content', the shorty awards - now in their second year - were set up to pay tribute to the individuals and organisations who, over the past year, have used Twitter with excellence.  With nominations open since the start of January, the deadline to have your say in any of the 26 official categories is February, when each category will then be reduced to just five finalists.  The final process will see a combination of the popular vote and members of the 'Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences' decide on overall winners.

Categories

With over 1400 community-created categories - including green, gaming and fashion - the 26 official categories are as follows:

apps	culturalinstitution	weird	small business	apps	innovation

How it Works

Winners of the Shorty Awards are part of the Twitter community, voted for by the Twitter community.

Nominations can be done via the official Shorty Awards site, Twitter or any Twitter client and must be sent in one of the following formats:

• Full version: I nominate @TwitterUser for a Shorty Award in #category because... (add reason here).
• Shorter version: #shortyawards @username #category (add quick reason here)

Although voters can nominate as many people and categories as they like, they must only vote for one person and one category per tweet.

For the full voting rules, visit the Shorty Awards site.

Winners of each category will be invited to the awards ceremony in NYC in March, where acceptance speeches will again be no greater than 140 characters.   For a taste of the 2008 awards, have a watch of its highlights:


The Shorty Awards on February 11, 2009 from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.