For all you Twitter haters, get your eyes in the roll position because it’s “Twitter Oscars” season!
Oh yeah, they give an award for that.
Several, actually.
The “Shorty Awards,”as they’re officially called, give out awards for excellence in the 140-character art in more than two dozen categories, including: Advertising, apps, celebrity, finance, food, government, humor, innovation, music, news, politics, sports, tech, travel and weird.
Last year’s winners include “Peggy Olson,”a person who Tweets in character as the crazy secretary-turned-copywriter on the hit show “Mad Men,” in the advertising category and Phil Pearlman in the finance category for his “stocktwits” blog.
This year, Jason “I Wear Your Shirt” Sadler, the guy who defied the recession by creating his own job as a professional T-shirt wearer, is giving Peggy a run for her money in the advertising category. He’s currently in the top six and was even leading the category a few days ago.
That’s right, this little guy with a chest and a dream is taking on the big ad guys.
“It just goes to show you the power of building a tuned-in community,” Sadler said.
Perhaps a sign that the economy has turned: Whole Foods(aka, whole paycheck) is leading the branding category with its fresh, organic tweets, along with Marvel Entertainment, that bastion of caped crusaders who defeat evil. And Suze “Girlfriend, you know you can’t afford that!” Ormanis currently leading the finance category.
There have been some suggestions that Haiti, Iran and other global events that saw Twitter used for matters more substantive than Britney Spears’ undergarments in 2009, may help Twitter gain more credibility with the over-140-character set.
But a quick glance at the nominees shows much of the competition remains a high-school popularity contest, complete with trash talking among contestants and accusations of robo-votes. (“The Ad men are losing to a T-shirt & his tricksters,” martini-swigging nominee FrankAdman wrote a few days ago on his Twitter page, referring to Sadler and his new T-shirt wearing employee, Evan White.)
In some strange way, the bickering is comforting: It’s a sure sign that the crisis is passing and things are getting back to normal.
Nominations end at midnight tonight, so you still have time to nominate your pithy friends for their outstanding achievement in brevity.
The awards will be held March 3 at the Times Square Center in New York. And, unlike those other Oscars, there won’t be any need play them off with epic music and a wideshot — all speeches are strictly limited to 140 characters.
Questions? Comments? Write toponyblog@cnbc.com.
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