Move Over Oscars Here Come The Shorties.....

By Debbie Mitchell

The Shorties are coming! The Shorties are coming!  The  4th Annual Shorty Awards is tonight and the best of the best in social media will be on hand to honour the winners.

I only found out about the Shorty Awards, fondly known as the Shorties last October.  So now it's on my award show radar. Now I know the online award is a pretty big deal in the world of social media, so big, the New York Times once called it “The Oscars” of Twitter. 


Since everybody loves a good award show my first thought was the Shorties could be a fun television show!  Since social media and traditional media are slowly coming together, what better way to introduce social media to the television masses than with a social media awards show. We could have  celebrities, red carpet fashion and best of all acceptance speeches that are limited to 140 characters! A sure fire way to get any long winded winner on and off the stage in record time.

Samantha Bee and Jason Jones , "The Daily Show"

This years Shorty Awards hosts include Samantha Bee (@iamsambee) and Jason Jones (@jonesinforjason) of The Daily Show who will be joined by guest presenters like “White Collar” star Tiffany Thiessen (@TAThiessen), Miss USA Alyssa Campanella (@MissUSA), best-selling author of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World Don Tapscott (@dtapscott), “The Daily Show” Correspondent  Aasif Mandvi (@aasif), and “Chef Roblé & Co.” star Chef Roblé Ali (@ChefRoble).

As in the past  special video appearances are a part of the show.  Last year Shorty Lifetime Achievement award winner Conan O’Brien accepted his win on tape. This year the award show welcomes  a video appearance from “Piers Morgan Tonight” host Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) and a live musical performance from viral-video mavens The Gregory Brothers (@gregorybrothers) and a few more surprise guests.

The goal of the annual award ceremony is to create a global effort to engage hundreds of thousands of Twitter users to identify the best people and organizations on social media. In January voting opened and folks were encouraged to nominate their favorite content creator in an existing category or create a new category for them. When all the tweets were counted there were over 1.5 million tweet-nominations this year. That's a lot of tweeting!

Once the nominees are selected in the individual categories, judges in The Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Science  are instrumental in choosing the winners from the Shorty Awards finalists. 

Sree Sreenivasan

Judges are  leaders in technology, journalism, business and culture and includes Dean of Student affairs for Columbia Journalism School and CNET Tech Columnist Professor Sree Sreenivasan,  Apple Co-Founder Steve “The Woz” Wozniak, actor, writer and executive producer Nick Cannon, actor Charlie Sheen, musician/entrepreneur M.C. Hammer, Foursquare co-founder and CEO, Dennis Crowley, Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark, , actress and philanthropist Alyssa Milano and Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales to name a few.

Steve “The Woz” Wozniak

Produced by Sawhorse media the online ceremony airs  via live stream at from 7:30pm EST to 9:30pm EST.  This year the live ceremony returns to the Times Center at The New York Times Tower in New York City.   For more information about the ceremony, including ticket information, event details and accommodations, please visit here. Check it out!

TV/Social Media Producer Debbie Mitchell is an Emmy nominated producer who is a member of the Producers Guild of America (PGA).  If you are a personality interested in television placement or connecting with brands follow Debbie Mitchell @TVProducerDeb or email Ready4Airtv@gmail.com .