2011 Shorty Awards Recap (In slightly more than 140 Characters)

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How can it be that Twitter, a company founded just five years ago, already has a glitzy award show in its honor, complete with step-and-repeats, celebrities and 140-character acceptance speeches? Oh, probably because it’s Twitter we’re talking about – the San Francisco-based company that has changed the media landscape, counts its registered users in the hundreds of millions and barely has enough server capacity to keep up with the millions of tweets sent out daily (read: fail whale). So, to honor this new media cultural behemoth, Sawhorse Media founded the Shorty Awards, which honors the “best producers of real-time content.” I attended the third annual Shorty Awards this past Monday night at the fantastic TimesCenter to get an idea of what this show, and all the #buzz, was about.

I went to the show with – to be completely honest – pretty high expectations: the show was to be hosted by Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi and feature presenters Kiefer Sutherland (aka JACK MOTHER EFFING BAUER), Jerry Stiller (Toy Story’s Mr. Potato Head), Miss USA and Miss Teen USA (like OMGZ), Jim Gaffigan (hot pocket joker), and CNN’s Ali Velshi (please answer my pitches, Mr. Velshi). In addition to the plethora of randomly assorted celebs, I came to the show after reading the New York Times’ review of the previous year’s show deeming it the “Oscars of Twitter.” This was guaranteed to be fun, and ridiculous.

Fun and ridiculous it was. From the start, Mandvi had me in stitches poking fun at the preposterous, yet very real award show. “Thank you very much for inviting me here to host the most irrelevant award show of the year,” Mandvi quipped opening the show. Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Stiller and Jack Bauer (ahem, I mean Keifer Sutherland) were all amazing to watch, but what really caught me was the sheer number of awards passed out.

A multitude of “Shortys” were passed out in 30 official categories ranging from best celebrity on Twitter (went to Neil Patrick Harris) to best television Twitter to best nurse on Twitter (an award sponsored by Showtime promoting the new season of the hit Nurse Jackie). Additionally, for the first time this year, the Shortys passed out industry awards including best marketing campaign on Twitter (Southern fried chicken chain Chick-fil-a won, much to the amusement of aforementioned food-enthusiast comedian Jim Gaffigan) and best integration of traditional and new media (Text 100 client MTV won that one!).

A definite highlight of the night was Conan O’Brien’s personally made acceptance video for the Lifetime Achievement Award. O’Brien has been on Twitter just over a year – certainly a “lifetime” in new media. You can watch his hilarious full acceptance speech here and the full 2011 show on the Shorty Awards’ YouTube Page.

While it has achieved a meteoric rise and gained the notice of Hollywood and international press and notoriety, I don’t think we’ll ever see the show evolve into a four-hour long, stuffy snooze fest like the Oscars. But that’s the way the Shorty Award producers want it – fun, lax and, above all, short.

Check out what MTV Twitter Jockey Gabi Gregg (@MTVTJ) had to say about the show in the video below. What do you all think about the show? Ridiculous or relevant?

Oh, and follow me (@kbturner) and nominate me next year for, I don’t know, being awesome, so I can keep going. I love a good show and free drinks!