Twitterific Tweeters Awarded At Shorty Awards

[All photos by Nick McGlynn for Random Night Out] The second annual Shorty Awards, hosted by CNN anchor Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn), were held yesterday evening in TheTimesCenter at the New York Times Tower.

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With an overwhelming amount of Twitter users these days, it's hard to point out tweeters who use Twitter as tool, rather than a tweet-for-all way of finding free booze, or instant gossip info (which isn't always an awful thing)!

The Shorty Awards (@shortyawards) does it for the twittersphere, by finding the "best people and organizations on Twitter."  The awards, or how twitter celebrates itself in 140 characters or less, are for the Twitter community, by the Twitter community.

In order to nominate an individual for a Shorty Award, all tweeters had to do was send a tweet as such: "I nominate @TwitterUser for a Shorty Award in #category because..." Easy enough, right?

Finalists were named in February, and winners were chosen in 26 categories based on the combination of the Twitter popular vote and judging by the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences.

The Shorty Awards' goal, created by Sawhorse Media and made possible by the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is to honor "the best creators of short-form, real time content."

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Sesame Street's Grover, and Brazilian pop-star Ivete Sangalo took home awards for their twitterfic accomplishments.

The CEO of Sawhorse Media, Gregory Galant, had this to say with regard to the awards:

"The Shorty Award winners show that you can make a big impact with few characters."

Winner within the "Government" category, Newark Mayor Cory Booker (@corybooker), was awarded for using Twitter as means of communication for timely snow removal.

Mayor Cory Brooker

Grover accepts a Shorty Award on behalf of Sesame Street.