You have to respect a bunch of rocket scientists who can explain things in 140-character bursts.
For the second year in a row, NASA won a Shorty award Monday night -- the equivalent of the Oscar in the social media world. “We're sharing the universe 1 tweet at a time. Be inspired!" the space agency tweeted to its more than 3 million followers on Twitter.
The award in the government category was one of more than five dozen Shorty awards handed out at the Times Center in New York. Hosted by actress Felicia Day, the ceremony also featured opening remarks by Mayor New York Michael Bloomberg via video who said, “SRY I can’t be there IRL.”
Special guests invited to present the awards this year include tech-savvy model Coco Rocha, comedian Hannibal Buress, Chris Hardwick from AMC’s "The Talking Dead" and more.
Anyone on Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, Facebook, and Tumblr can be nominated for a Shorty. The Twitter community selects six finalists in each award category, and a panel of experts and celebrity judges choose the winners. This is the fifth year for the awards.
This year, the popular blog Texts from Hillary won Micro Blog of the Year on Tumblr. Selena Gomez received the Celebrity Fashion award and tied with Tara Strong, a Canadian actress best known for her voice-over work, including the voice for Bubbles from Cartoon Network’s "Power Puff Girls," for best actress.
The Science Shorty Award had two winners: ASAP Science and Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut and commander of the International Space Station (ISS). Hadfield delivered his acceptance speech via video inside the ISS while orbiting in space.
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Other big winners included Brazilian comedian Rafinha Bastos, who has more than 5.4 million followers on Twitter.
George Takei received the Distinguished Achievement in Internet Culture Award. Jimmy Kimmel won the Lifetime Achievement Award, which requires “staying power, personalities that remain interesting and funny in our fickle internet era." Previous winners of this award include Ricky Gervais and Conan O’Brien.
Logan West, the Connecticut-native Miss Teen USA presented the first-ever Keep Good Going Award that honors those who use social media to inspire others to stay focused on the positive in life. “Those nominated in this category include upbeat bloggers, energetic entrepreneurs and parents of young performers who live actively and share good with others.” The winner of this award was Kathy Zucker, Founder of Metro Moms Network.
Here is a video produced by the Shorty Awards where Felicia Day learned the value of having more than a million Twitter followers in New York City:
