Sure, the Academy Awards are swell. Each year, there are about 600 movies and 24 award categories (or almost 40, if you count the technical categories, too). Those are great odds compared to the pool available for the Twitties, the first annual awards for the best tweets in Twitter.
The Twitties are the first annual awards for top tweets.
If the IDs for Twitter status messages are to be believed, the leading microblogging service has racked up almost 870 million tweets since it was created two years ago. As Twitter has grown from 200,000 members to 2 million in a single year, there are now over three million messages being piped through the system each day. By the time the second annual Twitties rolls around, there will be over a billion new candidates for a handful of awards.
There are fourteen categories for this first Twitties nomination period, which ends on August 30:
- Best Tweet—Which Tweet takes the cake?
- Funniest Tweet—Which Tweet makes your sides split?
- Smartest Tweet—Which Tweet flew right over your head?
- Best Avatar—Which avatar beats the rest?
- Most Informative Tweet—Which Tweet informed you better than Matt Lauer?
- Best Use of Twitter to Break News—Which Tweet kept you most up to date?
- Best Putdown—Which Tweet would make your mama proud?
- Snarkiest Tweet—Which Tweet is razor sharp?
- Dopiest Tweet—Which Tweet gives new meaning to moronic?
- Best Use of Twitter for Business—Which Tweet has the most business savvy?
- Best Use of Twitter for Journalism—Which Tweet belongs in the New York Times?
- Best Use of Twitter by Media—Which Tweet is the most media friendly?
- Best Flirtation—Which Tweet makes you blush?
- Best Straight Man—Which Tweet is the best comedic backboard?
A list of infamous tweets was recently compiled by Inside CRM. You won’t find any of my nominations on that list—I drew from the 79 favorites I have starred since joining Twitter in early March 2007, and the oldest one of those dates back only to last February. Some of the categories above don’t fit my favorite tweets, but here are the best ones from my personal information stream.
“ 134-Year-Old Man Attributes Longevity To Typographical Error http://twurl.nl/rpde2m”
(The Onion)“I now own Jesus band-aids.”
(Darren Brockes)“Twhepherd = The Twitter employee that finds and restores lost followers to your twaggle. ”
(Tweet Crunch)“is embracing her inner FailWhale.”
(Fluff T. Bunny)“The fact that people are COMPLAINING about the WATCHMEN trailer proves that Internet=most efficient pure disgruntlement engine in history.”
(hodgman)“flatbush ave=yet another bklyn street named by random compound word generator.”
(hodgman)“‘cakey: Can you build websites with firefox? imarock: can you build cars with roads?'”
(Brooks Guthrie)“Realizing that ‘goddamn elves’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it as ‘fucking elves.'”
(hodgman)“The friendly dirt has salts and nutrients magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride. And pH of 8. You could grow asparagus, say scientists.”
(MarsPhoenix)“retweet: @der_mo showed me twitter knows Unicode: â–† â–… â–„ â–ƒ â–‚ â– â–‚ â–ƒ â–„ â–… â–† â–‡ â–ˆ â–‡ â–† â–… â–„ â–ƒ â–‚ â– â–‚ â–ƒ ”
(JeffClark)“Q: ababaaabbaaabbaabbbbbaaabababaab A: long time no ‘C'”
(shveta aneja)“OH: ‘How do you spell required, because the paper doesn’t correct me like the computer.'”
(Amy Makice)“Monroe declared disaster area”
(Mark Bell)“How does Rick Astley promote a concert schedule? As a Prairie Home Companion gig? http://tinyurl.com/5ml8ze”
(Kevin Makice)“Our government only breaks international law to take lives, but never to save them.”
(Noah)“I don’t want to be this fly on the wall: http://tinyurl.com/59hbt9”
(Amy Makice)“Sometimes, twitter is that friend you turn to in class when everyone’s being a moron, just to say, ‘really? Really?!'”
(katrina_)
NOTE: I tried to nominate this one, but the Twitties didn’t like the underscore in the username“What do you mean, my birth certificate expired?”
(ankitkhare)“i think that from now on, when i get cold calls from random marketing people, i will just act like i am drunk. ”
(Jenn Hileman)“I read somewhere recently that cinnamon can help prevent fatigue. I put a lot in my coffee this morning. I think it’s bullshit.”
(Adam Williams)“The word ‘webinar’ can never be scrubbed from my brain.”
(Kelly Prill)“‘Flocked’ – when your twitterific catches up after being off for a while and your screen is covered with growl updates.”
(change02)
Voting will begin on September 1 and run through the end of that month. Winners will be announced on October 1, 2008.
Which are your favorite tweets of the year?