Congratulations to Michael Berger and Nanowerk;s Nanotechnology News for being in the running for a Shorty Award. It’s still possible to nominate (vote) for the website through to Feb. 17, 2012.  Here’s a brief description of the Shorty awards (from the Rules page on the Shorty Awards website),

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media, by recognizing the people and organizations producing real-time short form content on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Foursquare, and the rest of the social Web.

There are specific rules,

How to Make Nominations

• To make a nomination, fill out the nomination form at ShortyAwards.com or send a tweet like this: I nominate @TwitterUser for a Shorty Award in #category because… [must add reason here].
• You can also tweet shorter nominations like this: #shortyawards @username #category [must add reason here].
• Be as creative with the reason. A tweet without a reason for the nomination will not be counted.
• The nomination must be relevant to the category.
• Vote for as many different people as you want, in as many categories as you want, as often as you want.
• Only one nominee and one category per tweet.
• Voting for the same person in the same category more than once simply replaces the text of your original vote; it does not count as an additional vote.
• You can vote in any of the featured categories or create a community category. If a community category becomes popular and has enough compelling finalists, it could become a featured category.
• Nominees and potential nominees (everyone on earth) are welcome to campaign and encourage friends to vote for them. Nominees are encouraged to take the Shorty Interview and embed campaign videos to help both voters and members of the Academy get to know them.
• If you change your Twitter username, any votes you received under your old user name won’t carry over.
• Nominees can delete any nomination received by logging into the Shorty Awards profile page and clicking the “delete” link next to that nomination.
• Nominations in certain Special Awards categories may have special instructions. Read each Special Award page to find out how to make nominations in one of those categories. Please note that there may also be exceptions to the rules for certain featured categories that supercede the general Shorty Awards rules.
• The Shorty Awards use several algorithms to automatically disqualify nomination activity that appears to be intended to game the system. We also perform periodic audits to check if our system is being gamed. Contact us if you see any suspicious activity.
• Nominators must be active Twitter users prior to the start of the competition. Votes originating from new Twitter accounts or accounts used mainly for Shorty Awards voting will automatically be disqualified and will not count toward the rankings.
• We reserve the right to disqualify nominees that do any of the following: violate trademarks, infringe copyrights, impersonate others (except in the #fakeaccount  category, where this is encouraged), invade privacy, make threats of violence, promote illegal activities, promote pornography, spam others, use bots, scripts or other automated means for voting, engage in abusive behavior, promise anything of value in exchange for a nomination, or otherwise violate the friendly spirit of the awards.

This is the 4th annual event for the Shorty Awards and they do seem to have made a splash (from the About page),

“Hollywood has the Oscars. Broadway has the Tonys. Now Twitter has the… Shorty Awards” [New York Times]

I was a little curious as to who (awkward grammar choice, eh?) is hosting/promoting these awards (from the About page),

The Shorty Awards are produced by Sawhorse Media, a New York technology startup. Our sites include the leading destination for journalists on Twitter and social media, Muck Rack, the brand new Muck Rack Pro tools for communications professionals looking to connect with journalists on social media, and the directory of Twitter people and lists Listorious.

It’s a classic public relations ploy to promote your company, create an award and competition. It’s hard work so bravo to the Sawhorse Media folks for being successful with this.

Good luck to Michael Berger and Nanowerk!