The first Shorty Awards ceremony was held on February 11, 2009, at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, New York.
[1] The event was hosted by CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and featured appearances by prominent Twitter users MC Hammer and Gary Vaynerchuk and a video appearance by Shaquille O'Neal.
[4][5] The Shorty Awards were created in 2008 by tech entrepreneurs Greg Galant, Adam Varga, and Lee Semel of Sawhorse Media.
[7] Winners were chosen by more than 30,000 Twitter users during the voting period.
[4] The founders of Twitter first heard about the awards after the contest had gotten underway and expressed support for it.