Conceived by Sawhorse Media, a Brooklyn-based start-up company, the awards allowed Twitter users to vote for their favorites in 26 categories.
In the news category, users liked BreakingNewsOn, a 20-year-old Dutch man's creation, which delivers a surprisingly thorough list of breaking news alerts from around the world.
Michael van Poppel's BNO, as it's known, aggregates information from other news outlets and relies on its own staff, including volunteers, to gather and confirm news flashes. Van Poppel declined, by e-mail, to talk much about himself but said that one day the site hoped to generate revenue, perhaps from advertising or mainstream media subscribers.
Names from big media -- including "Meet the Press" host David Gregory, CNN's Rick Sanchez and Slate political writer John Dickerson -- have made a second home on Twitter with their posts.
Another new/old media face, Ana Marie Cox, took second in the Shorty Awards voting for top political journalists. The 36-year-old journalist gained acclaim as Washington-based blogger Wonkette, then moved to Time magazine for much of the presidential race.
Back to her netroots, Cox posts with almost pathological regularity on Twitter as @anamariecox or, during live events, as @amclive.
By turns snarky, savvy and coquettish, she covered President Obama's White House briefing last week like the bad girl in the back of the class. Cox poked fun at the fur vest worn by venerable correspondent Helen Thomas, grasped at unintended sexual entendre, caught Obama dissing his vice president ("Joe's been under the bus so many times," Cox wrote, "he's actually licensed to repair it at this point") and dinged the president for responding to questions with non-responses.
The fate of the nation may not have been advanced, but Cox's 45 tweets provided a nice insurgent voice inside what can be an overly somber Washington set piece.
That doesn't mean Twitter can't provide access to weightier information, said Susannah Fox, who co-wrote the Pew Research Center's recent report on the huge growth of status-update services.
Fox, for example, finds many tips about conferences and journal articles on another research topic -- the effect of technology on healthcare -- from one of her favorite Twitterers.
That's the key here. As in many corners of the Web, you need to find people who share your interests and don't waste (too much of) your time.
Others clearly are finding something worth reading. The site, with less than 1 million unique monthly visitors in January 2008, had about 6 million as of last month, according to the tracking service compete.com.
So I guess Twitter, along with my dog, will remain part of my daily routine. The only daunting downside -- as so often happens with new media: You only get back as much as you put in.
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james.rainey@latimes.com
Times staff writer Andrew Nystrom contributed to this column.
