Coming top of the category from over 3000 nominees,
Sherlockology won the Shorty Award for The Best Fansite in Social
Media on March 26 2012.
The Shorty Awards are designed to honour the very
best of social media on the internet, recognising those that
produce real time short form content across the full range of
platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, and
Foursquare. The awards are initially voted for by a public vote
using Twitter, with the six highest ranked nominees going through
to become the finalists in their category. Those final six are then
put before a panel of expert judges, and the final winner is then
chosen.
After winning the vox populi public vote on February
23rd and narrowing the category to the final six
nominees, we were contacted to check our availability to attend the
Shorty Awards in person in New York City. After some rather hurried
booking of flights and hotels, half of Team Sherlockology jumped on
a plane on the last weekend of March and found themselves staying
in a hotel just off of Times Square.
The awards themselves started at 19:30 Eastern
Daylight Time, which translated to 00:30 in the morning in the UK,
and were hosted by The Daily Show's Samantha Bee and Jason Jones.
So while half of the Team fought jetlag in The Times Center, the
others were watching via the provided live stream in the small
hours of the morning. Thankfully, eighteen minutes into the awards
the Fansite category was called, and Sherlockology won! Restricted
to a pre-prepared speech lasting no more than 140 characters, the
only choice was to dedicate the award to those that had gotten us
there - the fans of BBC Sherlock - and to make our first ever
proclamation of the rally cry that has swept the internet and
indeed the world since the conclusion of The Reichenbach Fall:
We'd like to say A HUGE THANK YOU to all our
followers for their support. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for
you guys #BelieveInSherlock
The speech wasn't the only thing we had gone to New
York prepared with. Two unique t-shirt designs were put together by
our talented designer, both gender specific and featuring
quotations based on the series.
Then it was off to the after awards party, where the
Team indulged in a spot of networking and met up with the other
winners, notably including the team from BBC America who won the
Shorty Industry Award for Best Brand Presence on Tumblr for Doctor
Who.
All in all, winning an award for our work less than a
year since Sherlockology started up was a surprising and rewarding
experience. It can be never overstated how thankful the Team
remains to the incredible fans of the show for putting us there. As
we almost prophetically stated at the end of 2011:
'While this may sound self-indulgent, we'd prefer
to think of it as a rule for everyone - if you have an idea, even a
small one, it can lead to some crazy and extremely unexpected
places. '
