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Congratulations, NASA! Your Twitter Won A Shorty Award For Social Media

It Came From Outer Space

Look at our little NASA, all grown up. Now they’re tweeting regularly and winning awards for it! A Shorty Award for best governmental use of social media to be exact. 

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The awards were announced this past Monday. If you aren’t familiar, for the last four years, the Shorty Awards have applauded the best uses of social media whether on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, or YouTube. Conan O’Brien, Sesame Street’s Grover, Suze Orman, Neil Patrick Harris are all winners but the awards go to more than just celebrities or individuals.

“The nomination for NASA’s official Twitter account, @NASA, cited the space agency’s efforts to get people — especially kids — interested in science,” according to Space.com. “The award is NASA’s third Shorty overall. The space agency won one in 2009 for its use of Twitter during the Mars Phoenix Lander mission, which found water ice just beneath the dirt near the Red Planet’s north pole. Further, astronaut Doug Wheelock won the Real Time Photo of the Year Shorty in 2011 for his ‘Moon from Space’ snapshot.”

NASA has over two million followers (and counting) on Twitter and often hold “Tweetups” where users can attend events alongside engineers, scientists and astronauts.

“The Obama administration has placed a high priority on openness and on-line communications, and @NASA is honored to be recognized for its social media efforts with a Shorty Award,” David Weaver, NASA’s associate administrator for communications, said in a statement. “We are inspired by the social media community and their passion for sharing our compelling story of reaching for new heights and keeping America the world leader in space exploration.”

Also, we must point this out. The Hubble Telescope congratulated NASA on the award.

AWWW! Hubble is such a great buddy.

(via Space.com, image by Paul E. Alers)

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Author
Jill Pantozzi
Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."

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