Arabnet Arabnet

If you’re walking through Madison Avenue, a mile away from Times Square, you’ll never be able to pinpoint Twitter’s NYC headquarters (Tilt six floors up). Well, here exactly, Twitter hosted the first ever “Vine Journalism Awards” organized by Muck Rack,  a social platform for journalists and media personnel based in NYC, on Wednesday October 2^nd.

Vine, a six-second looping video sharing mobile app owned by Twitter, is being frequently used by news agencies, comedians, advertisers, and companies.

The invitation-only-event, which was attended by around 100 media personnel and Vine enthusiasts, focused mainly on journalists and storytellers, according to Greg Galant, CEO of Muck Rack, who talked to ArabNet after the event.

Six winners spanning four categories were announced, as follows (click on the vines to play them):

Behind the Scenes for Daniel Wein:

Inspirational for Zoe Fox:

Sports for Christian Lindner:

Breaking News (3 winners):

Omar Villafranca

Doug Lorman

NowThis News

The number of revines and likes played a role in the selection process by a duo of independent judges. Two of the winning Vines were shot through a TV screen, and not on-site. “There was a debate about that,” commented Greg.

Earlier in the evening, Meagan Cignoli, an NYC photographer who amassed around 375,000 followers on Vine, shared with the audience some #VineTips. Next was Mark Luckie, Manager of Journalism and News at Twitter, who advised broadcasters and media personnel on how to shine on Vine. “Give a tour to users where they can't go [behind-the-scenes],” remarked Mark.

Mark placed the concept ahead of the technique and stressed on the importance of interactivity with the audience. “If you're doing social media but you're doing the media part only, you miss all the social interactions.”

A new Twitter media blog was announced during the event.

Some of the attendees responded by vining, and others by tweeting:

Thank you #vinetips for helping me grow! #vineawards Twitter, Muck Rack https://t.co/FCFxZW0eaZ

— evergreenest (@evergreenest) October 3, 2013

I wasn't convinced @vineapp could be useful to journalists, but @muckrack has me thinking outside the box. #vinetips#vineawards

— Sabrina H (@_SabrinaHerrera) October 2, 2013

The atmosphere was #awesome with Vine microcelebrities sipping a free flow of Twitter draught beer, and snacking on leafy green Vine twizzlers, while vining along the way:

“The 6^th annual Shorty Awards [organized by Muck Rack as well] will include a wider array of Vine users, most notably comedians”, concluded Greg.

Vine, launched in January 2013, had 40+ million users as of August. And while some question the feasibility of telling a news story in 6 seconds, others hail the upcoming “new age of journalism”.

Here are some exclusive pictures from the event:

* The homepage image is courtesy of Muck Rack .