The Official Shorty Awards Blog

Moving Into the Public Eye As #YouTubeStar: Curtis Paradis

Today, celebrities emerge right from their own homes by uploading videos to YouTube and receiving millions of hits! The #YouTubeStar Shorty Award, presented by @AETV’s Breakout Kings, honored Curtis Paradis (@CurtisParadis) from “The Curtis Paradis Show” for building a viral social media presence on multiple social platforms.

Best known for his “Sims 3” videos, a game that has become second nature to Curtis, this #YouTubeStar encourages people to engage virtually in YouTube communities. He reflects, “I went through a lot of hard times in my life and I want to say that it does get better, and I want to encourage anyone to start doing what I am doing.  Become part of Youtube or any other website on the internet and be yourself.  Because if you become yourself and express yourself, you will feel better about yourself”.

Curtis’s success establishing a strong online presence and following surrounding “The Curtis Paradis Show” is why we are proud to honor him with the Shorty Award for #YouTubeStar.

Category Profile: #YouTubeStar

There are a TON of YouTube celebrities, but here is the cream of the crop: The #YouTubeStar Shorty Award, created in partnership with A&E’s Breakout Kings, will be awarded to a YouTube star and breakout celebrity whose unorthodox and innovative use of Twitter, Facebook and social media has allowed them to become famous and take their careers to the next level. Here’s a rundown of the finalists!

Paolo Feliciano (@kimpoyfeliciano) Nineteen-year-old Paolo Feliciano lives in New Zealand, and dances, sings—anything to get the hits coming. But they do come! Feliciano gets hundreds of thousands of views on his numerous YouTube videos.

Jamich (@ilovejamich) Jamvhille Sebastian and Paolinne Michelle Liggayu are two pretty people from the Philippines who make long videos about love and heartbreak as Jamich. They get a lot of views, and their fanbase thinks of them as the best among the YouTube stars!

Peyton Sanders (@TheRealPSanders) YouTube rap is a funny genre—quality is variable, there’s an eternal scramble for eardrums and eyeballs, and on the end of the weird spectrum is the looming spectre of a Based God. But seventeen-year-old Peyton Sanders is an Atlanta rapper who’s attracted a large following based on his earnest lyrics and melodic beats. Kid’s got potential, and he’s already got fans.

Julie Anne San Jose (@MyJaps) Seventeen-year-old Julie Anne San Jose hails from the Philippines, and gained Internet fame via her impressive series of pop covers. But don’t start assuming she’s just another of the thousands of “Rolling In The Deep” cover artists on YouTube. (Well, she is. But she’s really good!) Julie Anne San Jose racks up millions of views, and things are looking up for her career. 

Justin Bieber (@JustinBieber) Come on, it’s Justin Bieber. Y’know, “Baby?” The Biebz? The hair? The shrieking mass of fandom and pure social media energy that follows the 18 year-old Canadian pop star wherever he goes? The man—boy no longer, for he is a man—is a Tumblr deity, a Twitter lord, a GIFable machine. King of the internets, prince of pop. 

Curtis Paradis (@CurtisParadis) Small-town Manitoba teen Curtis Paradis is known for his sixteen-minute gameplay videos in The Sims 3 that rack up 50,000 views each. (Ponder that for a second.) He scores popularity with an attention to detail and a flair for gab. Paradis’ knowledge of gaming and his vibrant personality seals the deal.

We are hosting a live Twitter chat with Malcolm Goodwin of A&E’s #BreakoutKings this Sunday at 8:30pm EST!

The A&E original series #BreakoutKings returns for its second season this Sunday at 10 PM EST. 

The @ShortyAwards will host an exclusive live chat on Twitter with one of the cast members, Malcolm Goodwin! Malcolm plays Shea Daniels, a former gang kingpinwho understands the mind of a criminal.

We’ll be accepting questions that are tweeted @ShortyAwards with #BreakoutKings at the end from now until 7:45pm EST this Sunday. The chat will start at 8:30pm EST and Malcolm will answer questions from @AETV that we will tweet out first until 9pm EST, an hour before the premiere.

Breakout Kings tells the story of two US Marshals rejecting protocol and using former criminals to catch current ones by forming a special task force composed of the three most elusive convicts ever captured. Season two premiers this Sunday, March 4th!

Help Shorty Award finalist Justin Bieber break a Guinness World Record!

There’s this pop star named Justin Bieber—you may have heard of him. The Biebs scored tens of thousands of nominations in the Shorty Awards, and is a finalist in a whopping threecategories: @AETV #BreakoutKing’s #YouTubeStar, @BIO’s #Celebrity, and #Music. He’s turning 18 today, and the good folks over at JustinBieberMusic.com are trying to see if they can use his massive amount of social media pull to break a Guinness World Record for most social media messages sent in a single day.

He has over 40 million Facebook likes, 2.3 billion YouTube views, and nearly 18 million followers—if you’re one of them, go to http://www.happybirthdayjustinbieber.com/ and RSVP to help Justin break his birthday record. The record is around 209,000 messages. We think he could do this.

Tune in to see who the winners of the Shorty Awards are via our live stream on March 26th! Or buy tickets at shorty4.eventbrite.com, early bird deadline is tomorrow.

Only a few days left to nominate your favorite #BreakoutCelebrity

Have you nominated your favorite YouTube star using #BreakoutCelebrity yet?

Created in partnership with A&E’s Breakout Kings (premiering Sunday, March 4th), this award will go to a YouTube star whose unorthodox and innovative use of Twitter, Facebook and social media has allowed them to become famous and take their careers to the next level.

We know you spend most of your days, weeks and months surfing the inter-web and stumbling upon YouTube videos, leading to more YouTube videos… and more…

And we also know that once in a while a gem is found, a #YouTubeStar whose wit, charm and overwhelming ability to keep us procrastinating on our work grabs us by the heart and compels us to hit “subscribe”. These are the chosen ones, the ones you should nominate for a Shorty Award.

Nominate now by tweeting with #YouTubeStar or #BreakoutCelebrity, presented by @AETV’s Breakout Kings.