Twitties Contest

Can brilliance be achieved in 140 characters or less? Behold the Twitties, an inaugural award honoring the best one-liners from Twitter.com, a Web site where "Twitterers" text or blog the minutiae of their daily lives in super-short "Tweets."

Winners of the contest, sponsored by Philadelphia consulting firm iFractal, will get nothin' but bragging rights. Still, Twitties judges received more than 1,200 nominations, which they pared down to 60 finalists -- five in 12 categories.

Twitter might have first appealed to the "Gossip Girl" demographic ("i'm in chem lab now. lol."), but the two-year-old site now draws a diverse group of subscribers from NASA officials to minor cult celebs.

Voting for the Twitties is open until today at Twitties.com. Here's a look at three of the front-runners -- based on 1,500 votes so far -- and what inspired their Tweets:

Category: Best Breaking News/Journalism/Media Tweet

The Nominated Tweet: "Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, WATER ICE on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!"

The Twitterer: MarsPhoenix, known in real life as Veronica McGregor, the manager of news services for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Tweet Origin: McGregor, a mom of two teenagers, has been Twittering the activities of the Phoenix Mars Lander (from the anthropomorphic perspective of the spacecraft) since it landed in May. MarsPhoenix acquired so many followers that McGregor has also begun Twittering as Mars rovers and a Saturn mission. Deliciously dorky.

Her Chances: Nice use of "w00t," but CNN's entry in this category is brilliant in brevity: "Space station's lone toilet is broken."

Category: Best Tweet (the marquee contest)

The Tweet: "I am totally serious. My Ob/Gyn was IN my vagina, and an earthquake started rattling the room!"

The Twitterer: MissRFTC, known in real life as Verdell Wilson, a communications officer for Warner Bros.