And the 'Oscar of Twitter' goes to: Renê, a slum boy from Rio

Considered by "New York Times" as the "Oscars" of Twitter, the Shorty Awards believes that the Brazilians are amongst the best users of the microblog Twitter. 


This year, there were many Brazilians taking the "awards" home,  Marina Silva (Green Party), former senator for the State of Acre, won the "politics category"; Rene Santos Silva, who reported the conflicts between drug traffickers and police in the Complexo do Alemão slum, won the "Innovation category", and the twitter account  "Lei Seca" written by the advertising executive Edu Trevisan, telling what happens in the city of Rio de Janeiro, was the winner in the  "news category".


But the best moment was when it was announced that Rene Silva Santos, the 17 year-old Carioca (from Rio de Janeiro) had won the Twitter Shorty Awards on the "Innovation category" for his tweets reporting in real time, via Twitter,  the police occupation in one of the most dangerous slums in Rio, the "Complexo do Alemão" slum, in November 2010. 


Renê was one of the winners of the "Twitter Shorty Awards", he was in São Paulo in October to participate at the event "Infinite Think Google", where he was a guest speaker, when he was told that he had won the award.

Today Renê is the "editor-in-chief" of Voz da Comunidade, the twitter account where he narrates the daily activities of the people from Complexo do Alemão Slum, and he has been raising funds to start publishing a hard-copy of the community newspaper and has disclosed during Google Event that they are releasing 5 thousand copies (colour) next April, which will consolidate Rene's role in the information and news reporting  stage within the community.   For the future, Renê wishes to go to College and do a degree in journalism.  

Renê Santos Silva: "I published the news before the traditional media did"

To follow Rene on twitter, click here.
To watch the awards ceremony, visit the official page at http://shortyawards.com/

If you wish to learn more about the Police operations in taking over slums from drug traffickers, watch this space as we are going to publish a special article and interview about this theme.

The video below shows scenes of the Police Operation on the day Renê Silva started sending his tweets.

This week, Rocinha Slum and the Police Occupation were in the news worldwide. If you wish to learn more this slum, visit the dedicated pages:

Wikipedia entry with details of how Rocinha started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocinha
The Official page of the Community: http://www.rocinha.org/