As the popularity of social media and short-form messages grow, it’s only appropriate that awards season includes what is being dubbed the ‘Oscars of Twitter.’ The second annual Shorty Awards will be held March 3 at TheTimesCenter in The New York Times Building. The awards are sponsored by the Knight Foundation.

The Shorty Awards honor the best producers of short real-time content on Twitter, who are nominated by users in 27 official categories and new crowd-sourced ones. The newly created Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences help select winners from groups of finalists. The academy is comprised of leaders in technology, journalism, business and culture and actress Alyssa Milano (@alyssa_milano), New York Times technology columnist David Pogue (@pogue), entertainer MC Hammer (@mchammer) and Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibarügen (@Ibarügen), among others.

Here’s a peek at some of the front-runners in a finance, food and government categories:

Nominations began earlier this month and end Friday, January 29, 2010 at 11:59:59 pm Pacific time. If you’re already on Twitter, you can nominate and vote for your favorite users by using the voting box at http://shortyawards.com/.