OUT + ABOUT
RECAP THE FIRST ANNUAL
SOCIAL MEDIA
AWARDS
APRIL 29, 2013
#BeirutGoesDigital Hosted by Lebanese television personality, Pierrette Katrib, at the Phoenicia Hotel, the Online Collaborative revealed who the Lebanese online community considers the most engaging among celebrities, diplomats, bloggers, tweeps and brands across 33 categories. The award ceremony was attended by H.E. Tom Fletcher, British Ambassador to Lebanon and H.E. Alistair Burt, British Minister to the Middle East as well as former Minister Ziad Baroud. Celebrity Haifa Wehbe surprised her followers on social media by attending the event to accept her award. This awards ceremony came as a culmination of the three preceding phases of the Social Media Awards - Online Nominations, Judging Panel Finalists Selection and Voting Phase, whereby the final decision was based 50 percent on the online community’s vote and 50 percent on the vote of the panel judges. Following over 100,000 votes by the online community over a period of a month of intense and creative campaigning by all finalists, the award winners were revealed in a surprise-filled evening accompanied by performances from Lebanon’s most socially active performing artists, Poly and Hiba Kadri. “When we decided to undertake the challenge of this large-scale event, our aim was to empower the users of social media in Lebanon,” said Mohammad Hijazi, Chief Collaborator and Founder of the On-
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line Collaborative. “Online Collaborative, in general, aims to promote the proper use of technology and social media to Lebanese society through courses, workshops, seminars, conferences and other events. Through the SMAs we wanted to promote the users of social media who are investing their time and energy on meaningful content across different social media channels and shed light on their achievements to ‘offline’ society.” The halls were filled with over 600 bloggers, journalists, online activists and representatives of digital initiatives and agencies in Lebanon who eagerly awaited to see who the online community had chosen as its best. Among the most long awaited reveals: the categories of Blogger of the Year and of Most Engaging Person on Twitter on the community side. While on the commercial side Lebanese brands awaited the reveal of the Most Interactive Business. Minister of Telecom Nicolas Sehnaoui, also
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