The Oscar Social Media #Selfie that Broke Twitter
The 86th Oscar Academy Awards aired last night and integrated social media more than any of their past shows. This year’s host, Ellen DeGeneres, is a Twitter guru. Her Twitter page has around 27 million followers over 8 thousand tweets. She kept her phone, a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, handy during the entire show which proved to be brilliant marketing on Samsung’s part.
About halfway through the ceremony, the Oscar host walked into the audience and asked her celebrity friends to join her for a selfie. Within seconds, she was immediately surrounded by a group of very talented people including: Jared Leto, Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong’o, Nyong’o’s brother Peter, and Angelina Jolie. Just moments before snapping the picture, DeGeneres challenged the social media users of Twitter to make the picture the most retweeted photo in history.
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014
Before “the selfie of the century” was taken, the record holder for the most retweeted image was a picture posted by Barack Obama after becoming re-elected to the White House back in 2012. Obama’s tweet has gathered 781,740 retweets since 2012. Ellen’s image currently has over 2.8 million retweets, and was only posted last night.
Four more years. pic.twitter.com/bAJE6Vom
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012
According to Twitter, it’s the “most retweeted Tweet, ever”. Ellen’s twitpic is also being credited with breaking Twitter for a short time. Twitter sent out an apology because all of the retweeting disrupted service for more than 20 minutes after 10 p.m. ET. I personally do not think that this is bad news for Twitter, as the short disruption created quite a bit of free publicity for them. This is the first year that I watched the Oscar show from start to finish. The Academy Awards has a stereotype of being too long and boring to some, but I think that having Ellen as the host and integrating social media made for a more entertained and engaged audience. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences joined the club and showed its spirit with a tweet of its own.
Sorry, our bad. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/VrjKjZ4YGl
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 3, 2014
