From red carpet fashion mishaps to emotional acceptance speeches, surprise winners (and losers) to backstage and after party shenanigans, the annual Oscars ceremony never fails to cause a stir in Hollywood and beyond. Thanks to Twitter becoming a highly integrated part of televised events these days, both on a national and global scale, the world can observe and join in the conversation as the action unfolds.
Live tweeting via the social media platform has become the norm during such high-profile and anticipated awards shows. A way of following real-time updates wherever you are in the world, whether from the event itself of from the comfort of your own sofa, being part of the experience via Twitter allows you to share your own vantage point, helping to expose your account to a wider audience while interacting with others.
Twitter trends and talking points
During the 86th Academy Awards, from 8.30pm to 12am ET, 14.7 million tweets were posted across the globe, with seven million incorporating the hashtags #oscars and #oscars2014. The most tweeted nominees of the evening included Jennifer Lawrence and Brad Pitt, while 'Gravity', 'Frozen' and '12 Years A Slave' gained the most mentions. It's certainly fair to say that Twitter was buzzing with activity throughout the duration.
Always a strong talking point, for some the Oscars is as much about fashion as it is about the film awards, with Hollywood's most famous stars being closely scrutinised by the world's media. E! decided to put a fun spin on this by capturing celebrities donning their costly outfits via its "Fashion Turn" Vine Booth 360, then sharing them via their Twitter account @redcarpet.
Breaking Twitter records - the celebrity selfie
Gather a load of A-listers together, grab a phone with a camera (in this case, a strategically placed Samsung Galaxy Note 3), take a selfie and upload it to Twitter...then wait for the reaction across social media.
This is what Ellen DeGeneres' did with the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, a photo which has become the most retweeted post in Twitter's history; at one point, the social channel went down as a result of the colossal volume of activity in a short space of time. In the space of 45 minutes, the A-list packed photo garnered more than 1 million retweets in just 45 minutes (now over 2 million), beating Barack Obmama's tweet about being re-elected to the White House in 2012, which was the previous record holder with more than 780,000 retweets.
A fantastic product placement opportunity for Samsung, high profile stars taking advantage of being surrounded by fellow famous people while having a significant social following on their Twitter accounts is becoming an increasing trend. While being a huge talking point, the argument is raised as to whether scenarios like this take away the meaning and successes of the awards ceremony; either way, it gets people all over the world talking about the event and most importantly (for Samsung) it's a great social media marketing campaign for their new product.
With so many statistics, commentary pieces and coverage, @SpamellaB of The Media Octopus thought it would be a great idea for us to pull together some of the key details and information to create our very own Oscars 2014 infographic, highlighting how the event unfolded via Twitter.