Best (and worst) social media moments of the Oscars

By Cory Bergman 

Like we did for the Super Bowl, here’s our list of the top social media moments of the Oscars, TV’s second biggest annual event. And like most big live TV events, Twitter took center stage. “What I like re big U.S. TV events on Twitter is how it reminds me of 70s childhood when everyone sat down to watch,” tweeted @palafo. Added @fromedome in all caps, “Twitter just saved live TV and killed the DVR.”

Without further ado, here’s the list:

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– Co-host James Franco, who just joined Twitter (@jamesfranco) earlier this month, started out the show with a bang by live-tweeting behind-the-scenes moments, including this cool video he took while walking out on stage. It’s the first time an Oscars host has live-tweeted the show. Too bad his tweeting couldn’t be matched by his on-screen performance.

– Twitter peaked just after the Oscars’ open with 10,000 tweets/minute, according to E! Online’s “Live from the Red Carpet” Twitter dashboard — 1.8 million overall. (We’ll wait for Twitter to issue the official count, like they did after the Super Bowl, which peaked at just over 4,000 tweets/second.) One gripe: the E! Online page, which was powered by MassRelevance, wouldn’t always load.

– Midway through the broadcast, the hashtag #Oscars appeared on the screen.

– Our favorite social media integration leading up to the Oscars goes to NYTimes.com. You could create your own Oscar ballot, connected to Facebook, which in aggregate provided a surprisingly accurate predication of the awards (all the big categories). You could also see, for example, the demographic breakdown of everyone who voted for The King’s Speech, as well as the movies they’ve “liked” the most on Facebook. NYTimes.com also invited well-known personalities to file ballots, so you could compare your picks. The Times also live-blogged the show, integrating tweets as well as a Facebook social plugin.

GetGlue tallied 30,000 check-ins before the end of the show, thanks in part to its integration on the Oscar.com home page. After the first hour, GetGlue said that 1/12th of all tweets about the Oscars were people checking in via GetGlue. Interestingly, those tweets included a “hat tip” to @mbusa, which is GetGlue’s sponsor, Mercedes Benz — an innovative way to include a sponsor. But not everyone liked it: “That’s sneaky, @getglue. I didn’t agree to endorse @mbusa,” said one tweet.

– For $1.99, we downloaded the official Oscars-ABC iPad app and watched a variety of behind-the-scenes cameras live with the show. For a live camera app, it was great — although we would have loved to listen to the director’s track in the control room, instead of a music track. But it introduced a challenge. Without Twitter integration, we suddenly we’re juggling three screens, instead of two. We can wait for the future of tablet apps that pull them both off seamlessly.

End the end, however, there was no real viral moment of the Oscars. No big upsets. No singular moment that everyone will talk about. And despite all the social media flying around, this year’s show will be less than memorable.

Have any more social media moments to add? Leave ’em in comments below. And for more news about TV+social media, follow @lostremote on Twitter.

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