Twitter and Blog Buzz Power Hollywood’s Big Night

42 million Americans tuned in to ABC last night for the Hollywood’s biggest night, the 82nd annual Academy Awards, marking the largest audience for the show in five years.  Big winners of the night included Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”) and Jeff Bridges (“Crazy Heart”) winners for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Actor in a Leading Role, respectively, but the story of the night was “The Hurt Locker”. 

According to a post at Mashable [Did Blog Buzz for "Hurt Locker" Predict Its Oscar Win?],
“Avatar” had a large lead in blog interest heading into the ceremonies
and was the presumed favorite in many of the key categories it was
nominated, only to see the coveted prizes land with the team behind “The Hurt Locker”. The film which saw major wins for both Kathryn Bigelow (Best Director, the first time a female director has garnered said honor) and Best Picture, making it “the lowest-grossing Oscar winner in modern history … the limited-release film [had] $14 million in box-office receipts” according to the Chicago Tribune [via]. 

oscartwitter1.jpgEither way, it was a great night for the Academy overall, as chatter on Twitter regarding “Oscar” peaked at nearly 70,000 tweets [Oscars Online: Twitter Traffic, Livestreaming Help Power Hollywood's Big Night] and interest remained strong throughout the night.  As Simon Dumenco pointed out, “though the media spends the months and weeks … obsessing about the potential nominees and winners, your average
Twitterer doesn’t care until the damn show is on the air.”  Just as quickly, they forget again, a fact supported by all the relevant Trendrr data in his latest Advertising Age column, Who Got the Biggest Twitter Lift From the Oscars? 

Once the show went off the air, the Twitter chatter flat lined once again, save for pockets of conversation regarding Sandra Bullock’s acceptance speech.  The first time Oscar winner came in fourth on Twitter on this night, however, as 32,742 tweets name-checked her in her peak hour last nigh, putting her behind the “Oscar/Oscars” itself (65,751), “Avatar,” which
scored 58,505 tweets at peak, and “The Hurt Locker” with 39,951 tweets in its peak hour

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 7:12 pm and is filed under v2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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