5 Reasons Why Twitter Was the Real Winner of the Academy Awards

The real winner of the 2014 Academy Awards didn’t get a shiny, golden statue. While we have yet to know how many people were watching the live broadcast, one thing’s for sure: whether they were in couture at the Dolby Theatre or in underwear on their living room couch, everyone was paying close attention to Twitter during the Oscars.

The social network was weaved throughout the ceremony. It was at the center of some of the show’s funniest moments and amused folks at home when things got slow in the 3.5 hour broadcast.

Here are 5 reasons why Twitter won the Oscars:

1. Host Ellen Degeneres turned tweeting into one of her main schticks throughout the show. And for better or worse, it provided some of the broadcast’s best parts. She was taking selfies from the first 15 minutes.

2. At one point, Degeneres decided to get the A+ listers in the front rows with her to take a selfie with her, explicitly to get a lot of retweets. Whether she was joking or not, the photo — featuring Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, half of Jared Leto’s face, and more — almost immediately became the most retweeted tweet of all time.

The photo trumped Obama’s “four more years” tweet after he won the 2012 election (retweeted almost 800,000 times) in minutes. And two hours later, it reached 2 million retweets, and counting.

3. Oscar online buzz got so crazy, that Twitter even broke down. “We crashed and broke Twitter. We have made history,” Degeneres said. “See, Meryl, what we did, you and I?”

4. Twitter lingo was even incorporated into Cate Blachett’s best actress acceptance speech. “Julia, hashtag suck it,” the Oscar winner said to competitor Julia Roberts.

5. Twitter also provided a necessary outlet to viewers who got bored during the 3.5 hour broadcast. Instead of changing the channel, people looked down to their second screen during inevitable slow bits.