The Oscars on Twitter were dominated by... Lady Gaga?!

Steven Loeb · February 23, 2015 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3c25

The singer's Sound of Music medley was most tweeted moment, even topping Birdman's surprise win

For all the Oscars' pretty well-earned reputation for being way too predictable (I mean, did anyone really think that J.K. Simmons, Julianne Moore and Patricia Arquette weren't going to win? Not that they weren't justified in getting those awards, but come on!) the show has tended to produce some pretty surprising reactions when it comes to Twitter, at least.

Last year it was Ellen's selfie that actually wound up setting a Twitter record and became the most retweeted photo of all time. (Remember that? Seems like such a long time ago!) And while there was nothing really to rival that moment this time around, there was one performer who blew everyone away and actually wound up becoming the surprise Twitter winner: Lady Gaga.

Yes, Lady Gaga. (Why do I feel like I'm actually writing about the (shudder) Grammys right now instead?)

Her performance of the medley from the Sound of Music, after which she was joined by Julie Andrews, was the moment that earned the most Tweets per minute (TPM), Twitter has revealed. It also led to her being the most Tweeted- about person at the event as well. 

I have to admit, that performance really rocked it. When they first announced it, my girlfriend and I simultaneously rolled our eyes. At the end of it, though, I said, literally, "I didn't know she could actually sing!"

The other top moments were one slightly surprising winner and one very predictable one: when Alejandro Iñárritu won Best Picture for “Birdman” (I had Boyhood checked on my ballot and when Patricia Arquette won her Best Supporting Actress award.

People were really digging the Arquette tonight, as she was the second most Tweeted about nominee, followed by John Legend.

The most Tweeted about movies were the ones you probably could have guessed: Birdman, the somewhat unexpected big winner; The Grand Budapest Hotel, which pretty much dominated the first half of the show; and Boyhood, with most of them likely of the "it was robbed!" variety. 

For some reason, Twitter has not actually released any of the actual numbers yet, but we will update the story if/when it does. 

Things weren't all great, though, as Twitter found a few things to be mad at (of freaking course it did). This time it was Joan Rivers being left out of the in memoriam section. You know, that great thespian Joan Rivers? Who is known for all of her iconic film roles?

Honestly, the only time I think I ever saw her in a movie was Spaceballs, and wasn't even in the freaking thing! Oh, and that documentary they made about her a few years ago. But why let facts like that get in the way when you can just rant? 

After all, that's a big part of why Twitter even continues to exist. And we love it for it... kind of.

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.