‘You’ve Never Seen Oscar Like This’: Academy Awards Embrace Social Media

The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards added some innovative use of social media to its awards gala. Now it’s the 82nd Annual Academy Awards‘ turn.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences kicked things off by streaming its nominations live via Oscars.org and its Facebook Page, according to AdAge.com.

Oscar.com, a joint production from the Academy and ABC, is also hosting more video and exclusive content from nominees, as well as widgets for Oscar pools and predictions for the second year in a row, and an Oscars iPhone app, which will launch later in February, will allow fans to see how their Oscar predictions stacked up against others, according to AdAge.com.

The Academy, however, was not able to prepare an integration of Facebook and Twitter comments in time for this year’s ceremony, which will air on ABC March 7, AdAge.com reported.

Co-executive producer Bill Mechanic told AdAge.com:

We won’t get accomplished everything we want to this year. If you look at the site, it’s really better than it’s ever been, so hopefully next year we’ll be able to execute 50 percent of what we wanted to. This year, we’ll probably only accomplish 20 percent of what we wanted. We always wanted Twitter and Facebook to be used not just by (co-executive producer Adam Shankman), but by others to speak to an audience that has not traditionally viewed the Oscars as important as it certainly is.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.