According to Twitter the winner is...

As the Academy Awards, televised in more than 100 countries, are quickly approaching the social media buzz prior to its airing has generated numerous trending topics, the creation of live blogs, and thousands of online predictions. Twitter users have been predicting Oscar winners for the past few days and Twitter estimated approximately 476,000 tweets were gathered to make various predictions so far this year. In previous years there has always been excitement and enthusiasm prior to the Oscars, however; the hype has never been quantifiable. Through the use of social media today Twitter and Mashable launched mRank, a newly created system to measure the Oscar buzz across Twitter and Facebook.  A chart was created listing the movie titles and the amount of tweets each one received. Right now The Artist is leading for best-predicted picture with over 13,000 tweets. The only movie that comes close to the first predicted movie is Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese with 4,900.

The Academy Awards are not only using Twitter and Facebook to promote the award show, but Mashable created a live blog specifically for people that may not be able to watch the show live on television. Similarly to Super Bowl XLVI, the Oscars will not be streaming live, however; fans will have the opportunity to receive the fastest updates through Twitter and Mashable’s live blog. Not only did the Academy Awards and Mashable join together to launch a blog with updates by the minute, ABC is offering an official Oscars Back Stage iOS application for the iphone and ipad. The new application offers behind the scene footage from the Oscars including access to the control room, views from multiple different camera angles, and select interviews with the Oscar winners. In comparison to last year where the Oscars offered an all access online pass for $4.99, the iOS application will be free for all iphone and ipad users. It is apparent that the Oscars are using social media in 2012 to their greatest advantage. The Oscars preshow is asking Twitter followers to hashtag #bestdressed and #oscars during the preshow and #oscars along with the award presented during the show.