Ellen DeGeneres’ “Oscars” super-star selfie is now the most retweeted tweet ever — beating out President Obama’s “four more years” tweet from November 7, 2012, the night he was re-elected.
Host DeGeneres gathered some of the biggest name at Sunday night’s show for the mega-selfie. The lucky 11 to cram into the pic include, from left to right: Jared Leto (side of face only), Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum (back row), Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ellen DeGeneres, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper (front and center holding the camera), Brad Pitt, Peter Nyong’o (brother of Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o), Lupita Nyong’o and Angelina Jolie.
“Let’s try to set the record for the most retweets,” DeGeneres said as she gathered the A-listers during the telecast.
She succeeded. Her tweet now has more than 2,000,000 retweets to Obama’s 780,000. (The President’s was a photo hugging First Lady Michelle Obama.) “Oh! I’ve never tweeted before!’ Streep said while Bradley Cooper offered to take the pic.
When DeGeneres posted the photo from her Twitter account, @TheEllenShow, just after 10 p.m., she captioned it: “If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever.”
She set the record less than an hour later.
Twitter also sent out an apology because all of the retweeting disrupted service for more than 20 minutes after 10 p.m.
At the end of the DeGeneres’ opening monologue, she took her first selfie of the night.
She told the audience she was live-tweeting the event and said she’d be hash tagging her solo shot #oscars and #blessed. She added #blurry when she posted it. The shot is a fuzzy profile of the comedian with a bit of the audience in the background.
DeGeneres appeared to be using a Samsung Galaxy phone for her on-stage snaps — the technology company was a sponsor of the awards show.
But technology reporter Mark Gurman noted that backstage, the show host posted another — much clearer — shot of herself with actor Channing Tatum … with her iPhone.
With Associated Press