Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar Selfie With Meryl Streep, Lupita Nyong'o And More Breaks Record For Most Retweets And Temporarily Brings Twitter Down

by UInterviewMarch 3, 2014, 12:00 amNews >

Oscar host Ellen DeGeneres effectively broke Twitter Sunday night when she tweeted out a star-studded selfie taken mid-Academy Awards featuring Bradley Cooper and Brad Pitt, to name a few.

The comedian first invited Meryl Streep to take a selfie with her and then quickly recruited Julia Roberts, Channing Tatum, Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Brad Pitt. Angelina Jolie joined in, as did a few photobombers who rushed in from the aisle. Lupita Nyong’o snuck in the back, as did her brother, and Kevin Spacey can be spotted in the back as well. Jared Leto ran across the row to try to squeeze in next to Lawrence, but Cooper, who took the photo, wasn’t able to get him in the shot.

Ellen tweeted the photo, telling viewers that she wanted to make it the most retweeted tweet in the history of Twitter. She quickly got her wish.

The tweet hit 100,000 retweets within a few minutes after being posted, and before the hour was up she had officially beat President Barack Obama’s record-holding tweet, ‘4 More Years,’ in retweets. Obama’s tweet has been retweeted just under 800,000 times. The Oscar selfie has now been re-tweeted over 2 million times.

In the hour following Ellen’s now historic tweet, Twitter suffered some technical difficulties, and later in the show Ellen announced to the audience that they had succeeded in creating the most retweeted tweet in history and that Twitter had contacted her, telling her that she temporarily broke Twitter.

The selfie has inspired many on the Internet to either create their own or photoshop other people into the original selfie.

– Olivia Truffaut-Wong

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