It takes a lot to stop Twitter in its tracks.
But a single “selfie” – a self portrait taken by Ellen DeGeneres at the Academy Awards and featuring an all-star lineup including Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper – did just that.
If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014
The image, taken live on television and posted online by Ellen via her Twitter account @TheEllenShow, has clocked 1.02 million retweets and has been “favourited” more than a quarter of a million times.
And it is still rising.
It is, according to unofficial estimates, on track to become the most retweeted tweet of all time.
“We crashed and broke Twitter. We made history,” DeGeneres said during the broadcast, noting that Twitter’s office had contacted the producers to alert them.
“It’s fantastic. See what we did, Meryl”
Twitter is back up again, DeGeneres confirmed to the audience, but proudly noted: “It has most retweets ever.”
In a media landscape defined by social media noise, that makes the Oscar “super-selfie” one of the most successful social media moments in modern history.
In an exchange that was obviously planned, though perhaps not revealed to its targets prior, DeGeneres invited the celebrities around her to gather for a selfie.
In addition to Roberts, Pitt, Streep, Lawrence and Cooper, the image featured Kevin Spacey and Jared Leto.
The previous record-holder was a picture tweeted by US president Barack Obama hugging his wife, US first lady Michelle Obama.
It had clocked 780,000.
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