A selfie orchestrated by 86th Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres during the March 2 , 2014 broadcast was at the time the most retweeted image ever . DeGeneres said she wanted to homage Meryl Streep 's record 17 Oscar nominations by setting a new record with her , and invited other Oscar celebrities to join them . The resulting photo of twelve celebrities broke the previous retweet record within forty minutes , and was retweeted over 1.8 million times in the first hour . By the end of the ceremony it had been retweeted over 2 million times ; less than 24 hours later , it had been retweeted over 2.8 million times . , it has been retweeted over 3.4 million times . The group selfie effort was parodied by Lego , and Matt Groening with '' The Simpsons '' . It beat the previous record , 778,801 , which was held by Barack Obama , following his victory in the 2012 presidential election . On May 9 , 2017 , Ellen 's record was broken by Carter Wilkerson ( @carterjwm ) by collecting nearly 3.5 million retweets in a little over a month
86th Academy Awards
86th Academy Awards
Twitter