Image via Wikipedia

While this year’s Academy Awards ceremony will be shown only on TV, the Academy is still trying to reach viewers on second screens.  For example, @TheAcademy, with more than 140,000 followers, has been tweeting all of the events. Oscar.com launched a social media page, Oscar Buzz, to track and create visuals of fan’s real-time comments using #Oscars and #OscarBuzz. The Academy also wants fans to tweet their own favorite #MovieMoments as part of their “Celebrate The Movies” campaign.

The Academy and ABC also partnered with Funny or Die for some original Oscar-related videos. A celebrity-studded trailer reveals how producer Brian Glazer, Robin Williams, Megan Fox and Josh Duhamel convinced Billy Crystal to host the event.

Entrepreneur.com

Image via Wikipedia

According to Alvin Estevez, co-founder and president of Enigma Software Group, computer viruses across the U.S. will increase by 30% tonight during the 2012 Academy Awards. He says he predicts this will be the second-most hacked day of 2012, taken in part from SpyWareRemove.com, which tracks Internet searches on computer infection solutions and help. According to the data, the number of searches jumped on Oscar night for the past two years, with last years rising 34% during that time.

The reason this happens is because celebrity gossip and news becomes more popular, with people searching for information and photos of the night’s winners and attendants. And so, hackers begin creating fake links containing viruses that, upon click, are released into the computer. Next, the victims are offered fake spyware kits, called scareware, which promise to remove the virus for a payment. Some of the most notable scareware infections are Security Shield, System Check and Smart Protection 2012.

The advice that Estevez gives on his Forbes blog post is to protect people from these viruses is to only visit major or well-known media sites, preemptively set up anti-virus software with both detection and deletion features, and do not open unsolicited emails with attachments; also, be cautious of emails from Facebook friends and Twitter followers, as these may also be infected without your friend’s knowledge

Forbes

Image via Wikipedia

The day after the Academy Awards is People.com’s biggest traffic day of the year. Millions peruse the site to see who made the best and worst dressed lists, so for tonight’s event, , People will feature a new Facebook tie-in and a Pinterest board for red carpet fashions. It will also incorporate an e-commerce dimension with Gilt Groupe.The partnership will feature People’s curation of couture looks for a “Get the Look: Red Carpet” sale on Gilt Groupe.

While People won’t receive revenue from Gilt Groupe’s sales, it could lead to future e-commerce collaborations.

Adweek

Image via Wikipedia

This year’s Oscars will be another huge social media event, according to The Wall Street Journal.

During the broadcast, tweets bearing hashtags #oscars, #redcarpetqa and #bestdressed will appear on Oscar.com and the Oscar app. An outside company has been hired to weed out offensive comments and span. “If everyone is going crazy about one event or moment of the telecast, we know what video clips to post to the site,” Karin Gilford, ABC’s SVP of digital media, told the Journal.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences created a new Facebook feature allowing fans to pick the films and actors they think will win and share it with their friends.Twitter has lined up TV personalities to live-tweet the ceremony, including Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives, Randy Jackson of American Idol and Whitney Cummings of the NBC TV show Whitney.

Even the exclusive Vanity Fair Oscar after party will be live tweeted by a staffer and videos will be posted hourly during the party.

According to Bluefin Labs, a social media analytics company, last year’s Oscar-chatter was mostly positive. Of the 966,000 social media comments, the third most used term was “love” (after #oscars and Oscars) and “dress” was the fifth. By comparison, Bluefin said this year’s Super Bowl had 12.2 million comments on Facebook and Twitter, up 578 percent from last year. The Grammys had 13 million comments, up 2,280 percent (the increase was partly due to Whitney Houston’s death one day before the awards.)

There is still no data measuring the direct correlation between social media comments and actual viewership ratings. But Albert Cheng, Disney-ABC Television Group’s EVP for digital media, told the Journal that social media drives engagement and sustains interest.

The Wall Street Journal

Image via Wikipedia

The 84^th Annual Academy Awards won’t be streaming online, but ABC has an iPhone Oscars App so viewers can watch red carpet live-streams, movie trailers and Oscar-themed videos. During the show, app users can also watch backstage live-streams.

ABC didn’t include Android users in their online Oscar coverage, but instead, Comcast created an app so they can watch a live-stream of E! Live From the Red Carpet, which will also be available online starting at 1:30 p.m.ET at eonline.com

TV.com

Best Actress Academy Award (Photo credit: cliff1066™)

ABC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have decided to launch a free Oscar’s app for Apple iOS devices in preparation for the show tomorrow. The app will allow users to choose from over 20 live camera feeds located backstage and on the red carpet over the course of the show, as well as predict winners and track the progression of the show via a live ticker feed.

The app will also be integrated with Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites; and though it does have advertisements, the main objective was not to gain revenue, but according to Variety,  to enhance viewer experience and increase buzz in the before and after stages of the show. This is a big change from their original app from last year, which charged customers $0.99 for the app and $4.99 for deluxe access, and actually had less content than the new and improved app.

Variety

Image via CrunchBase

Consigliere considers itself a service oriented VC who does not lead deals right now, but invests at the Series A and seed level. The company works with the startups to build their brand pehenomena, he said, and for many, continues to invest in them as they grow.

Xconomy

Image via Wikipedia

Esther Dyson, Oxygen Media President Jason Klarman and some other high profile advisors are backing WebThriftStore, a for profit NY startup that enables charities to set up online thrift stores on their  website so they don’t have to maintain their own brick and mortar shops. The company, founded by Columbia University M.B.A.s Doug Krugman and Lynn Zises, who are married to each other, launched pilot stores last Oct.

The site lets donors to price items from $5 to $5000 and promote what they are selling on Facebook and Twitter. The East River Development Authority, ClassWish.org and the ASPCA are among the website’s charter users, as any 501(c)3 charity can apply.

Crain’s New York Business

Image via Wikipedia

In the Connecticut town of Stamford lied the historic old Town Hall, which had been unused for 25 years until Patti Meagher and Barry Schwimmer, along with other investors and a sponsorship by Sikorsky Aircraft, decided to shell out $16 million in 2008 to renovate and enlarge the building. The reason for doing this was to create an incubator for text startups, which is expected to officially open its doors to entrepreneurs this summer.

According to The New York Times, there is no specific type of tech business that the new Stamford Innovation Center is trying to attract. Rather, the only requirement is that it must be seen to have potential to be successful. These businesses will receive the needed work space, mentoring and eventually access to venture capitalists.

Stamford has a population of 122,643 and an unemployment rate of 7.1 percent, which is lower than the national rate. However, about a fourth of the business space in the city is currently unused. The goal of the incubator is to foster successful business that will eventually graduate and move to those unoccupied spaces.

The New York Times

KABC correspondent Tina Malave and style expert Lawrence Zarian will use Trendrr data in a segment called “Red Hot Right Now.” Viewers will also be able to click on trending topics and view the social conversations behind it.

Mark Ghuneim, Trendrr’s CEO, said that KABC-TV was smart to employ social media in strategic ways–not only to drive conversations around programming, but also as a way to generate content. He told Lost Remote, “If this year’s Super Bowl and Grammys serve as any indicator, the Oscars will be more socially-connected than the previous years by orders of magnitude.”

Lost Remote