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Can’t get enough Oscar? Neither can we. But, unlike other blogs, we aren’t gonna recap the show or even discuss the stars’ outfits. Stepping out in true geek fashion, today socialTNT looks at the Academy’s social media strategies and offers up tips on how Oscar can stay young.

Best CyberScreen Adaptation

• Oscar makes his CyberScreen debut in style with his own YouTube channel. We have to admit, we were really impressed! The videos, numbering 69 at time of writing, cover the full gambit of what we have come to expect with video campaigns. The channel includes favorite acceptance speeches and greatest moments in Oscar history.
• We’re suckers for behind-the-scenes videos, which is probably why our favorites were short video interviews with past winners discussing topics like: What it’s like to be nominated, the voting process, what it’s like to win and how to produce an Oscar montage. Aspiring Future Winners: Avoid the embarrassment of being drowned out by the orchestra, and check out this video on how to prepare an acceptance speech
• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ President Sid Ganis did have some videos for a video blog. Check out the last entry chronicling final preparations before the big night.
• We were a little confused by other cool features like the “Thank You Cam” and Antonio Sabato’s overly produced “Road to The Oscars” journal. They are hosted on the Oscars page, but not found on the YouTube channel. This schizophrenic offshoot requires that you watch a video ad before the clip and it’s not sharable or embeddable. What?!
• How to make it better? Give nominees webcams and let them video blog the full experience, from nomination to post-awards. Sadly, not everyone can be nominated for the movie world’s top prize, so this could provide a more unfiltered look at the drama and excitement that is the Oscars.
• Following in the footsteps of the Crunchies, maybe the Oscars could have 10-second video responses filmed by each of the nominees.
• You know all the technical awards? Well, there are tons of aspiring young make-up artists, sound editors, and costume designers who would love to see behind-the-scenes of the award nominees in action. Those vignettes are shown during the awards presentation, so why not make the full videos available online!

Best Original BlogPlay

• Yup, the Academy had an official live blogger, Joel Stein.
• Now, we’re not knocking Joel, but maybe the Academy could have also invited a couple of bloggers from big entertainment or movie blogs to officially live-blog the show from the Kodak theater. Yes, they are probably going to blog it from home, but an official invite is a powerful gesture that could leverage preexisting reader communities’ excitement about the show.
• Nominees are busy busy, but they could still Twitter The academy could also aggregate all discussion on Twitter regarding the academy awards and post it on the home page.
• What if iJustine could videocast backstage?! HOT!

Best Application in a Social Network

• You may not have known this, but the Academy has a Facebook widget. According to the Oscar site, the widget has a countdown feature, trivia game, and plays the ad-sponsored videos not found on YouTube.
• Sadly, Oscar’s widget only has around 1,000 users, with only 32% of them active. This could be due to the oh-so-uninspiring description on the app’s page: “Follow the latest buzz about this year’s Academy Awards! Add the OSCAR Widget today. Click the blue “Add to Page” button in the right column!” *yawn* Also, it looks like it may have just been launched a few weeks ago.
• Application adoption is really hard to break in to. Some suggestions for Oscar: let users earn points to send virtual gifts, or allow them to create mash-up montages of the nominees or past shows. Also, people love movie-compatibility quizzes.

Next Year’s Nominees?

• The Academy should try to utilize preexisting communities like Facebook groups to build buzz.
• Flickr photo stream to compile all the photos tagged with Academy Awards. Also, make the photos already on the site embeddable.
• Wikis on all the Lifetime Achievement folks we might not know.
• Tribute pages for the dead Academy members.

All in all, socialTNT was really satisfied with the Academy’s social media efforts. The Academy should be fully applauded for their YouTube efforts. In terms of strategy, our only suggestion would be to start the seeding process a couple weeks–if not months–out. The first videos to be posted were from 5 days before the event. That’s not really enough time to “go viral.”

As Hollywood starts to see online video as a valid and viable revenue stream, and as TV viewership drops, the Oscars will inevitably be faced with doing more CyberScreen adaptation. How did you think the Academy fared? Was there anything you thought could have been added that wasn’t? Tell us in the comments!

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[The above photo, “Oscar” by Alan Light, is used under Creative Commons]

Last Friday, socialTNT attended the very first Crunchie awards. For those of you who were unable to go or who missed the live webcast, we offer you a short recap with our picks for the best highlights.

The Crunchies 2007 were hosted by our favorite tech-blog monarchs TechCrunch, GigaOm, Read/Write Web and VentureBeat . With nominees like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, and TechMeme, the event was a who’s who of technology greats. My dates for the evening were the talented team over at UGOBE, whose adorable robotic dinosaur, Pleo, was nominated alongside the iPhone and the Wii in the best new gadget category (full disclosure: UGOBE is a SHIFT client).

The event lay in stark contrast to the recently canceled Golden Globes awards, the infamous snoozefest known in recent years for its boring lineups and watered-down content. Without official “script writers” and fancy schmancy talent, the Crunchies awards presentation was one of the most entertaining awards ceremonies we’ve witnessed in quite a few years. I mean, who needs the typical, scripted dribble when you can watch Fake Steve Jobs drop f-bombs from the comfort of your own computer? Take that, FCC!

The awards ceremony was broadcast live over the Web and integrated a number of social media components. The Crunchies’ heavy incorporation of Web video may foreshadow a whole new era in award show formats. One of the most entertaining social media integrations of the night was a video compilation of 10-second responses from nominees. Introduced by video blogger Sarah Meyers, many of the responses were filmed using unconventional methods, including personal digital cameras and webcams.

Without further ado, here are socialTNT’s video picks of the night:

Best Live Version of a Viral Video: The upbeat crooning of The Richter Scales performing their popular You-Tube video “Here comes another Bubble” on-stage.

Best Award Into Video: CrunchGear’s John Biggs, dressed in a chic blazer with a floral ascot and a pipe hanging from his hand, announcing the nominees for Best New Gadget. Am I watching “Animal House” or an awards ceremony? No matter. The video is hilarious.

Best Acceptance Speech: (Fake) Steve Jobs (aka Dan Lyons) accepting the award for the iPhone as winner of Best New Gadget. My favorite part: “Steve” talks about the new MacBook Air while bending and twisting a Manila envelope to showcase the Air’s awesome design (“it’s actually in there right now”).

Best 10 Second Nominee Response Video: All of these were so amazing that we couldn’t pick just one. In the first video, the ProductWiki guys shows you how to bootstrap like a pro. In the second, Nova Spivack of Twine shows off THE most disruptive technology of all time. I promise, you will be blown away.

And that’s a wrap! Still not satisfied? Take a look at the full list of winners, or check out other recaps to munch on:

• ABC7 News
• ArsTechnica
• TechCrunch
• WIRED News
• ZDNet