Millions of viewers all over the world tuned in to catch the Oscars last night, a bar-setting event that determines the direction of the entertainment sector for the following year.  This year’s ceremony represented the entertainment sector’s leap beyond TV alone, and featured several indicators of this ongoing transition.

These indicators included the Oscar Backstage Pass app, which streamed live camera views from the red carpet, Kodak Theatre and Governor’s Ball, and also James Franco’s #OscarsRealTime Twitter channel. These two elements probably assisted ABC to get more users to watch the ceremony, but advertisers discovered that users preferred to view live videos and backstage photos, and not their premium price-tagged ads. Moreover, in addition to overshooting advertiser contracts, ABC didn’t upload any video to Oscar.com after the ceremony ended.

As the entertainment sector shifts to online tools and trends, the industry will need to utilize more sophisticated, real-time data analysis in order to optimize tactics around advertising and user engagement. This is something 3^rd parties are already leveraging at large events such as the Oscars, developing inference research tools to gauge consumer demand around brands. Clearspring’s AddThis sharing platform is already on the ball, providing some network data and analysis from the big night.  The AddThis network that provides sharing and social analytics to more than 8MM sites and over 1B unique users monthly, laid out in this blog post.

According to Clearspring, Oscar nominee Black Swan and leading lady Natalie Portman got the most viewer interest, even though the movie didn’t take the gold statue home. Moreover, the movie King’s Speech did win the Oscars but users interest only spiked after the announcement.  Not surprisingly, The Social Network was the most shared entry on the web. Putting these aside however, Charlie Sheen shocked us by topped the list of searched actors, following by presenter Anne Hathaway.  Sorry James.