With the 69th Golden Globe Awards just around the corner, Twitter is predictably brimming with chat about the event. However, the talk isn’t all about the nominees and predictions for who will take home the gongs on Sunday night.
Following his controversial humour at the film industry’s expense at last year’s awards, Ricky Gervais is back on the podium again this weekend to reprise his hosting role, and much of the pre-show digital buzz is about him.
The findings of NM Incite, a social media tracking and analysis company, show that “Excitement for Ricky Gervais” accounted for 26% of the tweets and conversations about the awards show, from a total of 7,000+ Twitter messages posted from January 10-11.
If you haven’t seen last year’s welcoming address from the British comedian, then you might not understand why there is so much anticipation for the 2012 awards. Gervais seems to hold nothing sacred when it comes to having a pop at the established order, or the way in which Hollywood works.
Here is last year’s opening speech where he takes pot-shots at Johnny Depp and Cher to name but a few:
Twitter is becoming more and more of a straw poll from which reasonably accurate assumptions of public opinion of a wide range of topics can be drawn, and it looks like the Golden Globes are another such event where Twitter will be the yardstick. Last April we saw how the micro-blogging site can even provide credible and useful information for making investments on the stock market.