The selfie was posted immediately to DeGeneres's Twitter account. the record was met less than an hour later. The tweet garnered 700,000 retweets and 200,000 likes within 30 minutes of it being posted. As of March 2014, the tweet had 2.7 million retweets and 1.4 million likes, becoming the most retweeted tweet of all time, surpassing a tweet from
Barack Obama celebrating his win in the
2012 United States presidential election with 778,000 retweets. The tweet was also seen by 37 million people, compared to the ceremony's 43 million. St. Jude's recreated the selfie with some of their patients as a thank you for the donation. By the end of 2014, the tweet was the most re-tweeted post of the year, peaking at 3.3 million retweets. 255,000 tweets per minute were posted discussing the picture that night. Commentators noted that despite the Samsung sponsorship, DeGeneres had sent the tweet from an
iPhone, Samsung's major competitor and rival. Other tweets by DeGeneres during the night were sent via Samsung. Samsung insisted that the selfie was not planned, and that the ensuing popularity was spontaneous. The tweet was valued at an estimated $800 million to $1 billion by
Publicis, the company which handled Samsung's international marketing. Samsung was mentioned over 900 times per minute on the site immediately after the incident. The tweet's most-retweeted record was held until 2017, when a tweet by a 16-year-old boy asking for free chicken nuggets from
Wendy's broke it. DeGeneres and Cooper had made pleas for people to retweet their tweet and the boy's while on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show to maintain the record, while also allowing him to get the nuggets. She later hosted the boy on her show.
"Sealfie" and other campaigns DeGeneres, who raised awareness for the
Humane Society of the United States during the broadcast and raised $1.5 million for them, faced backlash from Canadian
Inuit due to the organization's anti–
seal hunting efforts. The "sealfie" phenomenon attracted widespread journalistic attention. DeGeneres had not commented on the campaign as of 2023. The campaign was considered "an unprecedented outpouring of contemporary Inuit political expression" by academics Kathleen Rodgers and Willow Scobie. The selfie also prompted the "#ashtag", promoting
Ash Wednesday and encouraging people to post selfies with ash crosses on one's forehead. After the hashtag had failed to attract attention the previous year, the creator, Mark Alves, was inspired to edit the Oscar selfie and add ash crosses to the actors' faces. This sparked attention online and the tag was used over 3,000 times by March 5. The
Church of England also promoted the tag. == Copyright ==