On Sunday night, while most of us were anxiously anticipating Hugh Jackman’s next dance move, one DC based firm was fast at work.

New Media Strategies, who happens to employ some pretty darn good social media experts, captured the Oscar buzz by following the action via Twitter.

According to NMS Communications Manager Leslie Bradshaw, their findings showed that Twitterers were most passionate about Slumdog Millionaire and Sean Penn — the former mostly due to the number of nominations and wins, the latter, having a lot to do with the political nature of his acceptance speech. 

Other popular Twitter conversations from Sunday night included:

Hugh Jackman’s ass
Isn’t he dead?
Cue the music.
Ben Still = Genius
I’d rather watch Rourke wrestle midgets.
How is it possible that this show get any worse?

And just why exactly does NMS have such a vested interest in the Oscars?  They just so happen to work for some of the movies that won golden statues.

With our work done on the films months ago, we were able to do what we do best last night — participate in the online conversation (had a few dozen of us going strong on Twitter) and track online buzz. With a lot of our clients up for awards, we were even that much more interested.  On that front, NMS projects racked up 6 wins last night, including those for Benjamin Button and Dark Knight. And, combined, we have worked on projects that have won over 40 Oscars and earned over 100 nominations since we opened our doors 10 years ago.

For the complete report on, click here.