In the months leading up to the 86th Academy Awards in 2014, the Twitter team came up with the idea of having presenter Ellen DeGeneres tweet a selfie from the stage, with the audience in the background. During rehearsals for the show, Ellen saw Meryl Streep's seating card and decided to rehearse taking a selfie with her. Samsung was sponsoring the event, and their representatives were present during the rehearsals. They saw Ellen practicing with her iPhone and asked if she would be willing to use a Samsung phone instead. Ellen agreed.

When Ellen took the first selfie of the night, it got thousands of retweets almost instantly. She then…