Oscars: The bomb heard round the Internet

The Oscars were the most talked about topic on Facebook last night.  And the talk wasn't good.

The Twitter chatter about the 83rd Annual Academy Awards on Sunday night was way more entertaining than the actual show.

There was lots of sharp criticism of Hollywood's biggest event out there in the land of social networking, with the brunt of it aimed at hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco.

The duo of actors were even the subject of a trending topic slugged #youngandhiposcars with the consensus being the show was anything but.

"I'm almost certain Franco & Hathaway thought this was a dress rehearsal," tweeted IndyweekArts.

"Finally a real host," tweeted Dorian Huerta when former Academy Awards host Billy Crystal appeared as a presenter, which resulted in a standing ovation from the audience.

Even a deceased former host got more love than Franco and Hathaway.

"The hosts made me miss Billy Crystal, Crystal made me wish for Bob Hope and Hope actually made me laugh and he's dead," tweeted "Daily Show" producer/writer Rory Albanese.

Hashtag "oscarsfail" also become a popular one as the evening wore on.

Viewer Anne Cauley tweeted, "The most exciting and unpredictable part of my evening was the drive home" (presumably from an Oscars viewing party), and iReporter Sukhraj Beasla said she was just plain bored.

Not even the sight of host James Franco in drag was enough to generate much enthusiasm among those watching.

"If #jamesfranco was any more stiff he would have roots," tweeted Hope Gaston.

In the age of social networking, everyone can be a critic and in this case even a real critic was not entertained. The famed movie critic Roger Ebert tweeted "The worst Oscarcast I've seen, and I go back awhile. Some great winners, a nice distribution of awards, but the show? Dead. In. The. Water. "

The tweeps very quickly figured out that the real party was happening over on Twitter as fan MeganWrites1 tweeted to CNNShowbiz "Did not watch, could care less. Everyone on Twitter kept me up to date on what I wasn't missing."

Richard Robbins, director of Social Innovation at At & T, tweeted that the show's producers might consider tuning in to Twitter and other sites in the future to gauge how the show is playing and make necessary changes if needed.

"In future, live show producers should have contingency plans to make on-the-fly changes when social media chatter shows trainwrecks," he tweeted.

The Hollywood Reporter's Tim Goodman summed it up nicely in his Monday morning review when he said "Somewhere Ricky Gervais is laughing like a school girl."