30 Twitter Celebs Who Have More Followers Than Oscar Host James Franco

The Academy is bound and determined to youngify the Oscars this year even if it kills them -- and judging by the looks and sound of it so far, death may indeed be lurking. But one notable phenomenon has come of recruiting James Franco and Anne Hathaway to co-host the show: @JamesFranco, the Twitter habitat of the actor/writer/director/student/Three's Company revivalist/Oscar-nominee. Surely the teeming young culture around Franco's Tweets will help skew the notoriously aged Oscarcast demos down a few years, right? It depends! How many followers does one need before s/he is officially a tastemaker?

As of this writing, Franco boasts 167,440 followers on Twitter -- not a bad number at all for someone who's been on the microblogging service for exactly a week, and admittedly 20,000 more than he had at this time on Wednesday. Nevertheless, if you're the Academy, and part of your mission is to rope in Gen X/Y converts to your bloated annual fête, there are at least 30 other celebrities out there with a hotter social-media temperature -- and thus, arguably, a broader influence among the coveted demographics sought with such garbage as Hathaway's "Rump Shaker"/Evita take-off and the other ironic teasers that have made the rounds for the last month. At this rate, Fred Durst could probably bring in more of a crowd than Franco could, and why not? He's a filmmaker who helped launch Jesse Eisenberg, so he's qualified-ish -- plus he's rocking 1.5 million followers. I'm just saying!

Along with Durst, here are 29 more Twitter celebs who could conceivably get the kids -- or at some extra viewers -- into the Academy Awards telecast. Maybe next year:

1. Tyra Banks -- 2,652,930

2. Stephen Fry -- 2,261,729

3. Rainn Wilson -- 2,193,481

4. Larry King -- 1,785,189

5. Eddie Izzard -- 1,783,161

6. Levar Burton -- 1,616,384

7. Fred Durst -- 1,511,891

8. Soleil Moon Frye -- 1,426,056

9. Alyssa Milano -- 1,335,908

10. Audrina Patridge -- 1,297,054

11. Yoko Ono -- 1,236,089

12. Danny DeVito -- 1,049,613

13. Dolly Parton -- 926,191

14. Adam Lambert -- 887,108

15. Simon Pegg -- 860,032

16. Nathan Fillion -- 735,949

17. Kirstie Alley -- 715,628

18. Kelly Osbourne -- 693,140

19. Kathy Grfifin -- 640,378

20. Steve Martin -- 637,841

21. Peter Serafinowicz -- 502,055

22. Rachel Zoe -- 384,507

23. Sofia Vergara -- 362,491

24. Emma Roberts -- 338,017

25. Mike Tyson -- 305,973

26. Josh Groban -- 263,868

27. Kristin Chenoweth -- 254,865

28. Rachelle Lefevre -- 208,765

29. Olivia Munn -- 214,597

30. Mario Lopez -- 176,429