According to Nielsen Online's BuzzMetrics Service, Brad Pitt and Kate Winslet have garnered the most buzz so far compared with other nominees in the Best Actor and Best Actress categories with 47% and 46% of buzz volume, respectively.  Brad Pitt has more than double the amount of pre-show buzz compared with Mickey Rourke (22%), who follows Pitt in the buzz ranking, and nearly triples buzz volume compared to Sean Penn (17%).  Pre-show buzz seems to be a tighter race among the Best Actress nominees as Angelina Jolie slightly trails Winslet with 43% buzz volume.

Percent of Blog Buzz Volume for Best Actor and Actress Nominees within Nominee Discussion, January 1-February 15, 2009

Buzz volume spiked for this year's best actor and best actress Oscar nominees on January 12^th following the 2009 telecast of the Golden Globes and again on January 22^nd as the nominations for the 81^st Academy Awards were announced.   The most notable spikes in online chatter were driven by Kate Winslet after winning two Golden Globes for her leading role in "Revolutionary Road" and supporting role in "The Reader" and Brad Pitt, as consumers discuss whether he will take home an Oscar for Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" after losing to Mickey Rourke at the Golden Globes.

Pre-Oscar Internet Buzz Trend for Best Actor and Best Actress Nominees, Among All Blogs

Other Online-related notes on the Oscars from Nielsen:

• Online interest in the Oscars is up significantly this year, with unique visitors to oscars.movies.yahoo.com growing 462 percent year-over-year, from 832,000 in January 2008 to 4.7 million in January 2009. The top page driving traffic was a blog post about Angelina Jolie's unusual fashion choice to wear her dress backwards for the SAG Awards.
• Oscar.com also enjoyed double digit growth in January, from 471,000 unique visitors last year to 1.0 million in 2009.
• Collectively, the movie Web sites of the films nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress drew 450,000 unique visitors in January. Last year the Oscars were still under the cloud of the writers' strike, which may account for increased interest this year.