Saturday, December 8, 2012

Election 2012: How Social Media Will Convert Followers into Voters


·         By Chandra Steele
 January 20, 2012

Poli-twits

There are far more than 140 characters in politics, but to keep track of the ones that are running for president, voters can follow them on Twitter. 2012twit.com polls Twitter stats on followers, @ mentions, and retweets for those seeking the GOP nomination. It also word clouds the @ mentions for President Obama, the GOP candidates as a group, and Congress. 2012twit.com is the work of father and son team Adam (a one-time overseer of Slashdot) and Zach Green. The Washington Post has taken on a similar task with @MentionMachine, which stacks up Twitter mentions against media mentions for all the candidates. As for how the candidates stack up on Twitter, Newt Gingrich leads the pack with followers (about 1.4 million followers to second-place Mitt Romney's 260,000 or so), something he put to his advantage by announcing his candidacy via a tweet in May.

How many real people there are behind those accounts has been in question, however. The Huffington Post took a look at the numbers with social media measurement company Colligent and no matter how many followers Gingrich has, engagement is dangerously low.

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