Romney’s Facebook page losing fans every second
3November 12, 2012 by kelseylian
This isn’t really an “additional resource” per say, but I wanted to post about this Slate article I saw today about how Mitt Romney’s Facebook page is losing fans every time you hit “refresh.”
I know Kelly is doing Facebook for her media project, so I’d be interested in her take on this as well. Right now, when I just checked, the page was at 12,038,430 likes, which is about 2,000 less than in the article, posted 4 hours ago.
The Washington Post’s Caitlin Dewey calculated on Friday that the erstwhile candidate wasshedding Facebook fans at a clip of 593 per hour. (That’s 10 per minute, one every six seconds).
I don’t know if you saw, but the Obama page had the most liked Facebook status update of all time after he won the election on Tuesday. It’s an interesting thought, in the world of Facebook and Twitters, what losing candidates will chose to do with their pages afterward. Do they keep those fans, posting updates or stories? Do they abandon them altogether? No one can really say.
I’m really interested to see how Romney continues to use social media, if he does at all. Will he post anything else, will he use it to run for office again? Will it become more about his personal life? It’s hard to know.
But, maybe that Romney face tattoo wasn’t such a good idea…
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That’s interesting about the facebook likes. I just tried it and Romney’s likes are still going down, and I checked Obama’s and his are going up. That most like status was interesting as well. Just how much will social media effect future elections? Obama is winning and has the most social media support. Will this youth support continue to influence future elections? With so much power in social media, maybe Romney is just gonna disappear under the mounds and mounds of facebook posts and hashtags that move on to the next new thing every minute.
This also connects to your blog, Charlie, about how Twitter is the number one social media site that spreads celebrity rumors. What is the limit on these rumors, and how do they even come about? Bill Nye had multiple rumors about him, maybe because he is not really technology-oriented when it comes to social networking. The Obama rumor is interesting, considering Obama is a top “celebrity” supporter of technology in our time. I’m just thinking that it’s because of these celebrities use of their Facebook’s or social media, that rumors about them are spread. I wonder what the next word regarding Romney will be, depending on what he makes of his Facebook now that he lost the election.
I have also noticed the difference of social media usage before and after the election. Romney tweeted 9 times on election day (Nov 6) and throughout the week prior to election day he tweeted an average of about 5 times every day. Since November 6, he tweeted only once on November 12 “From the bottom of our hearts, Ann and I thank you for your support, prayers, efforts, & vote. We are forever grateful to every one of you.”
I wonder if Romney will still use twitter to promote change in the government. Although I do not agree with Romney’s beliefs and policies, I think that he should still use his influence to make a change in the country for what he thinks is right. The fact that he isn’t using his influence on Twitter (still with an impressive 1,743,400 followers) to share information in an attempt to inform the people on what he thinks is important so he can still make a difference, even while not being in office.