Thursday, October 4, 2012

Twitter is blowing up with political comments

Just when people are saying that social media does nothing for their business, a great stat about how effective it is blows that theory out of the water. Last night’s presidential debate was the biggest political event EVER for Twitter.

While making a statement about the debates does nothing for my business, or probably yours, it does show the impact that this powerful medium is making. According to Twitter, there were 10.3 million tweets in the 90 minutes during the debate. That is a lot of tweeting!

The most tweetable (if that’s a word) moment was when Mr. Romney asked to move on to a new debate topic. Moderator Jim Lehrer responded a cheeky “Let’s not.” There were 158,690 tweets per minute in that flurry of tweeting. I love it!

Seeing the full impact of Twitter gives me great ammo to use when I talk to people about social media. Of course, my clients’ small businesses are not going to generate that kind of traffic. But, knowing that millions of people are using this social medium at all hours of the day and night, demonstrates the powerful presence that Twitter has on today’s society.

Former VP Al Gore made comments about President Obama’s performance being altered by the altitude in Denver. He was mocked world-wide for his statements and is, as of this writing, still trending. Twitter has been buzzing about it all day.

Of course, Facebook was no slouch either. Many of my personal friends were commenting throughout the course of the debate. I’m sure that was happening all over the country and beyond. I’ve notice that a lot of people resent any political comments on their Facebook pages and have limited comments by friends who constantly talk politics.

A couple weeks ago, I was eating at a restaurant and the waiter happened to mention that he actually deactivated his Facebook account until after the election. While that seemed a little extreme to me, I can understand it. Personally, I like to keep comments about politics and religion to myself. But, I like to read what everyone has to say, if only to see on which side of the fence they stand.

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