John Borkowski, May 11, 2012
As we all know by now, social media empowers us all to become reporters of our own. Oftentimes we discuss the news and major announcements, and even stimulate buzz for a particular product and brand. President Barack Obama has grabbed the media’s attention after officially announcing his support for same-sex marriage on ABC’s Good Morning America.
While the media has gone in to a frenzy to report on this major evolution in his presidency, millions of other reporters surfaced on Twitter- that’s right, us. Perhaps one of the most intriguing considerations is the fact that there is now an official “Retweeting President Obama” counter that states the amount of times the President has been retweeted on this topic.
Leave it to social media to cultivate a statement and generate its own buzz. In fact, Twitter reported that there were greater than 7,300 tweets per minute immediately after the President tweeted “Same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
Twitter published the follow analytical graph showing the explosive growth in tweets per minute (TPM) that emerged shortly following the announcement. Image is courtesy of Twitter, Inc.
The President knows exactly what he is doing by moving the conversation to Twitter. Back in 2008, the President successfully leveraged social media while on the campaign trail. The fact of the matter is social media now provides everyone a platform to stimulate buzz and snowball information amongst our contacts. This move is a strategic decision by the President and it seems to be working in his favor.
