Romney crosses million mark on Twitter
Three days after accepting his party's nomination for
president, Mitt Romney on Sunday crossed the one-million mark in Twitter
followers.
Saturday night, he fell just 3,000 followers short of
threshold, and around 2 p.m. ET on Sunday, Romney posted that he now had 1million.
President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is well ahead of
Romney, coming in with more than 19.2 million followers as of Sunday afternoon.
The White House has made an aggressive push to appeal to Twitter users. The
president occasionally tweets from the account himself, and he has taken parts
in Twitter town halls in the last year.
In his tweet, Romney made sure to point out that his
followers were "active," after some high-profile figures, including
the GOP presidential nominee, have been accused of beefing up their follower
list with fake names purchased from "follower agencies." Romney's
campaign, however, has denied buying inauthentic names.
Last year, Newt Gingrich especially faced questions over
his Twitter account. In August 2011, the former House speaker had 1.3 million
Twitter followers, while none his fellow GOP presidential opponents came close
to 80,000, including Romney.
A New York based search analytics company PeekYou, said
their algorithm results showed only eight percent of the candidate's followers
were "humans" and claimed his real follower count was closer to 106,000.
The firm excludes businesses and brand accounts as "real people."
Gingrich's campaign maintained the account has higher
numbers because Twitter added him to its "Suggested User List." The
feature recommends certain names as a way to get new Twitter users started in
compiling their favorite people on the microblogging site.
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