“Four more years” accompanied by a sweet twitpic of President Obama hugging the First lady Michelle, this morning made Twitter record as the most retweeted post. Obama’s tweet came after it became clear he had won his re-election bid against Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012
As of midday (Kenyan time) his post had been retweeted over 500,000 times. It took only 22 minutes to beat the previous record held by Justin Bieber.
The same picture of a relieved and happy-looking Obama hugging his wife appeared on the president’s Facebook account — and was shared tens of thousands of times by some of his 32 million fans.
Social networks have emerged as key tools in the months-long US presidential campaign, with both Obama and Romney staging major pushes on these popular platforms to draw in supporters and get them to go out and vote.
But while Romney has increased his presence hugely on social media compared to 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Obama is seen as having retained the upper hand from his successful online campaign four years ago.
Already in January, Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina had hinted at a huge social media campaign in an interview with Newsweek.
“Our efforts on the ground and on technology will make 2008 look prehistoric,” he was quoted as saying.
Even as election day drew to a nail-biting close late Tuesday afternoon, Obama made a surprise appearance on social news website Reddit, where he made a last-ditch plea for more votes.
