Why the Obama and Romney fake Twitter accounts are important

by Donna Anderson, examiner.com
August 27th 2012

An August 27, 2012 article at FirstCoastNews.com reports that President Obama has almost 19 million Twitter followers and 70% of them are fake or inactive. Mashable.com says that Mitt Romney has far fewer followers, only 900,000, and 46% are considered fake or inactive. Why are these statistics considered newsworthy? It depends on who you're asking.

While most news articles don't come right out and say it, they all include some small paragraph that says Obama and Romney both deny buying Twitter followers. Even if they are, it's not like they're the only ones, but now you think this is important because you read it on a news site.

Let's face it, digging the dirt in the social networks is big news these days, especially since Facebook went public and the investors actually started paying attention to the numbers. So, in the end, these Twitter numbers are just another piece of political fuel for the fire and, more important, they'll help to distract you from the real issues, like unemployment and the national deficit.

But, if the candidates did buy Twitter followers, then those numbers are newsworthy for two reasons:

They didn't do their research before they spent the money

Depending on your source, you can buy one or two thousand Twitter followers for $10. But everyone knows (well, apparently not everyone) there's no guarantee what you're going to get for your money. With a little market knowledge and research into your sources, though, you can improve your odds.

Do the math and you'll see that Obama wasted around $65,000 and Romney wasted around a thousand bucks.

These are the people who are asking us to put them into office, promising that if we do they'll balance the budget, put everyone back to work, and eliminate a national deficit that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $16 trillion. Yet they can't even effectively spend $65,000 to purchase a few million alive and kicking Twitter followers.

If these candidates and their advisers had done even a modicum of research they would have known that Twitter and Facebook are riddled with fake and inactive accounts, just look at all the headlines Facebook has been making lately. Heck, you and I know it and we're just average Americans.

They really don't care about their followers

It's one thing to spend $65,000 on Twitter followers but it's quite another to spend that kind of money and then not even know what to do with those accounts. Obviously, if these guys had been using Twitter to socialize, as it was intended, they would have known long before now that all those accounts were fake or inactive.

Apparently Obama and Romney are sharing advisers with those Wall Street executives that think all you have to do is post a few links and you'll start raking in the dough. It's just not that easy, folks.

Twitter, like Facebook, is a social network which means you have to get in there and interact. Charlie Sheen has almost 18 million followers because he actually connects with people. He sends personalized Tweets all day long. He retweets for people all day long. He engages his followers all day long.

The fact that these candidates have so many fake and inactive followers suggests that they're not really making an attempt to engage their followers. With numbers that high they're each bound to have bogus followers but if they were actually getting into the trenches and connecting those percentages would be a lot lower.

And if Obama can't connect with 19 million people and Romney can't connect with 900,000, on a platform that's as easy to use as Twitter? Well, it kinda makes you wonder how they're going to be able to connect with an entire nation once they get elected.

Original Page: http://www.examiner.com/article/why-the-obama-and-romney-fake-twitter-accounts-are-important

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