Hasta La Gadget!

Twitter was overrun with hashtags and drunk punditry as the returns form presidential election came in last night. We were there, and so was pretty much all of America. Or you’d think so when you look at the freaking numbers. Reuters reports that democracy-loving tweeters fired off some 31 million election related messages last night. More »

US president Barack Obama wasn’t just clinching his second term in office yesterday, he was also setting a new Twitter record for the most retweets. The message – “Four more years” and a photo of Obama embracing wife Michelle – quickly smashed through the half-million retweets mark, and at time of writing is at over 630,000, collecting over 200,000 favorites along the way.

It’s not the only popular message from the re-elected president in recent hours. A slightly earlier tweet – “This happened because of you. Thank you” – is approaching the quarter-million point in retweets.

In contrast, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has left his Twitter account update free since before the election results were confirmed. Obama’s social networking presence has been cited by some as a key factor in how Democrats spread the party’s message, accruing over 22m followers versus Romney’s less than 2m.

The most-retweets record had previously been held by Justin Bieber, whose late-September message of “RIP Avalanna. i love you” currently sits at more than 220,000 retweets. Twitter’s system only counts those retweets triggered through its official system, rather than with the old-style “RT” prefix, but even accounting for some wiggle-room it’s clear Obama is ahead of the Canadian singer.

Obama sets Twitter record is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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If there’s ever an occasion to have a one night stand on Twitter, this is it. It’s the night of the 2012 Presidential Election, and a few key people are sure to have something to say as the evening unfolds. Here’s a look at the names we’ll be checking over the next few hours. Try them out, and—who knows—you might just stick with them for the next four years. More »

The general consensus amongst these hopeful people who are wondering why they can’t vote on their smartphones: It’s 2012 and their phones can pretty much do everything so why can’t they vote on it? Or if they can’t use their phones, how about voting on their iPads? And if not their iPads why not their Xboxes? How will these people juggle Halo 4 and Election Day? They need answers! More »

This is something that has always been obvious to me, but it’s nice to see some actual data on it: if you want to get a higher chance of retweets, your tweet’s length should be 71 to 100 characters. More »