As we embark upon 2013, Jeremiah Warren has pulled together a short video including some of the past year’s hightlights including events in the the Middle East, London Olympics, 2012 presidential election, the Pope’s first tweet, Kate Middleton’s pregnancy, the Mayans and several memorial tweets remembering those we lost.
I decided to take a look at how some of the top presidential contenders were using various social media platforms. Specifically, I set out to aggregate data to include the number Facebook likes, Twitter followers, YouTube views, Foursquare fans, Flickr photos, LinkedIn friends and Google+ circles. Of course, when measuring ultimate campaign success, it’s not just about numbers but I do think that they can be an indication as to whether a candidate is building support or if specific messages are resonating.
Many news stories started online before making their way into “mainstream media” and some merely took on lives of their own as the Web augmented their reach. Here’s my list of the Top 20 in 2009.
According to Mike Allen, who writes Politico.com’s Playbook, the Obama-Biden transition stated on Friday that “No President-elect or President has ever turned the radio address into a multi-media opportunity before.” Actually, that’s not true. All of President George W. Bush’s radio addresses have been available on WhiteHouse.gov, published weekly on the White House Radio page, since January 27, 2001. In addition, President Bush has delivered several LIVE radio addresses, many of which included a webcast, audio, photos and on demand video post event.