Barack Obama dominates Twitter

Sen. Barack Obama has already proven himself to be the most popular presidential candidate on the Internet, what with his more than 1.3 million Facebook supporters and lofty aims of 2 million online donors. Now the presumptive Democratic nominee is not only outshining other politicians on the Internet, but also the very stars of social networking--Obama has just overtaken Kevin Rose's spot as the most followed person on Twitter, according to Twitterholic.

By Twitterholic's last count, Obama stands at 56,661 followers, compared with Rose's 56,442. Obama also has the second highest number of friends on Twitter--59,338--according to Twitterholic, which calculates individual statistics for each Twitter user a couple of times a day. The candidate's Twitter page offers up such rousing tidbits of news as "Holding a town hall on economic security in St. Petersburg, FL."

But for all those followers, there just may be a few who don't feel sufficiently networked with the candidate. For those who want to be in-the-know about all things Obama--like his VP choice--a millisecond before millions of others, the candidate reminds us to sign up for his text message alerts.

[Spartan_458]

That's very, very sad.

[sanenazok]

56K followers...how's that for insignificant! Doesn't Ms. Spears also use Twitter? Why doesn't he post his plan for providing healthcare: creating a single payor system while all other industrialized nations are moving away from this idea. Obama's entire system is covered using about four bullet points. It's perfect for TWITTER!!!! Also, throw on another layer of bureaucracy on the current system (that makes it BETTER apparently) called the "National Health Insurance Exchange." Probably as efficient as Microsoft Exchange only run by Chicago-style political machine.

[limefan913]

@sanenazok: I have an idea, why don't you look at his official website that DOES have all those details. Nice try, come again next time.

[druekataoka]

Hi Stephanie--
This is interesting. We just did a video interview with Craig Newmark where he talks about Obama's use of the technologies of democracy. You might like to see it:

http://www.valleyzen.com/2008/08/13/craig-newmark-obama-john-mccain/

[Miramax42]

This may not be super interesting, per say, but its definitely ridiculous. A guy made a petition to make himself Obama's VP: www.makemeyourvp.com

[keith.r.benedict]

Other than "slow news day", I can't figure out why this is newsworthy other than an attempt at keeping Obama's name in the news.

[Seaspray0]

Remember when the beatles performed on the Ed Sulivan Show? All those screaming girls had children who grew up to be reporters following Obama. It's true!