President Obama’s Social Media Experiment: FAIL

President Obama’s Social Media Experiment: FAIL

by Megan Dumpe Kenworthy | July 29, 2011

President Obama's @BarackObama Twitter account has reportedly lost 10,000 followers after a barrage of 100+Tweets overwhelmed followers in a matter of hours.

Friday Morning Obama and his 2012 campaign staff decided it would be a good idea to put pressure on the GOP by Tweeting out the Twitter handles of Congressional Republicans, saying for example, "If you live in Missouri, ask@RoyBlunt to support a bipartisan compromise to the debt crisis."

By late afternoon, you could tell it wasn't sitting well with followers. "You clogging up my Twitter feed is definitely not making me want to vote for you," one typed, while tons of others begged it all to stop.

It even came to this: "PURE GENIUS! INSTRUCTIONS: Go to the @BarackObama twitter account. Click 'block and report for spam.' Then, RT this. "

Epic FAIL.

I actually don't think that the loss of 10,000 followers is a big deal. After all, he has over 9 million followers! I was on Twitter when the barage of tweets were going out - it was a little cluttering - and I would bet that many people blocked/unfollowed him temporarily just to weed out those "repeating" tweets.

Re: the method, social media, I am a big believer in the power of social media so for me its a