Barack Obama Loses 34,000 Twitter Followers After Debt Crisis Tweets

Posted on July 30, 2011

The New York Daily News reports that President Obama lost around 40,000 followers when he turned to Twitter to discuss the debt crisis. Twitter Counter's stats page shows President Obama lost about 34,000 followers, but started gaining followers again today.

President Obama used his popular Twitter account to encourage users to sent Tweets to Texas Republican reps. He sent out lots and lots of tweets with the Twitter addresses of Republican lawmakers.

Pointing out the lost followers makes for an easy, fun attack for Republicans. Lost followers are to be expected when a Twitter account that doesn't tweet very frequently suddenly starts delivering lots of tweets. People don't like their Twitter streams cluttered and they may be starting to realize President Obama is going to tweet at them more frequently with the 2012 campaign nearing full throttle.

Mediaite calls the lost followers a "tempest in a twitter teapot." It is true that the Twitter followers President Obama lost were a fraction of his 9.4 million followers. It is also true that his Klout score increase. However, it would be wrong to say there was no cost at all in these lost followers. They were clearly regular Twitter users, which makes them more valuable than people who have not logged into Twitter in months or years. So the mass tweeting did come with a cost. Whether or not it was worth the cost or not is up to the political pundits.