Facebook and Twitter Launch Dueling Election Tools

Posted on August 27, 2012

Facebook and Twitter now have dueling election tools that attempt to track what the users of the social media sites are feeling and saying about the 2012 candidates.

Twitter's election tool can be found at election.twitter.com. President Obama currently has about ten times as many followers as Mitt Romney, but Romney has a higher score on the Twitter Political Index. The tool also includes recent news and a historical index. The tool is powered by Topsy. You can aslo follow the @gov Twitter for regular updates.

Facebook partnered with CNN for its political tool, called Facebook-CNN Election Insights. Like Twitter's tool, the Facebook tool attempts to estimate people's sentiments towards the candidates. It also lets you break down the data by U.S. state, gender and age group.