I’m not saying he bought them, but Romney’s follower stats have taken a sharp and sudden rise since Friday 5PM EST. Could it be a weekend blitz? Twitter noticed. Personally, I think this is too obvious for the Romney campaign to have done. It’s more likely somebody is trying to plant a story to embarrass him. The question then is: who controls 100,000+ Twitter accounts like this? Time will tell. In the meantime, here are the numbers:
Data Last Updated July 23, 1:20PM EST
Romney was gaining around 3000-4000 new followers per day for the past month. Yesterday he acquired 23,926 new followers and is climbing well over 75,000 today. The hourly stats make it pretty clear where this began.
The red and orange lines are Romney’s mentions and retweets each hour, so you can see no corresponding increase in other metrics. If anything, those have trended downwards. If you aren’t convinced yet, look at the 10 best days over the past 500 for Romney getting new followers.
It’s hard to stay on top of this data as Romney’s total followers have increased over 8000 in the time it took me to compile this. I will try to keep it updated for you all. See the 10 most retweeted Twitter reactions below.
“Hey, fake Twitter followers are people, my friend.” – Mitt Romney #MoreFakeMitt
— Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke) July 21, 2012
The most despicable thing about Romney buying his Twitter followers is that they’re from China. Didn’t even buy American. #MoreFakeMitt
— S. Douglas (@blackmagpie69) July 21, 2012
BREAKING: 425,000 of @MittRomney‘s Twitter followers all claim to “live” in a P.O. box in the Cayman Islands #MoreFakeMitt
— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) July 21, 2012
It’s wrong to accuse @MittRomney of buying followers. He’s really CREATING JOBS for pornbots. You’d know that if you were a job creator.
— Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat) July 21, 2012
Mitt Romney averaged 3,600 new followers per day this month. He’d gained 87,700 followers in the past 20 hours. bit.ly/NJvRx0
— Election Analysis (@2012twit) July 21, 2012
Romney pledges to create 11M new jobs in his first term: “Including 10.95M jobs where you get paid to follow me on Twitter” #MoreFakeMitt
— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) July 21, 2012
That awkward moment when people notice @MittRomney has been buying followers.
— Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat) July 21, 2012
President Obama has over 17 million followers on Twitter.Mitt can’t handle it so buys fake followers.#MoreFakeMitt
— Another Obama Mama (@ObamaOyeah) July 21, 2012
Mitt Romney: “I am NOT buying followers on Twitter. I just have an agenda that’s very popular with spammers and bots.” #MoreFakeMitt
— Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat) July 21, 2012
Michele Bachmann warns that thousands of @MittRomney‘s fake Twitter followers may also be fake members of Muslim Brotherhood #MoreFakeMitt
— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) July 21, 2012
Update from BuzzFeed: Romney Campaign: We Don’t Buy Twitter Followers
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And they look to me to be porn bots or tweeple.
5 PM EST, that would be what, about 8 in the morning Beijing time?
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