Social Media the winner in US Presidential election campaign

The photograph of US President Obama embracing his wife Michelle with the words “four more years” has set new records as the most liked and re-tweeted post in social media history, The Guardian reports.

Obama posted the image at 0416 GMT, effectively claiming victory over Mitt Romney in the US presidential race. Since then it has been re-tweeted more than 700,000 times. More than 3.23 million people have liked the image on Facebook, with more than 400,000 shares; today, more than 100,000 people ‘liked’ it every hour.

The unprecedented viral success of the post confirmed the role that social media played in the US presidential campaign, and abroad. In the past, election night ended when the losing candidate phoned the winner to concede defeat, with news of the “phone call” promptly leaked to news media.

Obama pinged his tweet soon after the television networks had called victory for him in the crucial swing state of Ohio. It was another two hours and 20 minutes before the president appeared in person and gave his formal victory address to ecstatic supporters in Chicago.

Another tweet, sent from Obama’s official account just before the “hug” image, also clocked up massive traffic, with almost 200,000 re-tweets. It read: “This happened because of you. Thank you.” There were more than 31 million election-related tweets on Tuesday night, making election night “the most tweeted about event in U.S. political history,” Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz told Reuters.