Barack Obama won 2008’s Presidential election in part by harnessing the power of social media and connecting with a new wave of young voters through Facebook. On Monday night, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo declared Twitter’s imminent dominance for the 2012 campaign.
Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference in California, Costolo was quick to attest that “Candidates that don’t participate on Twitter while the conversation is happening will be left behind.” He pointed to the 14,000 tweets per minute generated from President Obama’s ultimately trivial “Spilled Milk” joke during last week’s State of the Union Address as a prime indicator of the buzz political activity can spawn on Twitter.
There was this collective groan [on Twitter]. … We didn’t have to wait for the pundits to tell us that. Republicans live-tweeted. Tomorrow morning it will be too late to react to what was said the day before.
—Dick Costolo
Much of that can be attributed to Twitter’s standing in the media industry. Costolo was quick to remind interviewer Peter Kafa that Twitter is a platform for conversation—not a single, solitary voice.
“We’re not a media company,” he said. “We’re in the media business. We distribute traffic. We’re one of the largest drivers of traffic to all sorts of other media property.”
That would explain why the company chose not to hold a blackout in protest of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).
“There were 2.9 million tweets that day, Wednesday, about SOPA and PIPA,” Costolo said. “When you’ve got an amplifier like that, you don’t pull the batteries out of the microphone.”
Twitter remains the premier sounding board for anybody with something—or sometimes nothing—to say, be they be armchair pundits or Republican presidential candidates. Costolo spoke briefly on latter, pointing out that Republican candidates are buying ads, promoted Tweets, Trends, and Accounts. “And they’re going to continue to do it,” he said.
The jury’s still out on whether or not such efforts will prove effective. As Buddy Roemer’s brief surge proved in early January, taking advantage of Twitter ultimately comes down to how you connect with your audience.
Photo by Asa Mathat of All Things Digital