Real friends stick with you through good times and bad.
By that measure, many of Mitt Romney’s Facebook friends weren’t real friends at all: In the three days after Romney conceded the presidential election to Barack Obama, more than 50,000 users have unliked his page.
As noted by the San Francisco Chronicle, Romney and Obama were both steadily gaining fans on both Facebook and Twitter through Tuesday evening, though Obama gained about five times as many on both networks.
Soon after Romney conceded the election, though, his social media followers began dropping quickly. Since 11:30am on Tuesday, more than 55,025 users have unliked the Massachusetts governor, at a rate of about 847 an hour.
Romney’s actually gained 17,601 Twitter followers since he lost. That’s odd, and might be more evidence of bot activity more than human interest, considering he hasn’t tweeted since 5:55pm on Election Day—a final relic of a message reads “With your help, we will turn our country around and get America back on the path to prosperity. Please vote today.”
By comparison, Obama has increased his already-impressive social media numbers. He’s got 33,118,444 Facebook likes, which is 804,479 more than he had on election night and, most notably, 20,982,472 more than Romney had at his peak. Obama’s also up to more than 23 million followers, almost a million since election night, possibly helped by setting the world record most-retweeted tweet, twice, that night.
Romney’s updated his Facebook exactly twice since the election: one a photo of the Governor in front of a crowd, simply captioned “Thank you,” and his signature, and a similar photo without any words.
Of course, Facebook being Facebook, there are still plenty of partisan inaccuracies, posted by both Romney supporters and detractors, on both posts.
“I never did like Obama with his pointed ears and narsasistic attitude,” wrote May Kollaritsch. “Remember everyone The antichrist is going to make llots of promises and fool a lot of people.”
“Bush knew about 9-11 before it happened, but he wasn’t impeached,” countered Akira Portis.
Photo via Mitt Romney/Facebook