McCain Loses Election and 300 Facebook Friends

If losing a presidential election was not enough, John McCain's Facebook friend count is also sinking like the stock market. This dramatic abandonment could be for a number of reasons:

1. People don't like to be associated with losers
2. People don't like to be friends with old creepy guys on Facebook
3. McCain couldn't figure out social media so he just paid Facebook to pad his stats until the
election was over
4. People really just don't like him

For those of you who still don't see the value of social media check these Facebook stats out. Let's use McCain as an example of when keepin it real goes wrong....

• Preliminary data shows an increase of more than 20% in activity on the site on election day vs. last Tuesday (measured by page views).
• More than 5.44 million people clicked the “I voted” button on Facebook to tell their friends they voted.
• McCain: 625k supporters on Facebook
• Obama: 2.5 million supporters - the most popular page on Facebook (no. 2 is Michael Phelps with 1.6 million)
• Since 9/5 McCain has added more than 330k fans and Obama has added more than 750k fans.
• On Facebook, Obama added more than 18k supporters Sunday night, more than 25k Monday night, and added more than 40k supporters on election day. That is the largest single day of growth we have on record.
• McCain lost about 300 Facebook supporters on election day.
• Total election-related virtual gifts given: more than 2 million
• Shortly after midnight on Nov 4, about 1 million people used the Causes application to simultaneously set their Facebook status with a unified message to remind their friends to vote. This kicked off one of the largest online rallies in history, with currently over 1.5 million people participating and growing quickly. So far, 4.5 million status messages have been posted. It can be seen at www.causes.com/election.
• In October, we partnered with Rock the Vote to register more than 50k.
• In the days leading up to Nov. 4, we were averaging about 200k wall posts per day related to the election. On election day, wall posts mentioning Obama surged to more than 1.1 million and those mentioning McCain went to 280k. There were more than 2 million total wall posts related to the election on election day.
• We also launched an election day event to remind and motivate people to vote. In just two weeks more than 2.4 million people have RSVP’d that they’re coming

Political Marketing Back to the People

In the wake of one of the most important presidential elections I wonder how McCain and Obama are going to snatch the last undecided votes. McCain has criticized Obama on his excessive advertising spending while Obama complains about all the negative driven ads that McCain runs. Which strategy will win? Who cares?

The real marketing battle is happening outside of the two delegates ad budgets. What's interesting is what everyone else is saying and doing. Between Obama Girl, Tina Faye as Governor Palin, Sarah Silverman and The Great Schlep and other celebrities getting politically involved, this election has gone beyond any traditional political marketing strategy and been brought back to grassroots influence. With the power of the web fueling the most talked about elections in history, I'm seeing the best action come from the people themselves. Who would have guessed that YouTube would become such a powerful political tool. Check out some of these popular political videos....