Viral 'Obama loses Twitter followers' chart is junk reporting

[Newsjock]

http://apple.copydesk.org/2011/07/29/so-why-is-this-unimpressive-chart-impressing-so-many-people-tonight/

The story is that President Barack Obama‘s unprecedented Twitter campaign today — in which his operation pretty much flooded the interwebs with updates about the debate and listing Congressional twitter accounts state-by-state — resulted in a huge number of folks unfollowing the presidential account.



... Sorry, my fellow tweeps. But I don’t see why you’re retweeting this story tonight. That may look like an impressive chart at first glance. But please notice: The baseline is not set to zero.

According to Simply Measured, the president lost nearly 37,000 followers today via Twitter. But that was among more than 9.4 million followers to begin with.

Do the math. That’s right around a 0.4 percent decrease. Not surprising at all, given the complete torrent of stuff his folks sent out via that account. But not really a huge number.

[Vanje]

1. Obama approval at an all time high

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1610581

[Lil Missy]

2. That's a spit in the ocean. Probably that many die every day.

[AsahinaKimi]

3. He doesn't do his own tweets anymore..

Nor does he probably read them... I am guessing that people figure, "Whats the point?"