romney

Twitter Political Index measures 'feelings' about Obama, Romney

Twitter is getting into the candidate sentiment business, parsing the content of 2 million tweets a week to capture what the company calls the "nuances of public opinion" about the presidential hopefuls.

The newly launched Twitter Political Index offers a daily tally of Twitter users' "feelings" about President Obama and his presumptive Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, the company says.

"Each day, the Index evaluates and weighs the sentiment of Tweets mentioning Obama or Romney relative to the more than 400 million Tweets sent on all other topics. For example, a score of 73 for a … Read more

Obama, Romney launch campaign-enhancing iOS apps

With the presidential elections fast approaching, both Mitt Romney and President Obama are taking their campaigns mobile. The Obama for America app concentrates primarily on distributing President Obama's policy stances, as well as news and events.

Users of the Obama for America app can also find useful information about voting rules and regulations on a state-by-state basis and information on volunteering to help the Obama campaign.

Romney's app takes a different approach, largely marketed as a way for users to keep up-to-date with the Romney campaign's decision on its vice president candidate, hence the app's moniker, … Read more

Chirpify: Tweet if you want to give money to Obama or Romney

Chirpify, the company that essentially turns tweets into money, is getting into politics.

The company launched its "Tweet a Presidential Candidate" Web site today. The site lets donors give and track donations to the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns with a tweet.

Chris Teso, Chirpify's CEO, said the 4-month-old company sees Twitter as the perfect platform for fundraising. He said Chirpify recognized social media's influential role during the 2008 presidential election when the Obama's campaign took advantage of social media for a grassroots approach.

"Now it's exponentially magnified this year," … Read more

Romney pet plays part in alleged e-mail hack

Pets have proven problematic for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He has been widely (and rightfully) pilloried for putting the family pooch on the top of the car during a long vacation roadtrip. And now someone is claiming to have hacked into his personal Web-based e-mail account by guessing the name of his favorite pet.

It remains unclear if "Seamus," the Irish Setter whose kennel he tied to the top of the car, was his favored pet. If so, I'd hate to see how he treated less preferential pets. Whatever the word was, someone is claiming to … Read more

Politwoops publishes all politicians' deleted tweets

Ever wanted to know the deleted tweets of President Obama, Republican nominee Mitt Romney, or even your local congressperson? Well, a new site called Politwoops launched today that aims to collect and preserve all of those tweets.

"From minor typos to major gaffes, Politwoops is now there to offer a searchable window into what they hoped you didn't see," Nicko Margolies, communications coordinator at the Sunlight Foundation, which created Politwoops, wrote in a blog post.

Granted, most of the deleted tweets are not that juicy and the majority seeming to have been nixed for small typos. However, … Read more

Mitt Romney's iPhone app spells 'America' incorrectly

Have you heard the news? Mitt Romney wants to be the President of the United States of "Amercia."

The Republican candidate's campaign yesterday launched a free iPhone app called "With Mitt," allowing people to snap photos and then superimpose one of 14 messages atop them for posting on social networks or e-mailing to friends.

There's just one problem: one of the messages that can be superimposed onto a photo promotes "A Better Amercia," rather than America.

As one might expect, the Twittersphere exploded last night with news of Romney's app mistake. … Read more

Romney uses targeted Google ads to tweak Obama

If you needed any further reason to alert you to the early arrival of the silly season, Politico is reporting how the Romney campaign is taking advantage of interest in President Obama's commencement speech at Barnard today to game the system to its advantage.

When users search Google for "barnard commencement" in the area of New York City around Barnard and Columbia, the first ad that shows up is a link to Romney's website titled, "Obama's Wasteful Spending." The ad is targeted just to the zip code in which the colleges are located, … Read more

President Obama adds Pinterest to his social networks

How many people know the recipe for President Barack Obama's family chili? Before today, probably not many. But now anyone on the social-networking site Pinterest can find out how many onions, ground beef, and kidney beans the recipe takes, and then pin it to their own profile if they like.

Obama has added the popular virtual pinboard site Pinterest to his social-networking trove and today his filled-out profile page with eight boards and 44 pins was made public. According to tech news site Mashable, the Obama campaign set up the account a few weeks ago, but there wasn't … Read more

Santorum goes all Apple 1984 with new ad

I never expected to write "Santorum," "Apple," and "1984" together in the same blog post, but here you go.

Apple fans (and anybody else even vaguely familiar with the history of commercials) will recognize a whole lot of vintage Macintosh-inspired marketing coming from Santorum's latest anti-Mitt Romney ad.

The video is titled "Rebellion." There's no doubt the Santorum ad is quoting from the original Apple endeavor. It features marching people wearing gray while authority figures bark slogans in the background and Romney's talking head glitches out like Max Headroom.

Instead of a woman in short-shorts with a big hammer, you get a woman hauling a "Santorum for President" political sign that she flips over to display a video of Santorum sharing his conservative views.

Santorum does manage to squeeze in a quick clip of some baby-hugging near the end. This is a political ad, after all.… Read more

Zuckerberg likes Romney? Really?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be a man who shoots animals so that he can eat, but surely many would imagine that his politics might tip slightly toward the Democratic side.

Until the last 24 hours, that is.

For the site's faithful suddenly got the impression that Zuckerberg was a keen liker of Mitt Romney.

Tech CEOs who wear jeans and look innocent are not supposed to be Republicans. They're supposed to be liberals who let youths skateboard around the office, while making billions of dollars.

How might this clear misunderstanding have occurred? Well, Zuckerberg decided that he … Read more