Obama beats up Romney, on Facebook that is

US President Barack Obama has laid a sucker punch at his chief rival in the race to the White House Mitt Romney by adding of more than one-million “likes” on his Facebook campaign page this week, according to tracking website “Inside Facebook”.

Started in September, this shows the largest number of once-off “likes” for either of the two candidates. To date, the largest single day spike in “likes” was 189 000 for Obama. Paid messages, or “sponsored” posts, can help to boost visibility on Facebook, yet the Obama campaign management has given no indication of any such strategy.

“There are a variety of ways to get spikes on Facebook, from contests to really being active to events happening in public,” the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Alan Rosenblatt said. “You can pay relatively small amounts of money to push out your message not just to friends. When you pay for a promoted post you can target your friends, or you can target friends of friends to reach out to new people”. Both candidates are using Facebook “quite effectively” Rosenblatt also said.

Currently, President Obama has 30.6-million “likes” on Facebook and 20.7-million followers on Twitter, and is much more prominent on YouTube, Pinterest and Google+. Romney on the other hand has 8.8-million followers on Facebook and 1.3 million on Twitter. What has to be remembered is that Obama has been in the public and social media eye for a much longer period than Romney.