Obama victory tweet is most popular ever

A message posted on Twitter in which Barack Obama celebrated his re-election has become the most popular ever after his followers retweeted it more than half a million times.
Before his victory over Republican candidate Mitt Romney had been officially announced the president proclaimed victory by tweeting “Four More Years”.
The tweet, which also featured a picture of Mr Obama embracing his wife Michelle, overtook a Justin Bieber song as the most retweeted message ever, according to BuzzFeed. Mr Obama also thanked his supporters, posting: “This happened because of you. Thank you.”
The picture showing a relieved Mr Obama was also posted on his Facebook account and was shared tens of thousands of times by many of his 32 million fans on that network. Social networking sites have played a major role in the 2012 election as both campaign teams have used the sites to urge the public to get out and vote.
Mr Obama’s team continued to to hammer home its message through the internet well into the dying hours of the election. Late on Tuesday afternoon, the president made an appearance on the social news site Reddit, which allows users to rank information posted according to whether they like it or not.
However, Mr Romney only sent one tweet early on Tuesday evening to his 1.8 million followers, and said nothing thereafter.
In January, Mr Obama’s campaign manager had hinted at the influence of social media, and how they would intend to exploit it in the election, saying: “Our efforts on the ground and on technology will make 2008 look prehistoric.”
The 2012 election has been a record breaking event for Twitter. With more than 31 million election-related tweets on election night it was “the most tweeted about event in US political history,” said Twitter spokeswoman Rachel Horwitz.
The conversation on Twitter hit a peak of 327,452 tweets per minute.
Rob Johnson, campaign manager for Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry’s failed presidential run, said Twitter had changed the future of electioneering.
He said Twitter “changed the dynamic this cycle and will continue to play a bigger role in years to come”.
“We no longer click refresh on websites or wait for the paper boy to throw the news on our porch,” Mr Johnson said. “We go to Twitter and learn the facts before others read it.”
Social media sites were often the first place news broke during the election, as political reporters and campaign staff utilised sites such as Twitter and Facebook.