Mitt Romney's Facebook page. (Screengrab)
Just when he thought his week couldn't get worse, losing GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has begun losing Facebook friends by the score. The Washington Post noticed this sad capper on the former Massachusetts governor's lousy week and took the time to track the rate of loss:
Refresh the page – 12.08 million. Refresh again – 15 less. It would seem the defeated presidential candidate faces a problem unique to the social media age: The race may be over, but on the Internet his bid for president remains as a frozen digital relic.
Then again, as WaPo blogger Caitlin Dewey notes, the Romney campaign basically gave up the social media ghost when it was clear the candidate had lost, with no updates to the Romney Twitter account since Election Day and only an image change on the Facebook page on Wednesday.
Political pundits might find such social media shifts educational. They could indicate both how much the electorate really liked the candidate--maybe not much, in this case--and who they think is on the rise. The Post notes Florida Senator Marco Rubio has seen "a modest jump" in Facebook friends since Tuesday.
Betabeat tested the Post's assertion about Gov. Romney's follower loss and watched his Facebook "likes" diminish by 20 in just five minutes. His Twitter account was in flux, losing about 15 followers in the same amount of time, only to gain ten more moments later.
This may be the way things truly end now, not with a bang, but with a thousand unfollows.