Obamaâs Twitter Town Hall By the Numbers [STATS]

TechGuy · Jul 7, 2011

Behind-the-scenes details are starting to pour in after the #AskObama Town Hall event earlier this afternoon, where Twitter users got to pepper the President with 140-character questions.

According to both Simply Measured and TwitSprout, more than 70,000 tweets were sent during President Obama’s first Twitter town hall.

The most frequent points of discussion in these tweets, which included either the #AskObama hashtag or mentioned the @townhall username were jobs, the economy, housing and the legalization of marijuana.

The jobs, economy and housing questions make sense in the context of the town hall parameters, but the mention of marijuana legalization might surprise some.

According to TwitSprout’s #AskObama Twitter Dashboard, the most retweeted question asked: “Would you consider legalizing marijuana to increase revenue and save tax dollars by freeing up crowded prisons, court rooms.” The President did not address that tweet.

When it comes to the location of tweets, the majority came from major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, with the most coming out of Washington D.C..

Check out more statistics from the folks at Simply Measured.

Tweet Volume

Throughout the event, the number of tweets stayed steady.

Data from Simply Measured.

Conversation Topics

The bulk of the conversation on Twitter focused on jobs, debt and taxes.

Data from Simply Measured.

Follower Growth

Most of the growth in followers to Twitter's new @townhall account took place in the hours leading up to the event. During the town hall itself, growth was steady.

Data from Simply Measured.

Tweet Location

Big cities led the conversation, with 14% of tweets coming from Washington D.C. alone.

Data from Simply Measured.

More About: #askobama, barack obama, obama, politics, president obama, stats, twitter, twitter town hall

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