It’s U.S. election night and, as you’d expect given these digital times, a large portion of the discussion and debate around Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s race for the White House happened on the Web and, indeed, via social media. In what is testament to Obama’s reach around the Interwebz, a tweet from the newly reelected President has just become the most retweeted message on Twitter ever.
Here it is and, as Buzzfeed notes, it shattered the existing record (held by Justin Bieber) within just 22 minutes of being posted.
Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012
The tweet hit 226,249 retweets around midnight EST and as of 12:23 AM (EST) — the current time of writing — that figure has reached an incredible 342,660.
Twitter removed the limit from its retweet counter — which used to top out at ’50+’ — earlier this year; it would be quite something if the tweet could reach 1 million retweets.
Although, of course, this number counts Twitter’s inbuilt retweet function only, and not the likely thousands of ‘manual’ retweets,as below. For the record, they are my personal choice since they allow for comment and analysis in addition to the original message.
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Lovely picture “@barackobama: Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…”
— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) November 7, 2012
Just want to add to the record number of retweets. RT @barackobama: Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Christel vanderBoom (@Xtel) November 7, 2012
RT @barackobama: Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Meg Holston (@megholston) November 7, 2012
President Obama currently has more than 22.4 million followers.
Headline image via Scott Olson / Getty Images
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