This week the White House launched a savvy social media campaign asking Americans how they’d spend $40 — the estimated amount that the typical family would lose per pay period if the payroll tax cut was not extended. (It was, for two months, on Thursday.)
The Twitter-op generated a decent amount of traffic, which President Obama touted during a press conference:
I have to tell you that the response has been overwhelming. We haven’t seen anything like this before. Over 30,000 people have written in so far — as many as 2,000 every hour.
But an analysis from Crimson Hexagon showed that there were more than 40,000 Tweets using the hashtag, about 30,000 of which contained an actual opinion. And 13 percent of those on-topic Tweets were actually negative statements about Obama.
We’re totally in favor of listening to actual Americans about how big picture politics impacts their real life — but if you want a truly unfiltered tale of working class life, we’d still recommend spending some quality time at wearethe99percent at Tumblr.
