Social Media + Election Day = Success

Today's elections have made history in the social media world. The use of social media to see who was winning greatly surpassed the use during the 2008 elections. However, I am not surprised by this fact because all day I have received tweets from @foxnews to keep me updated on the elections! And now as I write this blog, I have the fox news "live elections results map" pulled up on my computer screen too.

Not only has Twitter been blown up by over 20,000 tweets, but the two most popular hashtags of the day have been: #Election, #ivoted. The #Election hashtag was promoted by the Washington Post, but in reality  #ivoted has received far more attention due to it's combination with Foursquare and Facebook. I believe the combination of these three social media giants is the number one reason why today's elections have received the highest social media attention in history.

Foursquare created a check-in specifically for this election. You could check-in throughout the day from wherever you voted. This screen shot was taken at 11:40am and as you can see 50,098 people had checked in from 23,503 locations. Wow! It also breaks down this statistic by gender and location.

The Foursquare check-in was linked through Twitter, where one could tweet their check-in and receive an #ivoted badge. Then, this badge was also linked through Facebook. Immediately when you logged on today, on top of your mini-feed, you were asked: "Did you vote today?' If you answered you received a Vote badge on your facebook profile. That is what I love most about social media, how they all intertwine to create such an in-depth user experience.

Lastly, I found the Foursquare check-in comparable to when Twitter created the VMA Tracker that displayed who was receiving the highest tweets throughout the night. Both were smart moves because it allows the audience to be even more involved with their hobbies.

Congratulations Social Media, you truly won the election!