Omaha company tracking Presidential Tweets

Twitter took over Wednesday night as Obama and Romney squared off.

By Justin Pazera

CREATED Oct. 4, 2012

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Omaha, NE - Twitter took over Wednesday night as Obama and Romney squared off for 90 minutes, 10.3 million tweets went out, the fourth largest Twitter event ever. Jimmy Winter co-founded Votertide in Omaha last year. his job, to track who's posting what and when.  

Winter says, "a lot of our clients, they track their own data online but a lot of them are more interested in tracking their opponents data."  And there was a lot to post about last night. A quick comment about possible cuts to Public Broadcasting sent references to Big Bird through the roof by 800-thousand percent on social media. Winter says, "If someone says, sees Big Bird, that's something that's going to stand out in the noise and people on line will just take that and run with it and just go wild."  

A request for a little more time from Obama was one of the top three comments posted about during the debate. Votertide also tracks local campaigns. In the Bob Kerrey Deb Fischer Senate run --- Kerrey is twittering ahead with average an 142 mentions a day versus Fischer's 92. Winter says the key though is for politicians to be genuine. 

Winter says "If you're going to go to a parade and walk up and down the street shaking people's hands it's got to be you. It can't be somebody else."  The bottom line people are watching and posting everything, taking campaigns into a different world and into his office in a matter of seconds.