More stories of Romney’s rise in Facebook


Here are a few links to what people are saying about Mitt Romney’s Facebook page.

26 April – Big Think – Obama vs. Romney on Facebook:

… while Romney is getting a higher rate of sharing from his fans than the president, Obama’s fans have shared his posts 2.24 times more often in absolute numbers. Add this to the fact that Obama’s messages are directly delivered to more than 24,000,000 fans than Romney’s, and it is clear to see that Obama is dominating Facebook so far in this campaign.

20 June – Mashable – Romney gains speed on Facebook:

According to data from both Facebook and SocialBakers.com, Romney has seen a swell in popularity recently. From June 11 to 17, one of his strongest weeks yet, he gained more than 71,000 new fans; according to Facebook, June 10 was his most popular day ever.

Meanwhile, President Obama gained about 77,000 new fans during the same time period. While that is a greater number of fans, it is down from previous weeks, and in the last month, Obama has only had a 1.7% increase in fans, whereas Romney has had a 10.8% increase.

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Does Romney Buy his Facebook Fans?

Two weeks ago, ZoomSphere, a company that analyizes Facebook statistics, identified many fake accounts being added to Romney’s Facebook page. I agree that this data looks very, very suspect.

Today you could see that Mitt Romney crossed the border of 4.000.000 fans on his fan page on Facebook. This is a great milestone for each politician.

Here we can see that around 34% fans of Mitt Romney have only couple of their own fans. It is very unusual and suspicious.

Similarly, a large proportion of such fans is usually an indicator of their shopping over the dubious services.

Check out ZoomSphere.com’s day-to-day tracking of Mitt Romney’s page here.

via ZoomSphere.com • Does Romney Buy his Facebook Fans?.

How Apple Killed the Linux Desktop

Nice look by Wired at the current broken state of Linux user interfaces.

Wired thinks OS X killed the Linux desktop but I maintain it’s suicide. I read Linus Torvalds’s rant about Fedora 17 and Gnome3 and have to agree with him. Not only did Canoncial break the Ubuntu desktop but Red Hat broke Fedora’s, too.

It’s hard to say exactly what percentage of desktop and laptop computers run Apple OS X, but it’s clear that the operating system has made slow but steady gains at chipping away at that the sizable lead Microsoft established in the ’90s with its Windows operating system. Some figures put the number at about 6 to 7 percent of the desktop market.

But one thing’s for sure: OS X has been more successful than Linux, the open source operating system that has found a home on data-center servers but is still a rarity on desktops and laptops. Linux may have seen a surge last year, but it still hasn’t seen the sort of growth OS X has, nor the growth that Linux supporters have long hoped for.

via How Apple Killed the Linux Desktop and Why That Doesn't Matter | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com.

My local urban woods to become subdivision

Urban deer


I received confirmation yesterday that the Weatherford property, the beautiful 10+ acre woods beside my neighborhood, is under contract by KB Homes. I believe their plans call for a 40-home subdivision with upscale homes similar to the ones in my neighborhood.

Checking KB Homes’s map of its other subdivisions in the Triangle area, this will be the first to be positioned so close to a downtown. That makes me wonder if we’ll see smaller, fancier, less car-centric homes to appeal to the new generation of homebuyers.

I will miss the nearby woods, though. I’ve grown used to mornings quiet enough to hear the call of barred owls, and the occasional encounter with urban deer grazing near my yard. I’m also expecting increased traffic as the dead-end street I live on gets extended to the new neighborhood, bringing more traffic through my neighborhood.
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Twitter Updates for 2012-08-28

Twitter Updates for 2012-08-28

Other Facebook users report Romney profile slamming


Other Facebook users have been reporting that their Facebook accounts were signed up for Mitt Romney’s Facebook page without their permission. Here are a few quotes from the Facebook help page topic:

“This happened to me, as well.”

“Happened to me too i wouldnt piss on that Douchenozzels shoes if his feet were on fire”

“That keeps happening to me, not only with the Mitt Romney page, but with several other pages–mostly commercial things like Amazon and Target, whose pages I never even visited.”

Here are a few from another Facebook help page on the topic:

“Betcha this year’s tax return’s will show Mitt Romney’s the biggest shareholder in Facebook. My page is flooded with his face”.

“My facebook is also flooded wiyh Mitt Romney posts, how can we rid of them.”

I’ve heard from friends of friends who have had this happen to them. I’ll see if I can get quotes from them, too.

Also, I’m starting to see this topic show up on message boards around the Internet. Word is slowly starting to get around.

Update 12:10 PM: Here’s another response on the Centrist Word blog:

“I had this happen to me, and as an outspoken Obama supporter, I was horrified. A friend spotted it on Facebook and texted a screen shot to me. A whole new low in political campaigning.”

Chart reveals unusual patterns in Romney’s Facebook popularity


I discovered a company called Inside Facebook which has been tracking the popularity of the Presidential candidates’ Facebook pages.

Take a look at the graph above. Obama’s growth has been extremely predictable and steady, while Romney’s has been all over the place. It shows extreme swings. Now, I don’t know if waves of actual Romney supporters are getting on board his train or if someone’s padding his numbers on his behalf but the stark difference in the two candidates’ patterns does raise questions.