Obama lauds your Twitter push

According to President Obama, you deserve some credit for the debt ceiling agreement announced last night.

The president in his Sunday evening speech announcing the deal reached by Congress lauded those who heeded his call to contact their representatives via Twitter, phone and email to ask for a compromise.

"Most of all, I want to thank the American people," Obama said. "It's been your voice, your letters, your emails, your tweets, your phone calls that have compelled Washington to act in the final days. And the American people's voice is a very, very powerful thing."

President Obama first asked the public to call and email Congress to ask them to reach a compromise. And so many of you apparently responded that servers hosting Hill websites crashed and phone lines were overloaded.

As the Aug. 2 deadline approached, Obama ramped up that call, requesting on Friday that Americans also tweet at their representatives and helpfully providing the Twitter handle of every single lawmaker on the social networking site throughout the day.

So does this apparent social-media success story mean the White House has a new strategy in bitter Capitol Hill stalemates?

If so, the White House tech team should proceed with caution. Mashable reports the president lost more than 36,000 followers to his Twitter account @BarackObama while many of the Republicans tweeted out as targets reportedly picked up followers. Mashable connected Obama's losses to users annoyed by the hours-long deluge of Twitter handles issued by the president Friday.