Social Media’s Republican Debate Winners, Iceland Crowdsources Its Constitution, and Facebook Loses Some Friends

Adriana Diaz


The first major Republican presidential debate was held in New Hampshire last night, and by all accounts, especially on social media, Mitt Romney dominated. After the debate, Romney gained the most "likes" on his Facebook page, bringing his total to almost 1 million, the most of all the candidates. Michele Bachmann gained the second most new "likes," totaling 300,000 overall. However, Bachmann blew Romney out of the water in Yahoo! Search. After starting the debate by announcing her presidential run, searches for Bachmann skyrocketed by 9,000 percent. By comparison, searches for Romney increased by 380 percent. So who are the social media losers? Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty, whose Facebook pages and search buzz remained flat.

In international news, one country is using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to help rewrite its constitution. Iceland, which decided to write a new constitution after its economy crashed in 2008, is posting drafts of the document online for citizens to see. Iceland's constitutional council has set up pages across different social media platforms to monitor public viewpoints on the working constitution. So far some citizens have said they want public ownership of the country's natural resources and greater livestock protection. People around the world are commenting on Iceland's Facebook page, praising the country's embrace of social media.

Yet it turns out that Facebook isn't as popular as it used to be in other countries. According to InsideFacebook.com, Facebook lost 6 million American users last month, reducing the total number of U.S. users to 150 million. Facebook also lost friends in Canada, England, and Russia. Statistics show that once the social media site reaches 50 percent of a country's population, its growth slows. Nonetheless, Facebook is still expanding its footprint in smaller countries and will soon hit 700 million members worldwide.

Will you be leaving Facebook anytime soon? You can tell us, where else...Facebook!