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“This happened because of you. Thank you,” Obama tweeted.

Is what president Obama tweeted before, yes before, giving his acceptance speech in Chicago shows the tremendous role social media platforms like Twitter played in the 2012 election.

“We’re all in this together. That’s how we campaigned, and that’s who we are. Thank you. -bo.”

Twitter announced it had broken records.  On Tuesday night there were more than 31 million US election-related tweets. Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz said it was “the most tweeted about event in U.S. political history.”Between 6 p.m. and midnight EST, there were more than 23 million tweets. The previous record was 10 million, during the first presidential debate on Oct. 3 2012.

Twitter had a peak of 327,000 tweets a minute, moments after Obama’s win.

Rob Johnson, campaign manager for Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry’s failed presidential run said. “The Internet is truly a real and powerful tool in politics.”

“We no longer click refresh on websites or wait for the paper boy to throw the news on our porch,” Johnson said. “We go to Twitter and learn the facts before others read it.”

Mediacoach’s media consultant Alan Stevens gives Obama a lot of credit for having the edge in social media since he started engaging through Twitter whilst still a candidate in 2007. "[Obama] has gathered 21.5 million Twitter followers, whereas his challenger has fewer than two million," he says. "In addition, he (or his campaign team) is more active, having so far delivered over 400 tweets in this campaign to a mere 16 from the Romney camp. Obama scores more highly on YouTube too, with 21 campaign videos to Romney's 10."

 MY OPINION

I believe social media platforms had a crucial part to play in the result of the US elections. The use of these social media platforms would have been to attract more young voters in my opinion. It allowed Obama to connect with the younger generation and this may have resulted in him being re-elected. It goes to show how far social networking websites have come, from once just being used to socialise to now being used to become the President of the United States. It will be interesting to see in 4 years if the candidates to become president take the use of social media platforms more seriously or not.