In Nonstop Whirlwind of Campaigns, Twitter Is a Critical Tool

From The New York Times:

If the 2008 presidential race embraced a 24/7 news cycle, four years later politicos are finding themselves in the middle of an election most starkly defined by Twitter, complete with 24-second news cycles and pithy bursts.

With 100 million active users, more than 10 times as many as in the 2008 election, Twitter has emerged as a critical tool for political campaigns, allowing them to reach voters, gather data and respond to charges immediately. But like most new media tools, it also carries danger for the campaigns. It can quickly define the political debate, whether candidates like it or not, and a single 140-character missive can turn into a nightmare.

“Twitter has changed the whole way that politics works,” said Teddy Goff, the digital director of President Obama’s re-election campaign. “Not just the press element, but the organizing element and the fund-raising element and the relationship building that all campaigns try to do.”

Perhaps no Republican campaign monitors Twitter more closely than Mr. Romney’s operation, which believes that it can ferret out bias among reporters by analyzing their posts. Top aides say they watch Mr. Romney’s events with a Twitter stream open on their computer. Their war room compiles all the Twitter messages from the press corps at every event and e-mails them to the campaign staff.

“Twitter is the ultimate real-time engagement mechanism, so it’s moved everything to a much faster speed,” said Zac Moffatt, the digital director for the Romney campaign. “You have no choice but to be actively engaging it at all times.”