(CNN) - Three days after accepting his party's nomination for president, Mitt Romney on Sunday crossed the one-million mark in Twitter followers.
1 million active followers – thanks everyone for your support. Help us keep the momentum going mi.tt/N74Zuo
—
Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) September 02, 2012
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Saturday night, he fell just 3,000 followers short of threshold, and around 2 p.m. ET on Sunday, Romney posted that he now had 1 million.
President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is well ahead of Romney, coming in with more than 19.2 million followers as of Sunday afternoon. The White House has made an aggressive push to appeal to Twitter users. The president occasionally tweets from the account himself, and he has taken parts in Twitter town halls in the last year.
In his tweet, Romney made sure to point out that his followers were "active," after some high-profile figures, including the GOP presidential nominee, have been accused of beefing up their follower list with fake names purchased from "follower agencies." Romney's campaign, however, has denied buying inauthentic names.
Last year, Newt Gingrich especially faced questions over his Twitter account. In August 2011, the former House speaker had 1.3 million Twitter followers, while none his fellow GOP presidential opponents came close to 80,000, including Romney.
A New York based search analytics company PeekYou, said their algorithm results showed only eight percent of the candidate's followers were "humans" and claimed his real follower count was closer to 106,000. The firm excludes businesses and brand accounts as "real people."
Gingrich's campaign maintained the account has higher numbers because Twitter added him to its "Suggested User List." The feature recommends certain names as a way to get new Twitter users started in compiling their favorite people on the microblogging site.
– CNN National Political Correspondent Jim Acosta and CNN's Ashley Killough contributed to this report.
From CNN Politics
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I heard a report that up to 70% of the President's followers aren't active. Is there any truth to this? I do believe that was what Mr. Romney was alluding to in his statement.
I hope Mr Romney will brush up on his
Image- he needs to be trained by a
Professional body image person and
Actor who will train him to show
More charisma – I speak as a Southern
Woman who will vote for him
Right... a million "follower agancy" names. A candidate who has yet to tell the actual truth during the campaign certainly isn't above buyuing some "followers". Why not? The Koch brothers bought Romney!
Where are those tax returns? Where are some specifics on all of those promises?
It's all look see show !
Mitt will even lie on the virtual circuit . . . Romney is bad news for America and most of us know it;
Most of his twitter followers are using the feed for laughs and drinking games. The man and his platform is a joke.
what is the descriptive noun for a person obsessively using Twitter: – - – -.
How nice. Twit Romney has a million Twits following him. Just like the Lemmings.....over a cliff.
I noticed the same trend of facebook. mighty mhitstain willard was boasting of his "likes" so I checked on our President – he had somewhere around 26 million more.
But then the rich don't bother with book-face and don't get all a-twitter except when they get their VIP parking for the willard events in the gated communities he prefers.
A lot of them look fake: no tweets, not following anyone else, no profile. Somebody got paid to make them up.
Oh look, most of Mitt's followers are not people. Just like the majority of his supporters: the corporations.
Isn't that special. Sorry this story is ridiculous.
One million followers, huh? And he's been running for the job for what, 5,6 years now? Either he's not too bright or his people have just discovered ANOTHER way to spend that 100 million his sponsors have promised to spend to defeat President Obama. Just curious about what they all expect in return for their investment?
The million mark? This clown has been running since when?