Hootsuite Opens Up A Social Media Command Center For The Election

Social Media Management company Hootsuite is offering up a fascinating tool for political junkes: their 2012 Election Tracker. This single screen provides, at a glance, the social media chatter going on around the Presidential election. It tracks mentions of the candidates, the VP candidates and even the contenders for the title of First Lady. Even better, it updates that chatter in real time.

Particularly fascinating, to me anyway, is that Hootsuite's page is also tracking social media sentiment - that is, the mood of the tweets about each of the candidates. For example, there are a lot of tweets about Mitt Romney with 'Fear/Uneasiness' sentiments. And a lot of tweets about Barack Obama with 'Anger/Loathing' sentiments. It's pretty interesting to watch.

But why has Hootsuite set this up at all? Well, as Matt Switzer, VP Partnerships & Corporate Development at HootSuite explained via e-mail, "Social media has become an incredible barometer of public opinion, and the public expresses more opinion during elections than almost any other time. This election-focused social command center dashboard provides a public opinion poll happening right in front of you during the entire election. Up-to-date info is essential during an election that sees candidates giving speeches, and potentially making mistakes, every hour of every day."

You can check out the tool for yourself here.

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