After the election, I found an interesting article about the effects of the outcome on Mitt Romney’s Facebook page. In this Washington Post Article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/11/09/mitt-romney-losing-facebook-friends-by-the-minute) the author, Caitlin Dewey, writes “Mitt Romney is losing 593 friends per hour – at least on Facebook today from 10 to 11 a.m. You can loiter on his page and watch them plummet by the second.” ‘Today’ refers to November 9th. I was very surprised to see this, if only for the fact that I wondered why people would even take the time to “defriend” him after having lost the election. Right after I read this, and before I continued on in the article, a reason I thought of for why people would “defriend” him (or just unlike his page, which is what I did) is because of the amount of traffic liking a figure like him causes in ones newsfeed. Before the election (I shared this in an earlier blogpost) I liked both candidates Facebook pages to see how much they advertised for their campaign. It turned out to be a whole lot, with both of them posting pictures and other such things to try and build up themselves or tear down the other. All of this seemed way too much, and especially now that the election is over, and Romney is no longer in the picture, it makes sense for so many to “defriend” him or unlike his page. However, to my surprise, the article suggests that it is the opposite reason for why people acted in this way. She writes, “That radio silence could explain why Mitt’s followers have been so quick to jump ship”. This proves my initial reaction to be completely wrong, showing that people do want tons of information coming up in their newsfeed, and when that information is not provided they become frustrated and immediately stop following this person. I guess I am in the minority of thinking there was too much political campaigning happening on social networking sites, such as Facebook. Also, it is not written in the article, but I would guess that Obama’s victory only caused thousands more to like his page because they want to see how he continues to utilize social media via Facebook during the next four years of his presidency. My guess is that he will be less active on Facebook now that he is assured another four years, but it is hard to tell how people will act on Facebook as it continues to grow dramatically and revolutionize social networks.