Walker v Neumann: The Twit Off

Earlier this week the Captial Times did a story on political campaigns and their increased use of social networking sites. The story largely focused on the use of Twitter and Facebook by Republican gubernatorial candidates Scott Walker and Mark Neumann. Reading the story made me curious so I took a look at what both campaigns are doing on Twitter.

First, as Dan Cody has already pointed out, Walker and Neumann are using Twitter in very different ways. Walker seems to be using it as just another way to preach to the choir and talk AT people. Walker also takes every cheap shot at the current governor that he can possibly think up. When he is not doing that he's telling us things about his daily life that we didn't need to know. One of my favorites is when he sent out a tweet about standing in some sub shop up north, when at the same time Milwaukee was in full scale emergency mode because of a possible pandemic. Mark Neumann seems to be using his Twitter account to actually interact with his followers. Most of his tweets are replies to people and so far they are not written in Walker-style cheap shot form.

Aside from the different ways that Walker and Neumann are using their Twitter accounts, it is also interesting to look at the raw numbers. Walker started seriously using his Twitter account months before Neumann. In fact Neumann just launched his a few weeks ago. So far Walker has posted 388 updates to Neumann's 90. Given those lopsided numbers and the Twittering head start that Walker had, I was surprised to see how many followers Neumann already has compared to Walker: 1,133 for Scott and 859 for Mark. Twittering Republicans (at least) don't appear to be totally sold on Walker quite yet. If Mark Neumann was able to catch up so quickly, where will those numbers be in a month or in two? Will he pass Walker? Either way, what will it say about the Republican primary if anything?

For the record, I will be keeping a close Eye On these developments and report back as the numbers change. No doubt this will become a series and I'd like to now officially dub it, "Walker v Neumann: The Twit-Off"