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Palin Sees Facebook Friend Surge Following Resignation

by Terrence O'Brien on July 8, 2009 at 07:01 PM

Palin Sees Surge In Facebook Friends Following Resignation
Whether you love her or wish she would find herself partially devoured by a Kodiak bear in the Alaskan wilderness, there is no denying that Sarah Palin is a popular, if polarizing, figure. One way to measure popularity in the Web-era is by counting friends on sites like Facebook, and by that metric Sarah Palin has managed to make herself more popular by stepping down as Governor of Alaska.

Tech and politics blog techPresident tracks the numbers of several major political figures' Facebook friends. The site found that in the days following Palin's resignation, her number of Facebook friends spiked -- and at a rather surprising rate. On July 3rd, when she announced that she would not seek reelection and would be vacating the Governor's office by the end of the month, she had roughly 560,000 friends. As of today, however, Palin is closing in on 625,000; that's a jump of almost 12-percent in five days.

There's also evidence that the popularity surge extends to other social networks like Twitter, as well.

Perhaps this is an outpouring from supporters who wish she would hold on to the governorship. Maybe it's merely people expressing sympathy for a woman who has taken a beating in the media. Or maybe it's just a bunch of curious onlookers expecting her to make a major announcement (presidential run, Scientologist, werebear) via her Facebook page. Either way, she's still got a lot of ground to cover if she hopes to ever catch up with President Obama and his 6.5 million friends. [From: Politics Daily and techPresident]

Tags: facebook, palin, politics, sarah palin, SarahPalin, social networking, SocialNetworking, top

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