Politics

Newt Gingrich: Did he out-tweet Sarah Palin?

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced Wednesday that he was running for president, and his method for doing so -- via increasingly popular social media site Twitter -- was a first.

"Today I am announcing my candidacy for President of the United States," Gingrich tweeted. "You can watch my announcement here." He then links to his official campaign page, where users can watch a two-minute campaign video and fill out fields to donate to his campaign. Gingrich has more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter as of this writing.

While Newsmax reports that the Twitter announcement marks the first official declaration of candidacy via a social media site, President Barack Obama announced his own re-election via a video on his website hosted by YouTube. Whether or not YouTube is a social media site is a subject open for debate -- social media tracker Mashable has called YouTube "the top social media innovation of the decade" -- but there is no doubt that Gingrich is the first to tweet his intention to run for the nation's highest office.

In doing so, he may have gotten the drop on another potential Republican candidate for the 2012 election, Sarah Palin. The 67-year-old Gingrich is hardly known for his appeal among younger generations. While Gingrich has remained active in numerous non-governmental organizations and as a frequent political commentator, the last time he was active in an official government capacity was when he resigned his seat in Congress, amid scandal over an affair he had with an aide -- while he was married and around the same time he was impeaching then-President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair.

While Gingrich has been a regular on Twitter -- posting several times per day with occasional gaps -- Palin is well-known for her social-media savvy, with most of her public communications via Facebook or Twitter. She tweeted her first response to the death of Osama Bin Laden, a congratulatory message to U.S. troops. On Wednesday, she shared a Facebook note titled "Removing the Boot From the Throat of American Businesses," in response to a letter sent to President Obama by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint and other Republican Senators.

Twitter would be the natural place for Palin to make her announcement.

By announcing his own candidacy on Twitter, Gingrich may have scooped Palin in an important way, by stealing the novelty of being first to use the platform. The grassroots, only-for-the-fans style of reaching out to her supporters has been preempted by a sectagenarian with a solid white head of hair, and now Gingrich gets the dubious distinction of being the first to announce his candidacy in 140 characters or less, while Palin will miss out on being recognized for the use of Twitter in a groundbreaking way.

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If Palin wants to run for president while maintaining her status as the political diva of social media, she'd better do it soon -- she's running out of firsts. If she waits too long, we may see her making an announcement by checking in outside the White House on Foursquare, or livecasting her candidacy from a dimly-lit room on justin.tv.

It is important to note that Gingrich's Twitter announcement also represents a strange coincidence with his apparent campaign slogan on his donation page: "winning the future together." Given Charlie Sheen's recent popularizing of the hashtag "winning" on Twitter, it would seem Gingrich would want to avoid equating his campaign in any way with Charlie Sheen. Maybe Gingrich can borrow Sheen and Snoop Dogg's new single, "Winning," as his campaign anthem. #winning

Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com

Ben Anderson

Ben Anderson is a former writer and editor for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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