Social Media Responds: Santorum Quits
News that Republican Rick Santorum was suspending his presidential campaign ignited chatter across social media on Tuesday. His name quickly became a trending topic on Twitter, with 2,187 Tweets posted per second during his live speech, according to social media monitoring firm Networked Insights.
Tweets about the news began with people sharing breaking news headlines. Our post, below, was retweeted more than 400 times:
- Conversations quickly took on a sarcastic nature, Networked Insights said.
- This tweet, from the satirist @pourmecoffee, for example, was retweeted more than 2,100 times:
- Several Twitter users remarked on Mr. Santorum's infamous sweater vest, which he mentioned during his speech Tuesday. “Amazing thing that sweater vest," Mr. Santorum said. "All of a sudden the Twitterverse went wild."And went wild it did:
Great, now I look like an idiot wearing this Rick Santorum-branded sweater vest. on.cc.com/IeYYpw- The remaining candidates also responded to the news:
- Newt Gingrich's campaign bought a promoted tweet, encouraging people to donate to his campaign:
- We posted the news of Mr. Santorum's withdrawal to The Wall Street Journal's Facebook page. The post drew more than 80 comments from readers. Here are some highlights:
