Sarah Palin Makes Many New Facebook Friends After Announcement

Sarah Palin's July 3 announcement that she would be stepping down as governor of Alaska, has made her more popular than ever. At least on Facebook.

Techpresident.com yesterday reported a massive spike in Facebook friends for the former Republican vice-presidential nominee. Techpresident tracks the Facebook popularity of various political figures on an ongoing basis. Even since their report yesterday, which had Palin with 591,635 supporters, she has gained an additional 18,368. That's a 3 percent gain in less than 24 hours. Without precise numbers it's hard to tell exactly how large her gain has been since the announcement Friday, but it appears to be around 9 percent.

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PD toolbar!Palin's online success has gone beyond Facebook, though. According to the traffic tracking service Alexa.com, two sites associated with Palin have seen substantial traffic spikes. SarahPAC.com, which accepts donations for the governor's political action committee, and TeamSarah.org, a popular grass-roots fan site, have both enjoyed traffic surges.


There has been plenty written from all sides about why Palin's decision to step down was a bad idea, and that the day and words she picked to make the announcement did her no favors. And, full disclosure, you can count me among those who thought her message hit the ground like, well, a dead fish.

But if these metrics are any indication, she may indeed have been crazy like a fox. I haven't found clear data to back this up, but one poster over at the freerepublic claims that her Twitter account has increased by 30,000 followers since Friday.

I don't doubt it. I'm one of them.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelCK



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