Mitt Romney Sheds Friends on Facebook

Nobody "likes" a loser.

As if losing the presidential election wasn't enough, Mitt Romney has been hemorrhaging Facebook friends.

People began unliking Romney's official Facebook page soon after the election results came in last week. The Washington Post noticed the drop on Friday, when the GOP presidential candidate's page was losing 593 likes an hour.

By Saturday, Mashable said the exodus was up to 847 friends an hour, and as of Monday morning, Romney's Facebook page continued to lose around 11 likes every minute.

For those who enjoy interactive graphics with their schadenfreude, the site DisappearingRomney.com shows Romney's Facebook likes dropping in real time. A ticker at the bottom of the page tallies how many people have unliked Romney's page just in the time users have been on the site.

Not that Romney is hurting for social media pals. As of Monday afternoon, he still had more than 12 million Facebook fans and 1.7 million followers on Twitter.

The former governor's team hasn't been doing much on social media lately to persuade people to stick around. After a flurry of activity leading up to the election, his official Facebook and Twitter accounts went silent for four days afterward. On Saturday, the campaign finally posted a photo of a sad-looking Romney with the message, "From the bottom of our hearts, Ann and I thank you for your support, prayers, efforts and vote. We are forever grateful to every one of you."

By contrast, President Barack Obama acknowledged his victory last week with a pair of posts on Twitter and Facebook that quickly went viral. And his social media accounts have been active in the week since the election.

Romney's recent silence extends to his running mate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, whose campaign's Twitter account has not been updated since the election. However, Ryan did update his personal (pre-campaign) Twitter and Facebook pages with two Veterans Day posts over the weekend.

The official Republican National Committee's Facebook page has also been quiet since Election Day, when it reposted a thank you to Romney from GOP Chairman Reince Priebus.

After Obama was first elected four years ago, his official Twitter, Facebook and, yes, MySpace pages (it was 2008, after all) went quiet for a time.

One explanation is that the staffers who manage these accounts either move on or are typically given new responsibilities after an election. It's unlikely that Obama or Romney were posting to Facebook and Twitter very often themselves.